General Information

Notion Hellenistic Everyday Table Ware represents the standard dishes of the site’s Hellenistic-era residents. The fabric is fairly well levigated, clean, compact, and slightly micaceous, with a few gray, brown, and white inclusions. It is generally soft pale reddish yellow in color (5YR 6/6) although it can vary from a more reddish to a more brownish hue. Vessels are well made, generally fully fired, and almost always carry a thin slip in and out, which ranges in color from matte red to black. Shapes consist of an array for individual dining and drinking: carinated cups, incurved rim bowls, everted rim bowls, saucers, dishes, hemispherical cups, and mold-made bowls.

This ware has been defined on the basis of excavations of a single large Late Hellenistic house, so these particular forms represent a specific moment in the history of Notion. However, a surface survey of the full site and its immediate environs, carried out from 2014-2019, recovered ceramics from the Iron Age through the late Roman period that included many vessels whose ware description conforms with that of Notion Hellenistic Everyday Table Ware. That ware, named Hales River Valley Ware, is characterized by a compact, pale pink-buff to pink-brown fabric with small white, brown, and gray inclusions. The color difference is likely due to surface weathering and other environmental impacts over time.  

The ubiquity of vessels of this ware at Notion over time suggest that it was manufactured nearby.

Notion (Turkey/Aegean)