The Plain Light wares of Iron Age - Hellenistic Cyprus are a broad family made in many place on the island. Vessels are wheelmade, usually light ground fabric, unslipped, unpainted, usually not very coarse. Plain Light Ware (PLW) carries no painted or slipped decoration and is generally not heavy or coarse in thickness or inclusions. Some pieces might be seen as plain dark ware (PDW); in the original SCE typology (Gjerstad 1948) PLW is merged with Plain White ware. The light buff wares (tan) were reduced to leach the red to orange color of the Iron rich clay of which the vessels were made (see Hocking 2001). Some preserve the red clay color either partly or fully. Some were more fully reduced making for a grey or even black color (though black sometimes comes from being burnt). When working on plain wares it should be remembered that a plain sherd could simply come from the undecorated section of a painted vessel.
In the Hellenistic period, this group includes vessels of fine and semi-course fabric. Generally, the fabric is characterised by the presence of few to common inclusions: angular and rounded, red and black, rounded white and sparkling. The voids visible at the fresh break are few fine to course thin, rather angular. The colour of the fresh break is reddish yellow (5YR 7/6) or pink (5YR 7/4). Commonly, there is a colour differentiation between the core and the surface. The fabric is very hard. The feel of the surface is smooth and the texture of the fresh break is hackly. Slip covers the vessels inside and it is also present outside in the form of stains, mostly on the rim and the neck. This slip is usually reddish brown (2.5YR 5/4) or very dark gray (7.5YR 3/0), thick, matt or semi-lustrous.
