Bringing Life to Old Museum Collections: The Interdisciplinary Study of Pottery from the Iron Age Polities of Salamis, Soloi, Lapithos and Chytroi

Anna Georgiadou and Maria Dikomitou-Eliadou present the first results of the MUSECO research project, which investigates Iron Age pottery assemblages stored in the Cyprus Museum from sites in the occupied north of the island. Because fieldwork in these areas has been discontinued since the Turkish invasion of 1974, the project examines unpublished vessels recovered between 1933 and 1974 by the Department of Antiquities and the Cyprus Survey from the polities of Salamis, Soloi, Lapithos, and Chytroi. The lecture focuses on the principal case study of Salamis and its territory across the eastern Mesaoria plain and the Karpas peninsula during the Cypro-Geometric, Cypro-Archaic, and Cypro-Classical periods.

In the first part, Georgiadou outlines the archival and archaeological context of 41 burial sites outside the capital of Salamis, alongside the material excavated before 1974 at Salamis itself. Over 1,100 vessels from these hinterland tombs, peaking in the Cypro-Archaic I period, consist mostly of decorated tableware. Georgiadou defines the stylistic profile of the Salaminian workshops, which are marked from the 11th century BC by a strong preference for Bichrome ware alongside Iron Age White Painted ware. She traces specific regional series: footed deep bowls painted red inside and out, shallow bowls with strap or red-painted lug handles, belly-handled amphorae in geometric, pictorial, or seventh- and sixth-century floral styles, large barrel jugs that remained in production long after disappearing elsewhere on Cyprus, and trefoil-mouthed jugs decorated with small geometric motifs or in the pictorial free-field style with waterbirds.

In the second part, Dikomitou-Eliadou sets out the project's sampling strategy and analytical methodology, which combines macroscopic fabric study, ceramic petrography, X-ray fluorescence, and scanning electron microscopy. Presenting preliminary petrographic observations on 130 White Painted and Bichrome samples from Salamis and its periphery, she identifies two dominant, closely related high-fired fabrics that each account for roughly 40 percent of the assemblage: a semi-coarse fabric showing clay mixing, and a coarser version tempered with quartz and feldspar sand. Both match the alluvial geology of the Pedieos and Yialias rivers in the Enkomi and Salamis area and correspond to Salaminian exports analysed at Tel Dor. Because the same two fabric recipes and stylistic norms appear across the capital, the eastern Mesaoria, and the Karpas over several centuries, the speakers argue that multiple workshops operated under centralised standards within a unified Salaminian territory.