Reconceptualizing the Middle Helladic "Type Site" from a Ceramic Perspective: Is "Bigger" Really...

FLORENS FELTEN, WALTER GAUSS, RUDOLFINE SMETANA (Editors)

MIDDLE HELLADIC POTTERY AND SYNCHRONISMS

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ÖSTERREICHISCHE AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTENDENKSCHRIFTEN DER GESAMTAKADEMIE, BAND XLII

Contributions to the Chronologyof the Eastern Mediterranean

Edited by Manfred Bietakand Hermann Hunger

Volume XIV


ÖSTERREICHISCHE AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTENDENKSCHRIFTEN DER GESAMTAKADEMIE, BAND XLII

Ägina - Kolonna

Forschungen und Ergebnisse

Florens Felten (Hrsg.)

Band I

MIDDLE HELLADIC POTTERY AND SYNCHRONISMS

Proceedings of the International Workshop held at Salzburg October 31st – November 2nd, 2004

Edited byFlorens Felten, Walter Gauss and Rudolfine Smetana


Vorgelegt von w. M. SIGRID JALKOTZY-DEGER in der Sitzung am 13. Oktober 2006

Spezialforschungsbereich SCIEM 2000„Die Synchronisierung der Hochkulturen im östlichen Mittelmeerraum

im 2. Jahrtausend v. Chr.“der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften

beim Fonds zur Förderungder Wissenschaftlichen Forschung

Special Research Programme SCIEM 2000“The Synchronisation of Civilisations in the Eastern Mediterranean

in the Second Millennium B.C.”of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

at the Austrian Science Fund

British Library Cataloguing in Publication data.

A Catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.

Alle Rechte vorbehalten

ISBN: 978-3-7001-3783-2

Copyright © 2007 byÖsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften

Wien

Grafik, Satz, Layout: Angela SchwabDruck: Druckerei Ferdinand Berger & Söhne GesmbH, A-3580 Horn

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Printed and bound in Austria

Die verwendete Papiersorte ist aus chlorfrei gebleichtem Zellstoff hergestellt,frei von säurebildenden Bestandteilen und alterungsbeständig.


CCOONNTTEENNTTSS

Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Preface by the Editors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

GGEENNEERRAALL // AAEEGGIINNAA

FLORENS FELTEN

Aegina-Kolonna: The History of a Greek Acropolis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

JEREMY RUTTER

Reconceptualizing the Middle Helladic “Type Site” from a Ceramic Perspective: Is “Bigger” Really “Better”? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

WOLFGANG WOHLMAYR

Aegina Kolonna MH III–LH I: Ceramic Phases of an Aegean Trade-Domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

WALTER GAUSS and RUDOLFINE SMETANA

Aegina Kolonna, the Ceramic Sequence of the SCIEM 2000 Project. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

PPEELLOOPPOONNNNEESSEE

GILLES TOUCHAIS

Coarse Ware from the Middle Helladic Settlement of Aspis, Argos: Local Production and Imports. . . . . 81

ANNA PHILIPPA-TOUCHAIS

Aeginetan Matt Painted Pottery at Middle Helladic Aspis, Argos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

MICHAEL LINDBLOM

Early Mycenaean Mortuary Meals at Lerna VI with special Emphasis on their Aeginetan Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

JÖRG RAMBACH

Investigations of two MH I Burial Mounds at Messenian Kastroulia(Near Ellinika, Ancient Thouria) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

BBOOEEOOTTIIAA // NNOORRTTHHEERRNN GGRREEEECCEE

KALLIOPE SARRI

Aeginetan Matt-Painted Pottery in Boeotia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

JOSEPH MARAN

Emulation of Aeginetan Pottery in the Middle Bronze Age of Coastal Thessaly: Regional Context and Social Meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

BARBARA HOREJS

Transition from Middle to Late Bronze Age in Central Macedonia and Its Synchronismwith the “Helladic World” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

CCRREETTEE // SSOOUUTTHHEEAASSTT AAEEGGEEAANN

ALEYDIS VAN DE MOORTEL

Middle Minoan Pottery Chronology and Regional Diversity in Central Crete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

CARL KNAPPETT

The Beginnings of the Aegean Middle Bronze Age: A View from East Crete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

LUCA GIRELLA

Toward a Definition of the MM III Ceramic Sequence in South-Central Crete: returning to the Traditional MM IIIA and IIIB Divison? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233

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NICOLETTA MOMIGLIANO (with a contribution by CARL KNAPPETT)Kamares or Not Kamares? This Is [Not] the Question. Southeast Aegean Light-on-Dark (LOD) and Dark-on-Light (DOL) Pottery: Synchronisms, Production Centers, and Distribution . . . . . . . . . . 257

