Bamboula “A Tomb of the Early Classical Period” Benson (photos)

12

Its heavier and coarser fabric and stubby appearance, as well as its flat base, suggest again a connection with Palestine. Roughly similar lamps were in use at Tell en-Nasbeh between 700-500 B.C.^33 It is, to be sure, probable that No.24 was made in Cyprus, though no good parallels are available from there. Yet the peculiarly close relationship with Palestinian prototypes of other artefacts in Bamboula Tomb 4 is underlined also by this one.

Ring: 28

This is essentially a silver ring, although the finger band has some, perhaps very little, copper. Gjerstad's (silver) Type 7, most closely comparable to the Bamboula ring, is attested from Cypro-Archaic II on.^34

Only the series of Plain White jugs is unequivocally fixed in the usual Swedish sequence at V. Since these jugs - and the other pot types as well - are equally divided between the second and third burials, it is not possible to reckon with any appreciable lapse of time between these burials. Also the first burial may have occurred only shortly before the others. It is likely that all burials took place within a generation. The storage jars, the painted jugs and the sack jugs are associated with foreign prototypes, which, as I have shown, easily allow them to have existed within the range of time suggested by the Plain White V jugs (Cypro-Archaic II).

On the other hand, since the pots with foreign prototypes are also represented in Cypriote tombs of the Classical era, the possibility of classifying them as VI in the Swedish sequence must be admitted. This allows the tomb to be dated within reasonably accurate limits to the end of Cypro-Archaic II or the beginning of Cypro-Classic I, a period covering roughly the first half of the