Mervyn Popham

Mervyn Popham wrote the 1972 chapter on White Slip ware in the Swedish Cyprus Expedition volumes². In the report on Cypriot archaeology for 1959 to 1961, Porphyrios Dikaios noted that "Mr M. Popham is preparing a paper on White Slip" in which he intended to call the early ware Proto-White Slip⁴. His White Slip chapter appeared in Paul Åström's The Swedish Cyprus Expedition IV:1C, published in 1972, and runs from p. 431 to p. 471². Later authors cite it for the origin of the ware (p. 431), its forms (p. 447) and the Type 2 craters of White Slip II (p. 468)³.

Thomas Kiely calls him "primarily an Aegean specialist who devised the standard modern definition of White Slip ware" and names Susan Sherratt as his graduate student¹. The works that cite him give no dates for his life.

The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford holds Cypriot pieces credited to a Mr M.R. Popham. Two were presented in 1960 and 1961: a Roman potsherd bowl from Akanthou-Moulos (AN1960.729) and a fragment of a Hellenistic black-wash bowl from Chytroi (AN1961.319)^5,6. Two more were bequeathed in 2001: a Cypro-Archaic Bichrome fragment (AN2001.25) and the base of a Red Lustrous spindle bottle from Aradippou (AN2001.33)^7,8. All four are sherds or fragments. The museum's records do not say how he obtained them.