ELENI HATZAKI

Ceramic Groups of Early Neopalatial Knossos in the Context of Crete and the South Aegean. . . . . . . 273

NNOORRTTHHEEAASSTT AAEEGGEEAANN // AANNAATTOOLLIIAA

PETER PAVÚK

What can Troia tell us about the Middle Helladic Period in the Southern Aegean? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295VASIF HAHOGLU

Çehme-Baglararas¶: A New Excavatipn in Western Anatolia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309

MASSIMO CULTRARO

The Middle Bronze Age Pottery Sequence in the Northern Aegean Islands: The Evidence of Poliochni, Lemnos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323

CCYYCCLLAADDEESS

DONNA MAY CREGO

Exchange in Period IV at Ayia Irini on Kea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333

JOHN OVERBECK

The Middle Bronze Age Sequences of Kea and Aegina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339

IRENE NIKOLAKOPOULOU

Aspects of Interaction between the Cyclades and the Mainland in the Middle Bronze Age . . . . . . . . . . 347

GGEENNEERRAALL DDIISSCCUUSSSSIIOONN:: PETER M. WARREN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361

Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363

Programme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365

Contents6

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1 My sincere thanks to the organizers – Professor FlorensFelten and Drs. Walter Gauß and Rudolfine Smetana – forthe invitation to participate in an exceptionally well-orga-nized and informative workshop. I am also grateful to J.Maran and C.W. Zerner for several helpful suggestions for

improvement of an earlier version of this paper. Sucherrors as may remain, however, are entirely the responsibil-ity of the author.

2 My thanks to C.W. Zerner for this last suggestion.3 VALMIN 1938.

Jeremy Rutter 1

RREECCOONNCCEEPPTTUUAALLIIZZIINNGG TTHHEE MMIIDDDDLLEE HHEELLLLAADDIICC ““TTYYPPEE SSIITTEE”” FFRROOMM AA CCEERRAAMMIICC

PPEERRSSPPEECCTTIIVVEE:: IISS ““BBIIGGGGEERR”” RREEAALLLLYY ““BBEETTTTEERR””??

More than twenty years of strewing, sorting, and writ-ing up sherd material of the Early, Middle, and LateHelladic (hereafter EH, MH, and LH, respectively)periods from half a dozen different excavations on thecentral and southern Greek mainland (Korakou,Gonia, Ayios Stephanos, Lerna, Athens, Tsoungiza,and Mitrou), in addition to ten years of similar workwith Middle to Late Minoan (hereafter MM and LM)ceramics from a major site in south-central Crete(Kommos), have persuaded me that MH pottery isquite limited in its typological ranges, whether interms of shapes, decoration, or modes of production(including assessments of paste or fabric preparation,shaping techniques, and surface treatments). I alsoconsider the MH ceramic tradition to be extremelyconservative and disciplined throughout time. Choosea typical MH ware category – dark-burnished, matt-painted, cooking pottery – and consider how muchthat particular category changes from the middle ofthe 21st century B.C. to the end of the 18th in terms ofits shape range and decorative practices (or surfacetreatments in the broadest possible sense). Changescertainly do occur, but the pace of change is compara-tively slow and the changes observed are relativelyminor. In my opinion, perhaps the most impressive sin-gle change across the more than three centuries of theMH period was the decision to produce plain burnishedwares in a pale-firing class rather than exclusively indark-surfaced classes (gray, black, brown, or red) –that is, the advent of what is often referred to as “Yel-low Minyan”. One result of this choice was to blur thepreviously sharp distinction between the dark-sur-faced burnished classes and the very different pale-sur-faced matt-painted classes. After “Yellow Minyan’s”appearance, the clay grounds – that is, the undecorat-ed surfaces – of both the pattern-painted and the plainburnished categories, the two principal components ofMH table wares, looked increasingly the same. And

consequently the basic distinction between these twocategories is largely lost in LH pottery, althoughmonochrome painted Mycenaean pottery may beviewed as the direct descendant of the plain dark-bur-nished tradition, perhaps affected by the solidly paint-ed fine wares at home on Aegina from MH III onward.2

So MH pottery is quite simple typologically. Itconsists of two major tableware categories, as wehave just seen (that is, plain burnished and matt-painted), each of which is represented by no morethan three or four major forms at a time: goblets,kantharoi, horizontal-handled bowls, and some one-handled cups among open shapes; pouring vesselswith various forms of handle and mouth profiles (allof which can be lumped together under the generalheading of jugs) and various forms of storage vesselswith at least two, and often more, horizontal handles(all of which may be described as jars) among closedshapes. When it comes to cooking pottery, the rangeis even narrower: a single wide-mouthed jar form maybe supplied with no handles at all, but simply someshoulder lugs; alternatively, the same basic form mayhave a single vertical handle from the rim or neck tothe shoulder, or else a pair of horizontal handles onthe shoulder. Aside from a distinctive series of wide-mouthed jars, with a comparatively high-swung ver-tical handle to the rim, that feature coarsely incisedornament – the class of pottery infamously chris-tened “Adriatic ware” by the excavator of Malthi,Natan Valmin3 – none of this dark-surfaced cookingpottery is decorated. Finally, a typical MH potteryassemblage features pithoi, but so few of these havebeen preserved in restorable form or with any kind ofparticularly distinctive ornament that MH pithoi asa class have a claim to being the most neglectedceramic types of the Aegean Bronze Age.

