Bichrome IV Jug with Wreathed Circle Systems

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

A globular jug on a ring base, with a short neck, a pinched trefoil mouth and a plain strap handle from rim to shoulder. The buff clay has weathered to a warm orange-brown, and lime encrustation clings to the lower body and base.

Each side carries a large circle system in which a heavy black ring encloses a disc washed solid red, with a small black target of fine rings at its centre. On the better-preserved side a band of red and black concentric lines runs around this, holding a wreath of seventeen small black concentric-circle groups spaced evenly like beads. Thin black lines drop from the neck between the systems, and beneath one disc sits a cluster of four small circle groups, three in a row and one below. The black is worn in places; the red has held best inside the central discs.

Commentary

This is a Bichrome IV jug of Gjerstad's Western or circle style, the Cypro-Archaic I decoration in which, in his words, the circles are "often connected in vertical or horizontal rows" and the outer line of a system is sometimes thicker than the others [1, p. 52]. The globular body, narrow neck and pinched mouth are the standard Type IV jug shape [1, p. 51]. The collection's larger jug JUG-GE-001 is decorated on the same principle, but the small circles are organised differently. There they form columns in the interspaces; here they are wound into a closed ring around the side system, so that the face reads as a single rosette.

That ring arrangement is matched in the Musei Reali, Turin, where one of the Bichrome IV jugs catalogued in 2021 has, between black and reddish lines, "11 groups of small concentric circles (their centres are linked by a single line)" [2]. The excavated Stylli jugs of the Swedish Cyprus Expedition, nos. 6 and 12, carry the same vertical red and black circles with small circles in the interspaces and belong to the later of their tomb's two burial periods [3]. Comparable museum pieces include the Bichrome oinochoe Manchester II.C.156 [4] and the Walters Art Museum jug 48.2347 [5].

The feature that sets this jug apart is the solid red disc at the centre of each system. Most circle-style jugs use red only as rings between black ones; filling the whole centre with red turns each side into a red boss framed in black and makes the two colours read as separate masses. The date follows the ware and style: Cypro-Archaic I, c. 750–600 BCE. The jug has no recorded find-spot. Like others of its kind it is likely to have come from a tomb, where trefoil jugs were placed as pouring vessels for the dead.