Large Bichrome IV Jug with Vertical Circle Systems

Cypro-Archaic I, c. 750–600 BCE · Bichrome IV ware · Wheel-made · H. 31 cm

A large, nearly spherical jug on a low ring base, with a short cylindrical neck, a pinched trefoil mouth and a strap handle running from the rim to the shoulder. The clay is fired a clean pale buff, flecked with small dark inclusions and flushed pink low on one side. The paint is matt black and a softer, faded red, both crisply preserved.

Each side carries a great vertical circle system: a bull's-eye of fine rings with a central dot, a heavy black ring around it, then a band of fine red concentric lines, and a sweeping black band of about five lines that curves over the shoulder and under the belly. In the fields between the two systems the painter set small black concentric-circle groups, a column of them down the front and pairs tucked into the angles. Black bands ring the neck, and the handle is barred across its back.

Commentary

The jug belongs to Gjerstad's Bichrome IV ware, the two-colour painted pottery of Cypro-Archaic I, and to the group he called the Western or circle style. Gjerstad located the circle style in the west and north of the island and described its Bichrome form as "a veritable circle dance on the pots", noting that the outer line of a circle system is sometimes thicker than the rest and that the circles are often connected in vertical or horizontal rows [1]. All of this is present here: the heavy black ring around each bull's-eye, the red kept to the fine rings of the outer zone, and the columns of small circles in the interspaces. The globular jug with a narrow neck and pinched mouth is one of the standard Type IV shapes [1].

The closest excavated parallels come from a tomb at Stylli in the Swedish Cyprus Expedition's excavations. No. 6 there is a "Bichrome IV globular jug" with "black and red vertical circles on body, and concentric circles in their interstices", 22.5 cm high, and no. 12 is an oval jug with the same scheme and "rows of concentric circles in their interstices" [2]. Both belong to the tomb's second, later burial period, above Bichrome III material. Among the Bichrome IV jugs in the Musei Reali, Turin, catalogued together in 2021, are examples with the same arrangement of longitudinal red and black circles and groups of smaller circles between them [3]. Museum examples include the Walters Art Museum jug 48.2347 [4] and a Bichrome oinochoe from Kourion in the British Museum, 1896,0201.369, with vertical concentric bands framing a bull's-eye [5]. The Leiden jug I 1913/10.2 carries the same scheme but is dated by its museum to 850–750 BCE [6], so a start in the later ninth century cannot be excluded; the combination of shape, size and fully developed circle composition fits Cypro-Archaic I best.

At 31 cm this is larger than the excavated Stylli jugs. Like almost every complete vessel of the period, it will have survived as a grave good in a chamber tomb, where such trefoil jugs accompanied the dead as table vessels for pouring wine, water or oil. The Greek name oinochoe is a modern convention and does not fix the contents.

The concentric circles were laid on with a multiple brush pivoted on a fixed centre, which explains their evenness; the small circle groups vary slightly in size and spacing, showing each was placed by hand. The jug has no recorded find-spot. A tradition attached to its sale in Sweden connects it with a gift from the Swedish Cyprus Expedition; we know of no document that supports this.