The MH pottery repertoire does not comparefavorably with contemporary ceramic assemblages

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elsewhere in the southern Aegean. The inventivenessof Protopalatial Minoan ceramics is justifiably leg-endary, as even a brief visit to the Herakleion Muse-um makes abundantly clear in the three or four gal-leries packed with the remarkable achievements ofMM potters.4 Furthermore, this inventiveness of theCretan artisan is manifested on just about every con-ceivable level when it comes to ceramics of the laterPrepalatial and Protopalatial eras, most famously inthe shape range and surface ornament of fine tablewares, of course, but just as much in storage vessels(especially pithoi) and even in cooking pottery (withinwhich the range of different major shapes puts thesingle wide-mouthed MH jar form to shame). Theexistence of palaces on Crete during much of thisperiod, and hence of groups of palatial artisans,accounts for at least some of the phenomenal vari-ability and creativity exemplified by MM IB and IIpottery. But Prepalatial pottery of the EM III andMM IA phases is still vastly more varied than is MHpottery. Moreover, Minoan Protopalatial ceramicassemblages differ more from region to region withinCrete than do the purely MH ceramic repertoires ofthe Greek mainland. Even a Middle Cycladic ceramicassemblage at a site like Phylakopi makes MH potterylook very dull by comparison.5

Given the simplicity of the basic MH ceramicrepertoire, then, why has it been so difficult to comeup with a taxonomic system – that is, a scheme ofclassification – that applies well enough to all thesite-specific ceramic assemblages of the southern andcentral Greek mainland during the Middle BronzeAge? Especially over the past 25 years, the growingnumbers of differently defined MH wares havebecome positively bewildering to the non-specialist.Indeed, this proliferation of different ware nameshad become such an issue by the late 1980s that threeArgive specialists sought to introduce a standardizedset of ware names applicable at least to that region ofthe Peloponnese.6 I suspect that many ceramic spe-cialists who have worked on MH pottery in particular(as opposed to Middle Bronze Age assemblages fromother regions of the Aegean) might respond some-

what differently to this simple question: why has theequivalent of a Furumarkian classification7 for MHpottery not yet been devised? As far as I am con-cerned, the basic problem is caused by ceramicimports, many of them from centers of productionthat lie outside of the MH cultural sphere. Since thenumbers of such “extra-Helladic” production cen-ters are multiple, and since any specific mainlandGreek site imported variable amounts of their prod-ucts according to where they were located and whatslice of time is being considered, the resulting MHceramic assemblages not surprisingly create theimpression of being chaotically variable, notwith-standing the very simple nature of the MH coreassemblage that I have just surveyed.

A simple example will serve to illustrate the prob-lem as I see it. Carol Zerner, in a series of seminal pub-lications spanning the years from 1978 to 1993, madeus all aware of the existence of two major centers ofpottery manufacture that exported their productswidely throughout central and southern Greece.8 Oneof these centers was located on Aegina, presumably inthe neighborhood of the site of Kolonna, and appearsto have specialized in the production of large closedand open vessels (water jars, barrel jars, and kraters),a restricted number of smaller drinking and eatingvessels (mostly goblets, kantharoi, and handlelessbowls), and four different types of cooking pots (threeof them variants of the wide-mouthed jar form that Imentioned earlier).9 The complex marking systemthat characterizes the pots produced at this Aegine-tan center during both MH and later Mycenaeantimes has recently been explored in considerabledetail by Michael Lindblom, who has also done muchto clarify the full shape range of this impressiveexport industry based on Aegina (Fig. 2). The secondmajor center or group of centers isolated by Zernerhas yet to be so narrowly located, but is likely to lieeither within southern Lakonia or perhaps on thenearby island of Kythera. This industry produced theclass of pottery called by Zerner “Lustrous Decorat-ed” in sufficient quantities for the various forms ofdecorated table ware it comprised to be distributed

Jeremy Rutter36

4 BETANCOURT 1985, 64–102; LEVI and CARINCI 1988;MACGILLIVRAY 1998.

5 ATKINSON et al. 1904; DAWKINS and DROOP 1911; BARBER

1987.6 DIETZ et al. 1988. For continuing problems with MH ceram-

ic terminology 15 years later, see STOCKER 2003, 360.7 FURUMARK 1941.

