Writing Wednesday: A Levigation Pool

As readers of this blog know, I’m leaning into this winter research leave by focusing on a short article describing the pottery manufacturing installation at the site of Polis (ancient Arsinoe) on Cyprus. Much of this is based on a 2024 ASOR paper which you can read here.

Last week, I wrote about an assemblage of second century lamps. This week, I’ve been working on the features associated with pottery production including a levigation pool, a possible treading basin, and ultimately an earlier kiln. Here’s what I managed to peck over the last few days. 

Oh! And happy holidays! 

The Levigation Pool

Excavations in both 1990 and 1991 revealed the top of a series of vertically arranged terracotta tiles arranged to form the coping of a pool. The excavators described this pool as a “fish pond,” but its proximity to a workshop area, size, and general characteristics make it more likely to have been a pool for the mixing of raw clay and water as part of the levigation process. The tiles that defined the pool appear to be in reuse and from monumental buildings. They seems have been set into a vertical bedding of clay which would have provided a degree of waterproofness and a layer of bright red clay covered the inner surface of the tiles. The interior layer of clay was either residue from the levigation process or, as plausibly, applied as a way to waterproof the sides of the pool. The floor of the pool seems to consist of a “hard, crusty, dried, clay-like earth floor” which perhaps represents the residue of the levigation process. The levigation pool itself consists of two perpendicular lines of coping tiles suggesting a pool that measured 5 meter east-west and perhaps 3 meter north-south. This estimate of the pools north-south dimensions depends upon location of a basin described in the notebook as a “pithos.” It appears, however, that this “pithos” was an open ceramic basin whose lowest level is at approximately the same elevation as the lowest parts of the pool’s coping tiles (around 18 m ASL). It seems reasonable to conclude that the basin and the pool are contemporary and that pool’s northern limits must fall before the area around the basin. Published examples of levigation pools from the Levant suggest that a pool of 15 sq. m would be relatively large, but not outside the range of dimensions for these features. Its size indicates the capacity to levigate large quantities of clay at the preliminary stage ceramic production process, and this suggests that it served a large production site. The basins to the north of the pool is a common feature at ceramic production sites in the Levant and should probably be associated with the treading of clay.

The main challenge in dating this pool and its associated basin is that the area where it stood was a busy one in the Roman and Late Roman periods. Not only was the basilica leveling fill and contemporary foundations cut through the area most likely disturbing the the western side of the levigation pool, but a wall preserved in two phases seems to have complicated and potentially disturbed the pool prior to the basilica construction. As a result, the overall stratigraphy of the area is compromised with only small areas of undisturbed soil behind the coping tiles of the pool preserving a small assemblage of datable material. The latest sherd in this material is a CS Form 30 dates to the 2nd century in the late series of Cypriot Sigillata form. There are also the thickened rims of contemporary globular cooking pots known from Paphos in this assemblage. Eastern Sigillata Form 4 and 30 appear to date to a century earlier as does a lagynos with parallel at Paphos (Hayes Series 5, no. 14). Material excavated from within the basin offers little additional evidence for date although the utility and cooking wares and color coated wares might date earlier than the material associated with the pool. Since the pool and the basin are almost certainly contemporary, the presence of earlier material in the basin itself reflects the generally confused stratigraphy of the area.

The pool stood near the intersection of two walls: one to the south and one to the east. The date and precise relationship between these walls and pool remains unclear. The wall immediately to the south of the levigation pool has three phases with the later two phases being seemingly Late Roman in date, but presumably before the leveling and filling of the area for the construction of the basilica. The earliest phase likely dates to either the same time or slightly later than the levigation pool, but the exact relationship between the wall and the pool remains opaque as does the relationship between the south wall and wall . The levigation pool and the wall both cut into levels that date to no earlier than the 2nd-century AD and contain CS12 and CS29 which generally belong to the later sequence of this type of pottery (L28). The wall that runs along the eastern side of the levigation pool is a series of superimposed walls similar to the south wall. The latest phase of this wall is Late Roman, but the earlier phase is likely contemporary with the Roman period road to the east and perhaps joints with the south wall. Our inability to distinguish the exact sequence of construction reflects the sometimes rapid adaptation of this area for new uses as production needs required.