Corinthian Vases Research Articles

A Boeotian Die in Context: Gaming Pieces, Jewellery, Seals, Spindle Whorls and Bird Bowls in a Female Burial of Status

Abstract The present paper presents a die in its archaeological context, which is a rich grave in the region of Boeotia. It attempts to understand with what other items this gaming piece coexisted and why, as well as who was the person who played with it during lifetime. The Boeotian die is a solid cube made of clay that presents a peculiarity in its numbering system, for the face normally bearing six dots features twenty-five instead. The date of the die in the Archaic period and the sex of the deceased can be established from its associated grave-group which comprises 48 Boeotian (mostly bird bowls) and Late Corinthian vases, minor objects, such as spindle whorls, and gaming pieces from raw natural materials (such as pebbles, shells, a terracotta animal in secondary use, etc), as well as jewellery such as rings, bracelets, necklaces, brooches, pins, spiraled tubes, seals and rosettes attached on a -now lost- head cover. The age of the dead is estimated as young from osteological analysis, which situates our die and its gaming assemblage in the cultural context of the “mors immatura” in Archaic Greece. Dice among other gaming pieces are known from antiquity, yet undisturbed (and sexed) contexts of the Archaic period are rare. In the 6th century BC dice occur in sanctuaries; none is known from Boeotia, hence the significance of publishing one here in its assorted grave-group.

Evaluation of the hypothesis of the Monster of Troy vase as the earliest artistic record of a vertebrate fossil

The Monster of Troy, depicted in a 6th Century BC Corinthian vase, has been proposed to be the earliest artistic record of a vertebrate fossil, possibly a Miocene giraffe (Samotherium sp.). The purpose of the paper was to analyze the giraffe hypothesis using four approaches: a double-blind random design in which 78 biologists compared the vase skull with Samotherium and several reptiles; an informed survey of 30 art and science students who critically assessed the hypothesis based on images of candidate species; an objective computerized mathematical comparison of the images; and a detailed morphological comparison of the skulls. All of the participants rejected the giraffe hypothesis. The types of eyes and teeth unambiguously discard a mammal, whether fossil or living, as the model. The model was most likely an extant carnivorous reptile of the Varanidae family.

An interdisciplinary approach to studying archaeological vase paintings using computed tomography combined with mineralogical and geochemical methods. A Corinthian alabastron by the Erlenmeyer Painter revisited

Abstract This paper presents the results of an investigation of an unusual unpainted area in the Corinthian vase painting silhouettes painting technique during the Archaic Period (late 7th to 6th century BC). A painting of two panthers in the heraldic scheme done by the Erlenmeyer Painter on an alabastron contains a striking unpainted circular area inside the shoulder of one of the panthers. Since this feature cannot be explained by iconographical constraints, it has previously been referred to as an “opening”. However, by combining X-ray methods, particularly computed tomography (CT) and related 3D surface renderings, with mineralogical and geochemical methods (SEM-EDS, XRD) and stylistic arguments, we have arrived at a new interpretation. The CT data revealed a feature directly beneath the unpainted circular area that was shaped like an angular plug and had similar structural properties and attenuation coefficients as the surrounding clay matrix. A visible inclusion on the surface of this alabastron was identified as a rock fragment, most likely sandstone or sandy shale, which suggests that a problematic large inclusion had been removed from the vessel and was subsequently filled with clay during the firm leather-hard stage. We argue that the painter intentionally deviated from the usual compositional form by leaving the area of the repair unpainted and adapting the drawing of the panther accordingly. One advantage of this method, particularly for vase collections, is that CT is a non-invasive technique that collects data from the entire ceramic body, which in combination with geoscience methods such as SEM-EDX and XRD allows for minimally invasive analysis that can strengthen the X-ray-based evaluation. Therefore, we contend that integrating CT data combined with mineralogical and geochemical data into pottery studies will open new avenues for the study of ancient vase painting, particularly for interpreting unpainted areas and other irregularities within black-glazed silhouette figures.