8 See especially ZERNER 1993, with references to earlier liter-ature.

9 For the shape range of Aeginetan MH pottery, LINDBLOM

2001, 22–38, figs. 4–8; also GAUSS and SMETANA in this vol-ume. There is a distinct difference in some cases between thepopularity of some shapes on the island of Aegina itselfand their frequency as imports in off-island contexts: seeLINDBLOM 2001, 35 (kantharoi and goblets).

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Reconceptualizing The Middle Helladic “Type Site” From a Ceramic Perspective: Is “Bigger” Really “Better”?

widely in the eastern and southern Peloponnese.10 MHsites located in the southern Peloponnese (for exam-ple, Ayios Stephanos) produce comparatively largequantities of Lustrous Decorated imports but negligi-ble amounts of Aeginetan,11 while sites located in cen-tral Greece north of the Isthmus of Corinth (forexample, Kiapha Thiti)12 produce substantial quanti-ties of Aeginetan material but relatively little Lus-trous Decorated by comparison. Sites in the north-eastern Peloponnese, such as Lerna, Asine and Argos,on the other hand, produce large amounts of both.13

Although we so far lack as much solid quantitativedata as we might like for many of the MH sites inquestion,14 we may imagine that the quantities ofsuch imports differed not only relatively but also inabsolute terms, depending on such factors as the dis-tances from the production center or centers and fromthe sea (over which this material must have been prin-cipally distributed), local circumstances at theimporting sites, and the individual economic trajecto-ries over time of the production centers themselves.

Of course, there are unlikely to have been just twosuch centers of production, although these may wellhave been the principal ones affecting the easternGreek mainland for much of the MH period. That is,we know of Cycladic imports at a number of MH sites,as well as of Minoan imports which differ sufficientlyfrom Lustrous Decorated vessels to be attributable tocenters of production on Crete proper.15 The numbersof all these imports are understandably highest atsites which are at the larger end of the range of MH

site size and which are also located on the coast (suchas Lerna, Asine, Ayios Stephanos and Lefkandi).Unfortunately, these have also tended to be those siteswhich have been chosen as type sites at which the MHceramic repertoires for specific regions have been con-sidered to be best represented. These sites also tend tobe multicomponent sites, selected for excavation pre-cisely because they can contribute significantly to adiachronic view of MH culture. Of course, problemscaused by kick-ups and remnant sherd material inlater deposits are far more serious at sites of this kindthan they would be at smaller sites occupied for short-er periods of time. It is thus fairly clear that the siteswe have chosen for the characterization of regionalMH pottery assemblages are in some important waysby definition poorly suited for this purpose. What weneed instead of large, multicomponent coastal sites,one might argue, are small, single-component inlandsites where the complications resulting from largequantities of imports produced at multiple centers ofmanufacture, some of them not yet located and othersperhaps not even isolated or identified, are removed.

Do such ideal sites exist? The answer is yes, andthere are at least two different varieties of them,each with its own particular virtues. In some waysthe most desirable would be a MH site occupied foronly a brief period of time and then abandoned. Anexample of such a site is the transitional EH III/MHI locale of Deriziotis Aloni located 500 m southwestof the Mycenaean palace at Pylos on the EnglianosRidge in western Messenia.16 The site consists of just

37

10 For the most recent overview of this industry, see PHILIP-PA-TOUCHAIS 2003 on its shape and decorative ranges asthese are represented in the Aspis excavations at Argos.

11 RUTTER and RUTTER 1976.12 MARAN 1992.13 ZERNER 1986, 1988, 1993 (Lerna); NORDQUIST 1987 (Asine);

PHILIPPA-TOUCHAIS 2002, 2003, and in this volume (Argos).14 The quantities of Aeginetan pottery imported to Asine in

MH III times have been estimated at 16% of the totalsherds recovered at that site, but amount to as much as25% in some portions of the site (LINDBLOM 2001, 41). Theamount estimated from the site of Kiapha Thiti in MH IIIlevels reaches as high as ca. 22.5–30% (MARAN 1992, 218,Befundcomplex Schn. 153, SE 7/Schn. 154, SE 5; 33 of atotal of 107 feature fragments [Signifikante Stücke] or 12of a total of 53 as a minimum number of individual pots);see also LINDBLOM 2001, 41 and n. 165. At Tsoungiza in theCorinthian interior, Aeginetan imports increase enormous-ly from only a couple of identifiable examples in MH III(LINDBLOM 2001, 41 n. 165) to between 9 and 12% of thetotal ceramic assemblage by both sherd count and weightin LH I (RUTTER 1989, 12). On the Aspis at Argos, the

