In the frame of the “TEXNH: Making, creating, and agency networks in the Ancient Mediterranean world” lecture series and discussion forum, we kindly invite you to the lecture The economics of the Mycenaean pictorial krater by Dr. Angelos Papadopoulos, Academic Programme Director, CYA, Athens.
Discussant: tba
The event will also be streamed live. For registration please visit:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0vf-ysqT4tGtbjMAsCofEvsile5HPlbxgt
Abstract
Over the past decades a rather surprisingly large number of Mycenaean pictorial kraters has been found in several Late Bronze Age sites in Cyprus and the Levant. The krater, painted with a variety of scenes from chariots to perhaps even mythological narratives, has been a popular part of what may be called “dinner set”, a very much Aegean product of the 14th and 13th c. BCE. What is surprising though is the amount of pictorial kraters found in Greece versus the numbers of those found beyond the Aegean. Equally, as it has been suggested before, the themes on their surfaces have been clearly made from a very specific clientele.
The aim of this discussion is to show how popular these clay vessels were for the non-Aegean societies and suggest a model of production, distribution and consumption based on the available evidence. Areas of production in the Aegean, like Berbati in the Argolid, distribution routes, for example from the harbour of Tiryns via Cyprus to Ugarit and finally aspects of consumption, with a focus on funerary and domestic contexts, will be explored. Although made of modest clay, and frequently of poor pictorial aesthetics, these kraters seem to have been a major Aegean export towards the East and a chaine operatoire can perhaps be identified.