“…Although a red wash ( miltos ) is also known from Athenian vases (Noble 1988, 125–7; Schreiber 1999, 48–52, 268), the Boeotian wash appears different because it is more pink ( cf . Higgins 1970). Fig.…”
This article provides an overview of the development of palmette cups from ancient Tanagra. Also known as floral cups, these formed the predominant type of decorated pottery in Boeotia and neighbouring areas during the Classical period. Production of these cups – which were decorated with simple floral motifs (mostly palmettes) in silhouette technique – peaked towards the end of the fifth and in the early fourth century bc. This study is based on a catalogue of 74 cups of unknown context in the apotheke of the Schimatari Museum, with reference to other material from excavations and collections, thus providing the most comprehensive body of palmette vases known from Tanagra or any other production centre. With a focus on vase shape and decoration, several groups or workshops are identified. The picture that is built up contributes to a better understanding of the diversity and development of this type of pottery, and offers an insight into the ceramic traditions of Boeotia in general.
“…Although a red wash ( miltos ) is also known from Athenian vases (Noble 1988, 125–7; Schreiber 1999, 48–52, 268), the Boeotian wash appears different because it is more pink ( cf . Higgins 1970). Fig.…”
This article provides an overview of the development of palmette cups from ancient Tanagra. Also known as floral cups, these formed the predominant type of decorated pottery in Boeotia and neighbouring areas during the Classical period. Production of these cups – which were decorated with simple floral motifs (mostly palmettes) in silhouette technique – peaked towards the end of the fifth and in the early fourth century bc. This study is based on a catalogue of 74 cups of unknown context in the apotheke of the Schimatari Museum, with reference to other material from excavations and collections, thus providing the most comprehensive body of palmette vases known from Tanagra or any other production centre. With a focus on vase shape and decoration, several groups or workshops are identified. The picture that is built up contributes to a better understanding of the diversity and development of this type of pottery, and offers an insight into the ceramic traditions of Boeotia in general.
Naxos, the largest of the Cycladic islands, offers a nuanced insight into Iron Age funerary behaviour in the Cyclades and relations between social groups as reflected in the archaeological record. The focus of this paper is the cemetery of Tsikalario in the hinterland of the island, with emphasis on two burial contexts which exhibit a range of activities related to funerary ceremonies and the consumption of grave-offerings. The grave-tumuli found in the Tsikalario cemetery comprise a mortuary ‘phenomenon’ not found otherwise on Naxos during the Early Iron Age. Such a differentiation in mortuary practice can be interpreted as a strategy used by the people of inland Naxos to distinguish their funerary habits from the more typical Naxian practices of, for example, the inhabitants of the coastal Naxos harbour town. This distinctive funerary practice can speak in favour of an attempt by the kinship group(s) that buried their deceased in the cemetery of Tsikalario to articulate status and identity. Beyond these tumuli, evidence from a different type of grave context at Tsikalario – Cist Grave 11 and its vicinity (Burial Context 11) – offers an additional example of a well-thought-out staging of funerary beliefs in the inland region of Naxos. Not only does it illustrate the coexistence of other types of burials in the cemetery, but, alongside the tumuli and their finds, it also demonstrates, through the symbolic package of the grave-offerings and the multifaceted network of interactions they reveal, that inland Naxos participated in the intra- and supra-island circulation of wares and ideas.
“…The picture is broadly similar in other major Greek archaeological journals; during the same period the Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, for example, did not publish a single paper devoted specifically to coroplasty and gave pride of place to sculpture. Similarly, it should be pointed out that since the syntheses of the 1960s (Besques 1963;Higgins 1967), whose approach is now outdated, no overall synthesis has been published on Greek terracottas. A collective work on coroplastic research is, however, in preparation, and will be more methodological in scope (Muller and Uhlenbrock 2018).…”
This overview discusses the recent scholarly literature on Greek terracottas of the first millennium BC. Figurative terracottas, once seen as meaningless trinkets, are now given their full meaning through rigorous study and anthropological approaches. Perhaps the most explicit and universal source on the piety of a great number of people, they now contribute decisively to the archaeology of religion, particularly in the field of votive and funerary practices. At the same time, research on figurative terracottas, renewed by a technological approach, reveals a craft that is surprisingly modern in its manufacturing and distribution processes.
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