amount of imported Aeginetan pottery may have been ashigh as 9 to 10% of the total assemblage in the earlierstages of the MH occupation of the hill (PHILIPPA-TOUCHAIS 2002, 4–5, table 1). Further west on the otherside of the Isthmus of Corinth, the quantities of Aegine-tan material imported to Kirrha between MH I and LHIII range between 1 and 6% (LINDBLOM 2001, 42 and n.168). The limited evidence available suggests that therewas a dramatic rise in the quantity of Aeginetan potteryimported at virtually all sites at the transition from theMH to the LH period (LINDBLOM 2001, 42), but the exam-ple of the Aspis at Argos shows that the quantities ofimported Aeginetan material (and in this case also Lus-trous Decorated) may also decline with time in someinstances (PHILIPPA-TOUCHAIS 2002, 4, 39, table 1; 2003,4). Finally, at Asine, NORDQUIST has estimated thatimports from Aegina make up as much as 86% of all iden-tified ceramic imports to the site in the MH III phase(LINDBLOM 2001, 41 and n. 160).

15 For Cycladic and Minoan imports into early MH Lerna, seeZERNER 1978.

16 STOCKER 2003.

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two poorly preserved apsidal buildings, one superim-posed over the other, accompanied by a small assem-blage of heavily worn but nevertheless quite closelydatable pottery.17 Of the 191 sherds published fromthis site, three ring bases reused from EH II vesselsand two kylix fragments and a coarse handle attrib-utable to Mycenaean pots are chronologically extra-neous,18 but the remainder appears chronologicallyhomogeneous. Just one of the items published fromthe site has any claim to being a possible import.19

The remaining sherds all belong to a narrow range ofshapes encompassing the three basic functions offood preparation (in cooking pots), bulk storage (inpithoi), and eating and drinking (from table wares).No pattern-painted pottery whatsoever is attested,but this is as likely to be the result of the extremewear suffered by this material as it is the reality ofthe ceramic assemblage that it represents.

A second kind of site that might be ideal for defin-ing a typical MH ceramic assemblage of a particularphase is a site freshly reoccupied during the MH peri-od after a substantial period of abandonment. Such asite is the small settlement at Tsoungiza in theCorinthia, resettled in the late MH period after two tothree centuries of desertion.20 Unfortunately, in thisand similar cases, the site’s subsequent occupation –in the case of Tsoungiza, for as long as four centuriesduring the Mycenaean era – has done considerabledamage to the underlying MH levels. Sufficient MHsherd material nevertheless survived from two spa-tially discrete areas at Tsoungiza – trenches EU2 andEU6 – to allow isolation of two slightly differentstages of a late MH ceramic assemblage that arebroadly contemporary with the first phase of use ofGrave Circle B at Mycenae (Fig. 1). Among the 176inventoried pieces, a figure that includes a dispropor-tionate percentage of table wares (over 85%), nomore than 5% (8 or fewer pieces, to be exact) weresuspected of being imports, including one probableand one possible Aeginetan fragment.

In both of these instances, we are able to gain animpression of a MH ceramic assemblage that does notconsist largely of imports from locales other than oneor more reasonably nearby places of manufacture.Sites such as Deriziotis Aloni and Middle HelladicTsoungiza are by their very nature – they were, afterall, small and occupied for only a short period –unlikely to have been loci of ceramic production. Forthese same reasons, they had not established duringtheir initial phase of resettlement a network of con-tacts that had introduced them to substantial num-bers of imports from a potentially quite widespreadset of suppliers. In both cases, the range of ceramictypes represented is limited, although only in thecase of Tsoungiza is it possible to provide even rough-ly quantified data.21

Why have I gone to such lengths to make the casethat the basic MH ceramic repertoire is so simple andrestricted, a case that involves finding sites where thenumbers of ceramic imports are minimal? After all,this is a workshop dedicated to the topic of intercul-tural connections and synchronisms, for which thedetailed study of as many exchanged items as possi-ble is desirable. Why am I focusing on sites of a kindthat appear virtually antithetical to the ones inwhich those attending this workshop have tradition-ally been interested – the Lernas, the Kolonnas, theAyios Stephanos’s, and the Pefkakias? My answer is asimple one: rather than devoting most of my atten-tion to identifying the large numbers of imports atmajor MH sites and wrestling with the taxonomicproblems inherent in devising a scheme of ceramicclassification that will incorporate all of these, I aminterested instead in isolating a core MH ceramicassemblage because I would like to explore theprocesses whereby large amounts of imported con-tainers were introduced into MH settlements and toinvestigate the effects of this activity on the lifewaysof MH populations. After all, it is the fact of suchlarge-scale importation of ceramics that is one of the

Jeremy Rutter38

17 STOCKER 2003, 363 and ns. 36–8.18 EH II ring bases: STOCKER 2003, 365 (P6, P7), 372 (P35);

LH III kylikes: 365 (P8), 393 (P142); Mycenaean (?) coarsestrap handle: 369 (P17). An additional body sherd is hesi-tantly attributed to an EH II shape, but without any com-pelling argumentation: 400 (P180).

