General Information

Mottled Purple Slip Ware is likely a product of a production center in Phrygia, possibly near the large ancient city of Dorylaion (modern Eskisehir). It was first identified at Gordion, where it is the most common of the few imported wares found at that site. Two shapes were found there: dishes with downward curving rim, in both small and large sizes, and strainer askoi. All feature an ivy motif, comprising discrete necklace-like garlands with incised stems bearing small leaves in fugitive added white. These adorn the rims of the dishes, and the shoulder of the askos. Both large and small dishes are further embellished with impressed elements on the interior, arranged—usually haphazardly—around a central incised ring. Large dishes were also adorned with impressed palmettes arranged around a central incised circle and a single wide band of rouletting around the palmettes.

At Gordion, Mottled Purple Slip Ware vessels were found concentrated in a single 189 B.C.E. abandonment deposit, the Pantry of Rodney’s House, which also contained figurines produced at Pergamon, Rhodian amphoras that most likely arrived at Gordion via Pergamon, and pithoi incised with Ionian capacities. Excavations in the foundation of the Great Altar of Zeus at Pergamon yielded at least 36 (catalogued) fragments of downcurved rim dishes, which exhibit a striking morphological similarity to the Gordion dishes. The Pergamene vessels, however, are generally plain or simply adorned with a slip band hastily applied to the rim, the upper wall, or both.

A closer parallel for Mottled Purple Slip Ware is found at Mytilene, with at least one rim fragment from a downcurved rim dish preserving an ivy garland that is closely—if not exactly— parallel to the garlands that adorn the Gordion dishes. The ware is also attested at Histria, on the north Thracian coast of the Black Sea, in the form of two fragments of downcurved rim dishes. Both have the same fabric and slip as the Gordion examples, and the floor of one bears a bright red misfired circle and impressed palmettes that may have been made by the same stamp that was used on the Gordion dishes. The rims of the Histria dishes are adorned not with ivy necklaces but with a modified egg-and-dart motif, which nevertheless employs the same technique as the Gordion rim designs, namely incision and fugitive added white. Thus vessels in Mottled Purple Slip ware indicate contacts between the Phyrgian plateau and networks stretching across Asia Minor and into the Black Sea.

The fabric is orange (2.5YR 5/6­­ to 2.5YR 6/6), dense, and somewhat brittle, with very few, very fine black, brown, and dark red inclusions, occasional mica flecks, and many tiny pinhole voids. Fractures are clean and sharp. All examples are covered with a metallic, mottled purple slip, hastily applied with frequent drips on the underside, which misfires to a bright red occurring in the form of a stacking circle on the interior. The diameters of the misfired stacking circles match the foot diameter of the same types. 

Gordion (Turkey/Central)