General Information

Kelenderis Band-Painted Ware was one of the most common groups of decorated ceramics in the Levant during the Persian (or Achaemenid) period. The group includes a small set of distinct forms: mainly bowls and plates, as well as jugs, table amphorae and hydriae. Most of these vessels are adorned with simple painted bands. On the larger serving vessels this is occasionally complemented by the occurrence of drop bands and wavy lines. While first examples of this Band-Painted (BP) style appeared during the 7th century BCE in Cilicia, significant quantities occurred in most of the eastern Mediterranean only during the 5th century BCE. Such vessels have been identified at almost every excavation of this period located in the coastal regions of Cilicia, Syria and the southern Levant (the southern coast of modern Turkey, Syria and Israel), with lesser quantities published from Cyprus and Egypt.

Kelenderis Band-Painted Ware is one of many similar sorts of productions throughout Anatolia, Ionia, and the Aegean beginning in the 7th c. BCE. It seems that almost every individual region produced their own version of band-painted ware vessels. The specific shape range varies from place to place, although all producers made bowls decorated with concentric circles on the interior and a wide painted band around the exterior rim. For a long time, when archaeologists found Band-painted ware bowls they were generally termed "East Greek," and often considered part of the same set of maritime networks that distributed Attic pottery. 

Whereas the production of Kelenderis Band-Painted Ware seems to end by the late 4th c. BCE, the taste for banded ware bowls and plates continues in Ionia and central Anatolia into the Hellenistic period. Hellenistic-era productions include Ionian Hellenistic Delicate Banded Ware, West Anatolian Hellenistic Banded Ware, and Central Anatolian Hellenistic Banded Ware.

The clay is well-sorted and finely porous, usually contains few rounded or sub-rounded white and red inclusions, sometimes with tiny micaceous grits. it is high-temperature fired clay, varying from reddish (Munsell 2.5 YR 5/6) to reddish-yellow (5YR 6/4‒8, 5YR 7/4‒6), or reddish-brown (5YR 4/4, 7.5YR 6/4‒6).

Most vessels are self-slipped, decorated with painted horizontal bands and occasional occurrence of drop bands and wavy lines, specially on closed vessels as jugs and table amphorae. 

Vessels of this ware includes simple plates and hemispherical bowls, jugs and table-amphoras.    

East-Greek Banded-Decorated pottery