The production, trade, and consumption of pictorial pottery in Late Helladic IIIC
Date
2024
Authors
Watts-Wooldridge, Ben
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Abstract
The collapse of the Mycenaean palatial administrations at the end of the 13th century BCE marked a period of significant transformations in social organization and interregional mobility across mainland Greece. The developments and innovations of this period were accompanied by the revival of Mycenaean pictorial style pottery. This decorative style employed figural motifs on vessels primarily intended for use in commensal social activity and was produced and traded across mainland Greece. Its study thus prompts consideration of regionalism, social ideology, and exchange in the post-collapse period: the present thesis examines the 12th century BCE rise of the pictorial style in the context of these themes.
I utilize the pictorial style pottery from the post-palatial settlement of Eleon in Eastern Boeotia as a primary case study. Among the large corpus of Late Helladic (LH) IIIC ceramics unearthed at the site is included a sizable and unpublished body of pictorial style pottery comprising 50 fragmentary vessels decorated with a variety of figural motifs. The study of pictorial pottery has historically focused on iconographic analysis and elements of stylistic development, often without consideration for the relationship between iconography, the site of production, and the movement of the pottery itself. Drawing on previously published neutron activation analysis conducted on ceramic materials from Eleon, the thesis responds to this trend in the scholarship by presenting the results of a macroscopic fabric study, integrated with iconographic analysis, that allows for attribution of provenance to the pictorial style pottery from the site.
I contextualize my findings by comparing Eleon’s pictorial pottery with that from Lefkandi and Mycenae, highlighting the stylistic trends and interregional motif preferences present in the post-collapse landscape. My macroscopic fabric study attributes a significant portion of Eleon’s pictorial pottery to Euboean production centers, attesting to a high degree of interregional exchange. This is corroborated by stylistic elements associated with the Euboean workshops. Eleon’s locally produced pictorial material reflects the predilection of Boeotian workshops for producing fish and bird motifs, while the Euboean workshops are shown to be the exclusive source of chariot and horse iconography consumed in LH IIIC Boeotia, supporting the recent suggestion that a limited number of centers produced chariot kraters. Stylistic continuity and reflections of palatial iconography in the pictorial art of post-palatial communities are also suggested to be indicative of a relationship between workshops of the pre- and post-collapse periods.
Lastly, I investigate the function of pictorial pottery within post-palatial communities. The main shape decorated at all sites is the ring-based krater (FS 281/282), a vessel used for the mixing of wine. Contextual analysis of the pottery shows that it is found primarily in domestic structures and more rarely shrines. I therefore propose that pictorial iconography was primarily seen during communal acts of drinking across Greece and less often in ritual contexts at sites such as Eleon and Kalapodi.
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Keywords
Pictorial pottery, Late Bronze Age, Greece, Eleon, Vase painting, Post-palatial, Mycenaean