CLUBFEET AND KYPSELIDS: CONTEXTUALISING CORINTHIAN PADDED DANCERS IN THE ARCHAIC PERIOD

The significance behind the imagery of the padded dancer, orkomast, traditionally has been connected to early drama, Dionysos, or ritual practices. Most Archaic Corinthian vases that include these figures portray them dancing, and a percentage of those dancers also illustrate a deformity of the foot. This article attempts to contextualise the clubfooted padded dancer within its political, cultural and geographic boundaries by offering an explanation for the end of production of these figures in Corinth. The lame padded dancer may have been a localised symbol offering political commentary on historical traditions of lameness within the tyrannical family of Corinth. Its production and discontinuation may be connected to the rise and fall of this family.

The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times (review)

This book is a study of the Greek and Roman discovery and interpretation of fossil remains. Adrienne Mayor argues that the development [End Page 119] of many mythological animals (griffins, centaurs, giants, cyclopes, and so forth) was influenced by the ancients' attempts to explain the large fossilized bones that littered their landscape. Mayor argues, for example, that griffins are derived from the bones of Protoceratops and Psittacosaurus in ancient Scythia (chapter 1); that the monster on a Corinthian vase (fig. 4.2) is an effective representation of a fossil skull weathering out of a cliff; and that the bones identified by the ancients as those of giants and mythical heroes were in fact fossil bones (chapter 3). Mayor writes entertainingly, and this book has almost more of the tone of a voyage of discovery than a scholarly work. In some places, this is rather frustrating; in particular, I found references to both ancient works and modern scholarship sometimes lacking in the footnotes (e.g., who is the "Roman poet" on p. 141; and try matching the research on pp. 165-66 with the sources in n. 4. Surely more than one endnote per page is permissible!). Given the patchy nature of her ancient sources, much of the book is necessarily speculative, perhaps rather more so than Mayor indicates in her text. But her research is intensive, her evidence strong, and her conclusions (by and large) persuasive.

The 'Monster of Troy' Vase: The Earliest Artistic Record of a Vertbrate Fossil Discovery?

This note proposes a new interpretation of a scene on a well-known Corinthian vase illustrating the Homeric legend of Herakles rescuing Hesione from the Monster of Troy. Commentators have assumed that the artist intended to depict the monster as a ketos, an imaginary sea monster, but the features of the beast do not conform to the traditional imagery of sea monsters in Greek art. I suggest that instead of creating a typical hybrid sea monster by mixing the features of various living creatures, this artist used for his model the large fossil skull of a prehistoric mammal. The vase was painted in the midst of widespread interest in large fossil remains, which the ancient Greeks identified as relics of giants and monsters of the mythological age. The features of the odd head on the vase match the basic skull anatomy of a large mammal of the Tertiary age, such as the Samotherium, a giant giraffe of the Miocene epoch. Numerous literary accounts describe exposures of these and similar large mammal fossils in antiquity along the Turkish coast, on Aegean islands, and on the Greek mainland. I conclude that this vase painting is the earliest artistic record of such a discovery.

Pots and Trade: Spacefillers or Objets D'Art?

It is now a commonplace view that fine pottery may not have formed the major part of any cargo in antiquity. The archaeological evidence of shipwrecks seems to confirm the view held by most students of the ancient economy that pots—both fine and coarse—were merely ‘parasitic’ on the main items of trade, staples, metals and slaves. However there are some who plead a special case for the fine wares—especially the figure-decorated—during the archaic and classical periods. J. Boardman, for example, though in principle in agreement with the general view that pottery accompanied ‘more important materials’, still seems to hold the view (which he formulated in 1964) that ‘Corinthian vases were being carried for their own sakes, as objets d'art, or at least best plate’. This paper will examine the recent claim—in response to those who, it is maintained, have ‘demoted the consignments of Greek pottery, plain or decorated, to “space-fillers” or “profitable ballast”’—viz., that ‘Athenian decorated pottery was not cheap and … was as valuable and profitable a trade commodity as most that any classical ship took on board’.

