Venice, Cyprus and the southern Levant in the 14th–16th centuries: ceramics as a reflection of contacts

Edna Stern of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the University of Haifa presents ceramic evidence for maritime trade connecting Venice, Lusignan and Venetian Cyprus, and the Mamluk and early Ottoman southern Levant from the 14th to the 16th century. After the Mamluk conquest of Acre in 1291 and the papal embargo on European trade, Cyprus acted as a transit point, while Venetian merchants gained permission in 1304 to moor at Acre, buy cotton, and bring Christian pilgrims through Jaffa.

Stern shows that imported Italian and Cypriot glazed wares have often been misidentified in the southern Levant as local vessels. Alongside finds from Jerusalem, Ramla, Safed, Acre, and Jaffa, she has identified Italian sherds in at least a third of contemporary Mamluk rural sites in northern Israel; at Tell er-Ras near Acre, imports form a fifth of the glazed bowls.

Turning to Cyprus, Stern examines 14th- to 16th-century sherds from Jaffa, Ramla, Safed, and Jerusalem. Through petrographic analysis with Anastasia Shapiro and consultation with Demetra Papanikola-Bakirtzi, she attributes a green-painted sherd from Jaffa to Lapithos, two further Jaffa sherds tentatively to Soli near Morphou, a finely incised sherd from Safed to Cypriot wedding bowls, and red-slip sgraffito fragments with yellow and green glaze (one bearing part of a coat of arms) probably to Enkomi. She also suggests that Mamluk yellow and green gouged ware from Safed Castle adapted zigzag schemes and collared bird friezes from contemporary Cypriot sgraffito bowls into larger communal dishes.

In the discussion, Konstantinos Politis, Hugo Blake, Jelena, and Nicholas Coureas comment on Gaza, market mediation, late Ottoman Lapithos wares, the papal embargo, and Cypriots in Mamluk Beirut.