19 The medium coarse hemispherical bowl identified bySTOCKER as an EH II type (2003, 363–4, 387 [P119], figs.22, 23) has perhaps a better claim to be an example of ashape well attested in late EH III and early MH contextsat Kolonna on Aegina as well as imported to contemporary

sites such as Lerna: WALTER and FELTEN 1981, 163–4, nos.270, 271, pl. 102; RUTTER 1984, 99 (Group IA [3]), fig. 1a.

20 RUTTER 1990.21 It should be possible to create a similar table for the exten-

sive body of data published from Kiapha Thiti, a site whichlike Tsoungiza was barely if at all inhabited during the ear-lier MH period (MARAN 1992, 200–1). Here, however, due tothe location of the site in much closer proximity to bothAegina and the sea, the quantities of imports from thatsource are comparatively high right from the start of theMH III period (see n. 14 above).

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Reconceptualizing The Middle Helladic “Type Site” From a Ceramic Perspective: Is “Bigger” Really “Better”? 39

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most striking features of MH material culture.Whether, in fact, this behavior is more or less pro-nounced on the Greek mainland during the MiddleBronze Age than in contemporary Crete or theCyclades is an issue that might repay further study,as would a comparison of the nature and numbers ofmainland ceramic exports to the islands with what-ever the reverse traffic in Cycladic ceramic exportsmay have been.

One-period sites lacking any significant numbersof imports, such as Deriziotis Aloni seems to be, willcertainly not be very informative for the study ofceramic exchange, intercultural contacts, or synchro-nisms, no matter how helpful they may prove to be inestablishing the basic building blocks of a MH ceram-ic assemblage. But I wonder how many such single-component MH sites really exist. For example, Der-iziotis Aloni itself may simply represent the initialoccupation of the MH site that would go on tobecome the palatial Mycenaean center of Pylos. Thatis, if the Englianos Ridge were to be more thorough-ly explored by excavation, it might well turn out thatthe ridge’s occupation is continuous after the phaserepresented by the two superposed and heavily erod-ed structures uncovered at Deriziotis Aloni, but thatthe spatial organization of the site changed signifi-cantly from phase to phase during the early stages ofthe MH period before eventually becoming centeredin the area of the later palace and adjacent lowertown to the southwest.

By far the more common kind of import-free sitewe have so far discussed is the sort that constitutes anew settlement during the MH period, whether at apreviously occupied locale (as in the case of theTsoungiza hill) or at one never before chosen for set-tlement (such as Koumoula in Phokis),22 but in eithercase one occupied for some time thereafter ratherthan for only a very short duration.23 The combina-tion of surface survey and excavation conducted bythe Nemea Valley Archaeological Project during the1980s revealed that a substantial number of sites inthe vicinity of Tsoungiza (including Zygouries and

Ayia Irini in adjacent valley systems to the east andwest, respectively) were, like Tsoungiza itself, initial-ly occupied in the late MH period either for the firsttime ever or after centuries of abandonment. More-over, this phenomenon of the later MH colonizationof the Greek mainland’s interior does not appear tobe limited to the Corinthia, since sites with similarhistories may be cited from both Phokis and Attica.24

At sites of this kind, it is possible to investigate thedevelopment through time of what often becomes thelarge-scale importation of ceramic containers in amore satisfactory way than would be possible at themuch larger coastal emporia. Thanks to the lack ofcontinuous occupation at such sites, problems causedby earlier kick-ups during the initial stages of theirMH occupation are minimal. At the same time, thefact that their external contacts during these initialphases of MH occupation are also minimal allows thepathways by which such contacts first came intobeing, and then subsequently grew, to be plotted in amore sharply defined way than might otherwise bethe case. In theory, it should be possible to track thegrowing numbers of imported types according totheir various places of origin, and to consider at thesame time the disparate functions of the containertypes represented, so as not only to reconstruct thenature of what are often extremely heterogeneousMH ceramic assemblages but also to explain how andperhaps even why they developed as they did.

Again, a specific example may serve to illustratethe points I am seeking to make. Figure 1 shows therange of shapes and functional categories represent-ed at MH III Tsoungiza, with the table wares furtherbroken down into the three principal decorativeclasses recognized: dark-on-light matt-painted, plainpale-burnished, and plain dark-burnished. The twosections of the table headed EU2 and EU6 displaysome basic ceramic statistics from two previouslymentioned, spatially distinct areas of the site. Anumber of comparatively minor differences betweenthese two bodies of material suggest that the findsfrom EU2 are slightly earlier than those from EU6.

