Cypriot Iron Age Black-on-Red wares (BOR)
Cyprus/Eastern South Coast, Cyprus/Western South Coast, Cyprus/Eastern Mesoria
ca. 925/900 BCE - 300 BCE
Cypro-Geometric, Cypro-Archaic, Cypro-Classical
General Information
This ware family includes vessels that were wheelmade, in a red to orange but also light ground fabric that was slipped all over and painted with black (usually manganese based paint) decoration. Vessels were fired such that slip turned from red-brown to orange, but sometimes purple in an oxidizing environment, brown to blackish in a reduced environment, and mottled red and black in an uneven firing environment. Black-on-Red (BOR) is in fact a version of Iron Age Cypriot Red Slip ware with black painted decoration (manganese pigment), as Cypriot Iron Age Bichrome Red (BIR) is a version of Black-on-Red with the addition of white paint. A fragment of BOR could of course be from a non-white painted part of a BIR vessel.
Kourion/Episkopi, Kaloriziki (Cyprus/Western South Coast)
Polis/Marion, Peristeries (Princeton Grid Area B.D7) (Cyprus/Chrysochou Valley)
Soloi (Cyprus/Western Mesoria)
Tel Dor (Israel/Carmel coastal plain)
Tell en-Nasbeh (Israel-Palestinian Authority/Central Highlands)
Tell Tweini (Syria/Coast/An-Nusayriah Mountains)
The material found at Tel Dor, Israel is part of The Early Iron Age Cypro-Phoenician Interactions: A Study of the Tel Dor Cypro-Geometric Ceramic Imports project, directed Ayelet Gilboa from the University of Haifa and supported by the Israeli Science Foundation. The Dor assemblage analysis and collection and preparation of the reference collection for analysis was done by Anna Georgiadou as part of a post-doctoral fellowship directed by Gilboa at the University of Haifa. The laboratory work was conducted at the Laboratory for materials in Archaeology, Group Head: Prof. Sariel Shalev, the department of Maritime Civilizations. Technical assistance: Golan Shalvi and Tanya Sokolsky.
