The ancient city of Kelenderis (today Aydıncık in Turkey’s Mersin province) was a prominent harbor on the southern Cilician coast. From c. 700 BCE through the mid-4th c. BCE, this city was home to a number of ceramic workshops producing decorated table vessels: bowls, plates, and kraters. Most of these vessels carried painted bands, including concentric circles and wavy lines within bands of varying width - hence these vessels have been termed Kelenderis Band-Painted Ware.
No actual kilns have yet been found at Kelenderis. Its identification as a production zone is based on an extensive series of elemental and petrographic analyses, which show that there is strong chemical and mineralogical homogeneity among vessels of this ware found at widely separated sites throughout Cilicia, Cyprus, and the northern and southern Levant (Lehmann et al. 2020).
Kelenderis pottery was distributed in Cilicia and along the northern Syrian coast beginning in the 7th century BCE. From c. 500 BCE, thanks to the revival of Levantine coastal settlements and their attendant maritime networks, Kelenderis Band-Painted Ware vessels start to appear in the central and southern Levant, as well as Cyprus and a few sites in Lower Egypt.
In both the northern and southern Levant, no vessels of Kelenderis production are attested after c. 350 BCE. This may be due to the growing popularity of Attic and Atticizing table vessels, whose production and distribution competed successfully with the Kelenderis ceramic industry.