Jeremy Rutter40

22 TOUCHAIS 1981.23 The MH settlement on the Aspis at Argos is anomalous not

only in that the quantities of ceramic imports representedduring at least three distinct phases of occupation (PHILIP-PA-TOUCHAIS 2002, 3) decline with time (see n. 14 above),but also in that substantial numbers of both Aeginetan andLustrous Decorated imports are present from the momentof this locality’s resettlement after more than a millenni-um’s abandonment following the Final Neolithic (or Chal-colithic) era. This peculiarity of the Aspis settlement may

be explained by viewing it as an extension of an alreadywell-established site rather than an entirely new founda-tion. That is, the initial MH occupants of the Aspis mightnot represent altogether new settlers in Argos, but rathersimply a (higher status?) group within the larger popula-tion of MH Argos that was seeking a more dominating res-idential locale. For MH settlement throughout the limits ofthe modern town of Argos, see TOUCHAIS 1998.

24 RUTTER 2001, 131 and ns. 146–7.

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Reconceptualizing The Middle Helladic “Type Site” From a Ceramic Perspective: Is “Bigger” Really “Better”? 41

Fig. 2 Major Middle and Late Helladic Aeginetan Vessel Shapes (after LINDBLOM 2001:26 fig. 4)

035_044 Rutter.qxd 14.02.2007 16:23 Seite 41

In neither case, however, does the number of recog-nizable imports exceed 5% of the pottery recovered.Within one or perhaps two generations, however –that is, by the developed LH I period, attested in anumber of discrete deposits at the site – the ceramicsituation has changed dramatically, imports account-ing for 20% or more of the total assemblage. Spaceconsiderations preclude any detailed analysis ofthese changes, whether according to formal types orto vessel provenances, but a few comments on somefunctional aspects of these changes and their broad-er cultural significance may be worthwhile.

The largest corpus of imports at LH I Tsoungizacomes from Aegina and consists of cooking pots (Fig.2.14–5), matt-painted water jars (Fig. 2.19–22) andkraters (Fig. 2.11), and solidly coated goblets (Fig.2.6) and kraters. To reach Tsoungiza, all of thismaterial had to be transported a minimum distanceof some 40 km overland from emporia located alongthe coasts of either the Saronic Gulf or the Gulf ofArgos. Note that the range of imported Aeginetanshapes includes no one-handled cups, no ladles or dip-pers, and no small to medium-sized pouring vessels(that is, jugs). These imports were chosen for theirfunctional utility in specific daily activities, namelyfood preparation, the fetching of water from springsor wells, and the consumption of beverages in sub-stantial quantities, presumably (but not yet demon-strably) wine mixed with water in the kraters andthen drunk from the goblets. It is not difficult to seethe appeal of the Aeginetan imports to the second-and third-generation residents of Tsoungiza. Thecooking pots were lighter in weight than the locallyproduced variety because they were better made, andfurthermore their volcanic fabric better resisted ther-mal shock. The water jars – stamnoi, hydrias,amphoras, and large jugs – were also lighter in weightbecause much thinner-walled than the locally pro-duced jars, thus allowing larger shapes to be pro-duced and reducing the number of trips to be madeto the local water source. Moreover, the greater poros-ity of their fabric resulted in more sweating of theirunburnished or only very lightly tooled surfaces, thuspromoting cooling of the liquid inside. Finally, thekraters satisfied a need for mixing bowls, and thegoblets presumably came along with the kraters aspart of a drinking set. The absence of any obviousdippers or ladles from the Aeginetan assemblage is aninteresting fact. At Tsoungiza, the need for this shape

already in late MH times is apparent from a pair offragments from the later MH III horizon representedby EU6 (Fig. 1). In LH I, this shape became morestandardized in form and much more common as alocally produced type.25 What makes the example ofthe dipper noteworthy is that the failure of the exter-nal supplier to provide it required its local manufac-ture. The implication is surely that Aeginetan drink-ing behavior did not include a need for a decorateddipper to go with its kraters and goblets – or for smalland attractively decorated jugs and juglets, either.