Corinthian Vase-Painting of the Archaic Period

This three-volume work is the first attempt in years to offer a comprehensive and detailed account of the stylistic, contextual, and iconographic aspects of archaic Corinthian vases. Exported throughout the Mediterranean and unearthed at numerous ancient sites, Corinthian vases are valuable for their artistic and cultural worth and for the information they provide about Corinth and the cities to which they were exported.

Corinth, 1896-1987: A Study of Changing Attitudes

The first regional symposium sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America in 1987 was held on 23-24 January at the University of Missouri-Columbia. It was designed to honor Prof. D.A. Amyx, the international authority on Corinthian vase painting, on the occasion of the publication of Corinthiaca: Studies in Honor of Darrell A. Amyx by the University of Missouri Press, Mario Del Chiaro, editor. The symposium was also supported by the College of Arts and Science of the University and hosted by the Department of Art History and Archaeology. The subject of the symposium was chosen to serve as a complement to the finished studies on various aspects of ancient Corinth that appear in Corinthiaca. The seven speakers, all involved in the current excavation or study of Corinthian material, reported on the progress of their research, which involved not only the analysis of material from current excavations but also the reinterpretation and study of past work at Corinth and in the Corinthia. In this way, the full range of current archaeological work at one site was presented, not only to the public but also for the scholars themselves in a symposium setting. Abstracts of each talk are published below in the order in which they were presented. It is relatively rare for a single site to be the subject of a regional symposium, and such a concentrated examination of current research in Corinth and its environs well illustrates the wide range of modern archaeology today as it is practiced at the oldest continuing American excavation in Greece.

San Simeon Revisited: Corinthian Vases

This article is a sequel to one that was written more than thirty years ago.1 It is also part of a program to publish, or republish, selected examples from the collection of ancient pottery in the Hearst San Simeon State Historical Monument.2 Complete publication of the collection, though much desired, must await some cleaning and conservation, and better photographs, of the vases.3 There are, at present, seven Corinthian vases at the monument. At the time of my first visit to San Simeon, in 1940, five pieces were present in the library of the castle, where they were photographed and described, later to be published in the paper mentioned above. Other Corinthian vases then belonging to Mr. William Randolph Hearst were either not seen by me or were for other reasons not included in the paper. Between the seven and the five, there is some duplication. Three of the five pieces then published are still present at San Simeon, two are not. Correspondingly, of the seven vases

Corinthian Vases in Montreal and Saint John

IT HAS FOR some time been the intention of the writer to make available to the scholarly world a knowledge of the Corinthian pottery existing in the northeastern states and eastern Canada, in smaller collections where the prospects of a corpus publication may not be immediately in evidence. So far this project has advanced only slowly, owing to the pressure of other commitments.1 However, it is a pleasure to present and comment on the vases in two Canadian collections. There is, of course, a fair representation of Corinthian pottery in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto already published. Apart from this, I am not aware of any other pieces east of, say, Toronto, other than the series in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and a solitary cup in the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John, to be described below. I should be glad to be corrected on this score, if readers have better knowledge, or access to private collections about which I have not been able to obtain any information. Needless to say, it is now becoming possible to attribute Corinthian vases to masters, or at least to relate them to known masters, with greater conviction than was possible a generation ago. As almost any vase may throw a revealing light on this concern, even if it cannot immediately be assigned to a painter, it becomes a matter of some importance that unrecorded specimens be brought to light. The most striking vase of this entire group is a large, handsome kotyle in a relatively good state of preservation, decorated with two friezes and closely set rays at the base (pl. 1).a A smaller set of rays is superimposed over the normal rays so that long, vertically extended, staggered triangles rise above the flaring foot. The painting of the rays and the frieze subjects is steady and careful, and the incisions are careful. The centre of the principal side (pl. 1, top right) is denoted by a double

