Characterizing the manufacturing practices of Late Bronze Age White slip ware from Bamboula-Kourion, Cyprus

Abstract

White Slip Ware (WS) is one of the most recognizable Late Cypriot pottery types and was traded around the Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age. This study examines the specific methods used to create the WS pots deposited in tombs at Bamboula-Kourion by considering the ware’s chaîne opératoire. Using a combination of ceramic petrography, x-radiography, infrared spectroscopy and electron microscopy, we reconstruct the production technology of WS I, II, and IIA vessels and add this fabric-based evidence to discussions of typology. This characterization of the production of WS ware vessels contributes to an understanding of community-level interaction at Bamboula and in the region around the Troodos and opens new questions about the continuities and changes in technical production knowledge that accompanied stylistic and typological shifts in LC pottery.