Maritime transport containers and the COMPASS project in Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Cyprus

In this lecture for the Archaeological Research Unit, Artemis Georgiou introduces COMPASS, a five-year European Research Council Starting Grant project investigating interregional connectivity in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age and the Cypro-Geometric period through the ceramic transport containers imported to Cyprus.

Georgiou begins with the Late Bronze Age trade in bulk goods, exemplified by the late 14th-century BC Uluburun shipwreck, which carried ten tons of Cypriot copper alongside 150 Canaanite jars. Unlike smaller fine-ware closed vessels such as Cypriot Base Ring ware or Mycenaean stirrup jars used for small quantities of high-value substances, maritime transport containers moved liquid and agricultural commodities in bulk. She outlines the three main classes circulating in the region: Levantine Canaanite jars holding wine, oil, olives or terebinth resin; New Kingdom Egyptian fusiform and squat wine jars; and large coarse-fabric transport stirrup jars produced primarily in Crete.

Turning to Cyprus, Georgiou notes that early excavations focused on Mycenaean fine wares while often grouping imported transport amphorae with local plain and coarse wares. Recent re-examinations of material from Enkomi and Kalopsida, new excavations at Hala Sultan Tekke, and the 1980s provenance studies at Maa-Palaeokastro have shown that these imports were far more common than previously assumed. Most imported transport containers in Cyprus come from contexts after 1200 BC, when state-controlled trade gave way to smaller, decentralised commercial networks. As a case study, she presents her examination of the 2010–2011 material from Pyla-Kokkinokremos, directed by Vassos Karageorghis and Athanasia Kanta. Over 1,000 sherds represent at least 68 Canaanite and Egyptian jars across 27 macroscopic fabric groups. Only one belongs to the standardized angular-shouldered Canaanite type common before 1200 BC; the rest are bellied amphorae characteristic of the 12th-century BC and Early Iron Age trade.

In the second half of the talk, Georgiou sets out the methodology of the COMPASS project across Cyprus, including Early Iron Age assemblages from Kition, Amathus and Palaepaphos. The team combines typological recording with portable XRF, thin-section petrography, neutron activation analysis, organic residue analysis and palaeoproteomics to identify origins and contents, alongside compound-specific radiocarbon dating, 3D capacity modelling, mechanical stress testing, the study of pot marks and Cypro-Minoan signs, and evidence for secondary reuse as ovens, storage jars or infant burials.