Bichrome IV Bowl with Red-Painted Pierced Lug Handles

Cypro-Archaic I, c. 750–600 BCE · Bichrome IV ware · Wheel-made

A small, rounded bowl of pale buff clay, photographed from below. Two lug handles sit opposite each other at the rim; each is painted red, slightly undulating in outline, and pierced by a small string-hole. The exterior is painted in the two colours of Bichrome ware. At the centre of the base a black dot sits inside a black ring; around it run group after group of fine black encircling lines, drawn on the turning wheel, broken at mid-height by one broad band of brownish red. The black has fired to a blue-grey in places. The surface is abraded and flecked with pale root marks and encrustation, and the paint has flaked from the edges of the lugs.

Commentary

Black and red paint on a light ground identify the bowl as Bichrome ware, and its details place it in Gjerstad's Type IV, the Cypro-Archaic I stage [1]. The key features are the pierced lugs. In the Swedish Cyprus Expedition catalogue of the Cypro-Archaic tombs at Stylli, near Enkomi, Bichrome IV plates are described with an "in-turned rim, and two wavy handles pierced by string-holes at rim", "encircling lines outside and inside" and "red handles", in diameters from about 10 to 16 cm [2]. Every element of that description can be seen here, and the size of this bowl (about 15 cm on an earlier record) falls within the Stylli range. The SCE uses the word "plate" for this small type; the present example appears deeper in profile than most, which is why it is catalogued here as a bowl.

A near-twin is a dish in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, Z 14838 B, of buff fabric with "two opposing vertically pierced lugs", red lugs, and on the outside "concentric black circles of varying width around the centre as well as one wider red circle in the lower third"; it measures 14.4 cm across [3]. A Bichrome IV plate from Stylli Tomb 17 in the Medelhavsmuseet, St. 017:032, confirms the type in an excavated Cypro-Archaic I grave [4], and a larger Cesnola plate in the Metropolitan Museum, 74.51.975, dated 750–600 BCE, shows the same arrangement of a red band set among black circles on the exterior [5]. The immediate predecessor of the scheme can be seen on a Bichrome III bowl from Stylli Tomb 7, St. 007:003, dated to Cypro-Geometric III [6]. On that basis the bowl belongs to Cypro-Archaic I, c. 750–600 BCE, and the earlier attribution to the Geometric period should be revised.

The string-holes allowed the bowl to be hung on a cord or a cover to be tied over it. The richer decoration on the exterior suggests it was often seen from below, whether suspended or stored upside down. Known examples come from tombs, where these small plates and bowls accompanied jugs and juglets in the grave. The interior, which is unphotographed, is reported to carry painted geometric decoration. We know of no record of the find-spot.