The Case of the Dunedin Painter: New Evidence

In the first volume of these studies,1 Darrell A. Amyx established that eight allegedly Corinthian vases attributed by him to one hand, the so-called Dunedin Painter, are modern imitations, their figure work taken from a genuine Corinthian oinochoe in Tarquinia.2 In the concluding section of his paper he introduced two more vases, a column-krater and a neck-amphora, already grouped together and declared modern in 1944. Both combine the Corinthian animals of the Tarquinia oinochoe with the Attic narrative friezes of an ovoid neck amphora, also in Tarquinia, that has given the Camtar Painter the second half of his made-up name.3 Punctilious as always, Amyx not only acknowledged my letters to him (prompted by the printed summary of his paper) in a postscript to his article proper, but he has since encouraged me to continue the story in my own words and to submit an account to the California Studies. Of this opportunity I avail myself the more gratefully, since the nucleus of what follows was formed more than twenty-five years ago when he and I shared a desk in the library of the Berkeley campus. My first picture (pl. 1:1) reproduces the other side of the vanished neck-amphora once in Lecce, of which the reverse was illustrated by Amyx on his plate 3:2. This neck-amphora had been offered to The Metropolitan Museum in 1932 by Dr. Philipp Lederer,

A Corinthian Cup and a Euboean Lekythos

In Volume lxix of this Journal I drew attention to three little vases in Reading University belonging to the group published by Wide in AM xxvi (1901) 143 f., at that time regarded as Boeotian and connected by Wide with Mykalessos. They are now known to be Corinthian, since vases and fragments in the same style have been found in the Potters' Quarter at Corinth and are now displayed in Corinth Museum. The general appearance of the vases from this workshop is far removed from that of normal Corinthian, which in the fifth century was decorated largely with floral or linear patterns. When compared with Corinthian red-figure and other vases with outline drawing the childish aspect of many of the figures, their long heavy eyelashes, dimples, chubby limbs, feet with toes on the side facing the spectator, all combine to set them in a field apart. Some of the subjects too are unusual. Among the divinities there is Demeter enthroned with torch, corn and poppies on a plate in Athens; bearded Herakles with club and bow inside cups in Reading and Athens; a youthful Herakles, weary and thirsty, leaning on his club as he fills his cup at a fountain, on a pyxis in the British Museum; Dionysos as Liknites, Winnower, horned and wearing a fawn-skin, holding fork and shovel, on a pyxis in Reading. Among the mortals we find a slinger, a girl playing kottabos and a centaur watching a tortoise inside cups in Athens, London and Leningrad. An unpublished cup in Athens, formerly in the Empedocles collection, shows a warrior advancing with his spear at the ready; another unpublished in Oxford, on loan to the Ashmolean Museum, has Oedipus and the sphinx. The only floral subject that I know is seen in the Reading cup with a rosebud between sprays. There is a replica of this (but with the bud black instead of red) in a cup with a tall foot in Corinth Museum.

Local Imitation of Corinthian Vases of the Later Seventh Century B.C. Found in Corfu

Local Imitation of Corinthian Vases of the Later Seventh Century B.C. Found in Corfu

Corinthian Vases at Wellesley College

Corinthian Vases at Wellesley College

A Geometric Grave at Clenia in Corinthia

thickness from 0.I2 m. at the top edge to o0.4 m. at the bottom. The cist was composed of two pieces very closely fitted together and measuring I.i8 m. and 0.43 m. in length respectively. The grave lay, at an angle approximately NWSE, at a depth less than half a meter below the modern surface and completely sunk into the soft greenish rock called pasparos which is native to the site. A trench wider than the sarcophagus had been cut to receive it and the space remaining when it was in position had been filled with small fragments of the rock which had been dug out. A very well preserved skeleton of an adult was found in the tomb together with ten small pouring vessels and a small amphora, all of the geometric period. There were also some metal objects. These finds will be described and discussed in this article. For the first time the existence of a larnax tomb of the geometric period cannot be disputed. The only other known instance is that of a tomb at Corinth2 (AJA 9 [19051 413, fig. i) where attribution to the geometric period is highly probable but not absolutely certain since early geometric vases were found very near the grave but not actually in it (ibid. pls. XI-XVI; Saul S. Weinberg, Corinth VII, pt. I, Cambridge 1943, i6, nos. 54-66). The other contemporary parallel is the aschenkiste found in a rock tomb on Thera. Note especially a vase illustrated by H. Dragendorff (Thera II, Berlin 1903, 28, fig. 74) which came from a tomb with geometric and protoarchaic burials. See also ibid. 56, fig. 190. Two more geometric vases found very near the tomb and two Corinthian vases found in a field not far from the village were given to me when I visited the site. These will be described and discussed together with the rest of the finds from Clenia.

