General Information

Thin-walled, wheelmade cooking ware, often with traces of blackening on the surfaces. Usually the assemblage of Cypriot early Roman cooking ware includes wide-mouthed, shallow casseroles, narrow-mouthed deep pots – often small and one-handled – and jugs with a concave bottom. There are petrographic differences, visible also with naked eye, between late Classical, Hellenistic and early Roman Cypriot cooking ware fabric. Although most of cooking ware, pots and casseroles, of early Roman period are plain, in the same layers parallel, slightly ribbed examples occur as well.

The fabric is hard, well-fired, reddish brown in colour, non-micaceous, but with small white inclusions, most probably calcite, medium to coarse textured, sometimes with dark core. Characterized by thin, usually non-ribbed, walls and sloping rims, as well as a ‘ledge’ on the inner side of the neck, to support a lid, more or less strongly delineated. A coarsening in the form of cusps of clay, which may have served an anti-slip function, appeared on most vessels, on the outside of the bottom. Most of the presented cooking vessels are not well preserved because of their thin brittle walls.

Idalion (Cyprus/Eastern Mesoria)

Paphos/Nea Paphos (Cyprus/Western South Coast)