Excavations on the Koukounaries Hill, Paros, Greece from 1976-1992 revealed a 12th century B.C.E. Mycenaean building, an Iron Age settlement, and an Archaic sanctuary. This volume presents the pottery from five areas inside the building, as well as the pottery from a limited reoccupation after the building's destruction and abandonment.
The excavations on the Koukounaries Hill, Paros, Greece, conducted under the direction of Demetrius U. Schilardi for the Archaeological Society at Athens from 1976 to 1992, revealed a 12th century B.C.E. Mycenaean building, an Iron Age settlement, and an Archaic sanctuary. Koukounaries I: Mycenaean Pottery from Selected Contexts presents the pottery from five areas inside the building: three large storerooms, the main east-west corridor, and a small shrine, as well as the pottery from a limited reoccupation after the building's fire destruction and abandonment. The ceramics from the main occupation phase comprise the largest and best-preserved domestic assemblage from the 12th century B.C.E. in the Cyclades and offer important evidence for the continuation of Mycenaean culture after the destruction of the mainland palatial citadels. The small deposits of pottery from the reoccupation phase, provide important stratigraphic evidence for defining the Late Helladic IIIC ceramic sequence. The volume also considers the function of the individual spaces within the building, based largely on the patterns of shape distributions and quantities, with the statistics for each context presented in a series of appendices. Other issues area also explored, including the evidence for itinerant potters, the trade in antique vases, and the place of origin of the settlers who founded and inhabited the Mycenaean building on the summit of the Koukounaries Hill.
Robert Koehl has long considered processions to have played an integral role in Aegean Bronze Age societies. Papers concentrate mainly on evidence from Crete, the Cyclades and the Greek mainland, with additional perspectives from abroad, these geographic divisions forming the basic outline of this volume.
Annotation Elizabeth A. Kaye specializes in communications as part of her coaching and consulting practice. She has edited Requirements for Certification since the 2000-01 edition.
The aim of this handbook is to make Mycenaean pottery more accessible to the general reader by presenting a brief description of the different types, placing it against its archaeological and historical background. Mountjoy expands on the illustrations from her 1986 guide Mycenaean Decorated Pottery to include material from different areas of Greece, allowing an examination of the exchange and trade of Mycenean pottery. Particular emphasis is made to the definition of ceramic phases, for although imprecise, changes in pottery style are the best chronological measure for the Aegean Bronze Age.
This second volume on Early Cycladic (and Cycladicising) sculptures found in the Aegean, examines finds from mainland Greece, along with the rarer items from the north and east Aegean, with the exception of those discovered in the Cyclades (covered in the preceding volume), and of those found in Crete. The significance of these finds is that these are the principal testimonies of the influence of the Early Bronze Age Cycladic cultures in the wider Aegean. This influence is shown both by the export of sculptures produced in the Cyclades (and made of Cycladic marble), and of their imitations, produced elsewhere in the Aegean, usually of local marble. They hold the key, therefore, to the cultural interactions developing at this time, the so-called ‘international spirit’ manifest particularly during the Aegean Early Bronze II period. This was the time when the foundations of early Aegean civilization were being laid, and the material documented is thus of considerable significance. The volume is divided into sections wherein contributions examine finds and their archaeological, social, and economic contexts from specific regions. It concludes with an overview of the significance and role of these objects in Early Bronze Age societies of the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean region. This will be the first time that this material has been systematically gathered together. Highly illustrated, it follows and builds on the successful preceding volume, Early Cycladic Sculpture in Context (Oxbow 2016).