Among the other classes of imported potteryfrom LH I levels at Tsoungiza are Gray Minyan,Mainland Polychrome Matt-Painted (as well as otherkinds of bichrome matt-painted in lesser amounts,presumably from distinct centers of production),Light-on-Lustrous-Dark-Burnished, and of coursethe Lustrous Painted that is the earliest manifesta-tion of what we call Mycenaean decorated pottery.Each of these classes of imports is characterized atTsoungiza by an idiosyncratic shape range, as theyare also at other sites of the LH I period throughoutcentral and southern Greece. The question of whythis wide range of “specialty wares” all of a suddencame into being at the MH/LH transition is oftenraised, as should also be the question of why virtu-ally all of them went on to disappear by the end ofthe LH IIA phase. Surely part of the answer to atleast the first question is that they responded to awidespread demand for new collections of householdpottery inspired by the colonization of large swathsof the Greek interior which had been effectivelydeserted since late in the 3rd millennium B.C. Aquestion for the future is whether the sudden rise inthe number of “specialty wares” in LH I is matchedby a boom in the production of already long-estab-lished Aeginetan export wares. From the limitedamount of data already available on this subject, itwould appear that the Aeginetan ceramic industryresponded to a sudden demand for large amounts ofpottery at around the time of the MH/LH transitionnot only by an increase in production, but also bythe development of a range of new vessel types,prominent among which are the kraters and severalvarieties of water jars that are such a prominent fea-ture of the picture of Aeginetan imports at LH ITsoungiza.26 The rise to prominence of LustrousPainted pottery at precisely this time presumablyreflects a corresponding boom in the output of the

Jeremy Rutter42

25 RUTTER 1990, 440 n. 50. 26 LINDBLOM 2001, 26–7, fig. 4 (S11, S19–S22), 40–2.

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Reconceptualizing The Middle Helladic “Type Site” From a Ceramic Perspective: Is “Bigger” Really “Better”?

similarly long-established producers of Zerner’sLustrous Decorated class. Do we, in fact, haveenough data yet to conclude that it was an episode oflate MH colonization of the mainland’s interior thatresulted in the dramatic changes in MH pottery thatdefine the beginning of the Mycenaean era? Mightthe discovery of late MH pottery in the centralMediterranean at sites such as Lipari and Vivara(and perhaps Monte Grande) be another expressionof either the rise in population or a sudden interestin decentralization or both that resulted in the phe-nomenon that I have been calling “colonization”?And last but not least, how is this “colonizing”behavior connected with the explosion of wealth andpower manifested in the Shaft Graves of Mycenae atmuch the same time?

However these very large as well as loaded ques-tions may ultimately be answered, there are twoaspects of MH social behavior that cannot be calledupon to explain the changes in MH pottery and in theimporting of non-local containers that we have beensurveying. Thanks to studies by both Carol Zernerand Gullög Nordquist, we know a good deal abouthow pottery was employed for funerary purposes inMH times, whether as grave goods, as grave furni-ture, or as the containers of bodies along with theassociated lids.27 Relatively few MH graves – onlysome 25–30% – contain pottery, and of those that do,rarely do the amounts exceed one or two vessels.Since most such tomb pottery consists of locally pro-duced items rather than imports, there seems to be

no connection possible between MH funerary behav-ior and a growing MH appetite for ceramic imports.Nordquist has also drawn attention to the curiousphenomenon of the deposition of MH vessel types inpairs, whether in tomb or settlement contexts.28 Therange of such paired examples of the same shape iscomparatively narrow and clearly points towarddrinking behavior as the activity lying behind theseinstances of ceramic twins. The most popularlypaired shapes are goblets and kantharoi, but jugs,cups of several kinds, and even dippers are alsoattested.29 The temporal range of this pairing is alsoquite narrow, the least ambiguous examples datingexclusively from the MH III and LH I periods.30 Vir-tually all examples of the twinned forms are localproducts rather than imports, a single exceptionbeing an Aeginetan goblet from a MH III settlementcontext on the Barbouna slope at Asine.31 Once again,whatever drinking customs may have given rise tothis pairing of vessels in the latest MH and earliestMycenaean contexts, they cannot be cited as behav-ior that would have dramatically affected the import-ing of pottery from abroad. The hypothesis present-ed here, that a significant change in settlement pat-terns, loosely identified as “colonization”, wasresponsible for some major ceramic changes in thelate MH and LH I periods, though it certainlyrequires additional testing before it can be consideredvalid, may in the meantime serve as an example of anapproach to MH ceramic analysis that is more prob-lem-oriented than purely descriptive.

43

27 ZERNER 1990; NORDQUIST 2002, 121–7.28 NORDQUIST 2002, 127–33.29 A pair of rim-handled bowls from Prosymna grave 1 cited

by NORDQUIST (2002, 127 and n. 82) and a possible pair ofwide-mouthed cooking jars from Tsoungiza with differenthandle systems (RUTTER 1989, 9–10, nos. 18, 19, fig. 7) areanomalies.

30 Two earlier MH rim-handled cups with quite different feet,from the tumulus at Aphidna cited by NORDQUIST (2002,127 and n. 93), are not very convincing as an example ofthe pairing phenomenon.

31 NORDQUIST 2002, 130, fig. 13b.

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