Humfry Payne's Drawings of Corinthian Vases

With Humfry Payne's photographs, now in the British School at Athens, are preserved a number of his drawings. Many of these are unpublished. A selection of them may form a useful supplement to those included in Necrocorinthia and Protokorinthische Vasenmalerei, and a suitable tribute to offer to Payne's friend and master. I am grateful to Mrs. Leonard Russell and to the Managing Committee of the British School at Athens for permission to publish these drawings.The notes on the vases are brief, because the drawings speak for themselves. I have added a few notes on the painters of some of the vases, and in doing so have drawn extensively on Payne's writings and notes, both published and unpublished. Most of the vases illustrated belong to the middle and third quarter of the seventh century, but I have added a few figures from later vases because of their human interest.Plate XXVIII, a. Aegina F 51a, from the harbour temple (so-called Temple of Aphrodite) at Aegina. Welter, Aigina, 37, fig. 35, top r. Conical oinochoe fr. Lion 1. There was another frieze above. Very fine; pale green clay. MPC II; towards 650.Plate XXVIII, b. Aegina F 104, from the harbour temple. Conical oinochoe fr. Lion l.; in front, hind leg of another animal. MPC II.

Apotropaism in Greek Vase-Paintings

Quite another concept-a concept which I take to resemble more or less closely the one whereon are based the numerous representations of an eye surrounded by antagonistic creatures or objects-finds, I think, expression in the way certain other animals appear in the vase-paintings. That concept is to the effect that the picturing of the mastering of an embodiment, or of a symbolization, of some particular evil influence will keep that influence from producing the effect which normally it would prodtice if free to exercise its power. The reasoning (if rationalization be attempted) supporting an expectation of such consequences is likely to depend on the way in which a person has been brought up . Thus, it may be thought that the source of the evil influence is so to be warned of a fate which may overtake it; or that, in a general sense, like will follow like ; or that some helpful divinity may in that way be instructed as to an outcome desired ; or, since from the selection of a subject as one of good omen to its application as presumably apotropaic is but a short span,102 that the portrayal has the character of an omen foreshadowing an actual event. The concept in question is, as I take it, exemplified on the vases by groups whose constituent members may be either normal animals, mythical monsters, human beings, or divinities. The essence of such groups, which are to be found on both the precursors of the Attic vases and the Attic vases themselves, is the representing of an attack on, or the overcoming of, a creature of evil import. On Corinthian vases, for example, we may see an owl between two lions,103 or a hare between two lions 104 or two panthers ;105 and on Attic, accompanying pairs of great eyes, a deer attacked by a lion and a tiger, and by a tiger and its cub.106 Concerning the deer in such groups, little

D. A. Amyx: Corinthian Vases in the Hearst Collection at San Simeon. (University of California Publications in Classical Archaeology, vol. i, no. 9.) Pp. 30; 5 plates. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press (London: Cambridge University Press), 1943. Paper, 50 c.

D. A. Amyx: Corinthian Vases in the Hearst Collection at San Simeon. (University of California Publications in Classical Archaeology, vol. i, no. 9.) Pp. 30; 5 plates. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press (London: Cambridge University Press), 1943. Paper, 50 c. - Volume 59 Issue 1

Corinthian Vases in the Hearst Collection at San Simeon

Corinthian Vases in the Hearst Collection at San Simeon