Abstract
Two markers of regional exchange in the Eastern Mediterranean during the first millennium BCE are the White Painted and Bichrome Wares from Cyprus’s Cypro-Geometric and Cypro-Archaic periods. Although these ceramics are often assumed to be imports from Cyprus, excavations in southern Turkey at sites such as Tarsus-Gözlükule, Kilise Tepe, Sirkeli Höyük, and Kinet Höyük suggest that at least some of this pottery was produced locally, requiring a major revision of our understanding of economic interaction in the Eastern Mediterranean. We employ a combination of portable x-ray fluorescence and neutron activation analysis to investigate the White Painted and Bichrome Wares recovered from Tell Tayinat, Çatal Höyük, and Tell Judaidah, three sites in the Amuq Valley of southeastern Anatolia. Our results demonstrate that a clear geochemical distinction exists between imported and local versions of this pottery. Through comparison with legacy datasets, we locate the likely origin of the imported pottery in the Circum-Troodos sediments of central and southern Cyprus. The secondary and tertiary settlements of Çatal Höyük and Tell Judaidah had access only to this imported material. In contrast, the inhabitants of Tell Tayinat, capital city of the region, consumed both imported and locally produced White Painted and Bichrome Wares. This pattern cannot be explained in purely economic terms whereby the frequency of imports decreases as distance from the point of production increases. Instead, we suggest that elite feasting practices drove demand, resulting in either local potters producing Cypriot-style pottery or Cypriot potters settling in the vicinity of Tell Tayinat. These findings offer new insights into the relationship between historically attested Iron Age kingdoms in southern Turkey and Cyprus and complicate our understanding of exchange in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Iron Age.
Highlights
As one of the most ubiquitous categories of ancient material culture, ceramics have long provided archaeologists with a tool to address a diverse suite of research questions, ranging from site chronology to local kinship patterns [1,2]
Because the objects are part of a study collection housed in the Oriental Institute Museum of the University of Chicago, we developed a methodology that began with non-destructive, but comparatively low resolution, portable x-ray fluorescence on all available ceramic sherds, in the process discovering two major geochemical groups
The findings at Kilise Tepe and Tarsus-Gozlukule, plus the provenience studies that have been performed at Kinet Hoyuk and elsewhere, indicate that geochemical analysis of White Painted and Bichrome Ware sherds from the Amuq Valley using portable x-ray fluorescence (pXRF) and neutron activation analysis (NAA) would be extremely informative for our understanding of ceramic exchange patterns during the early first millennium BCE
Summary
The findings at Kilise Tepe and Tarsus-Gozlukule, plus the provenience studies that have been performed at Kinet Hoyuk and elsewhere, indicate that geochemical analysis of White Painted and Bichrome Ware sherds from the Amuq Valley using pXRF and NAA would be extremely informative for our understanding of ceramic exchange patterns during the early first millennium BCE. Alpha includes White Painted and Bichrome Ware pottery from the regional capital of Tell Tayinat (n = 51) as well as the secondary settlement of Catal Hoyuk (n = 14) and the tertiary site of Tell Judaidah (n = 10).
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