Writing Wednesday: Roman Fineware from Polis

Over the last few days, I’m grinding out a bit of text based on an assemblage of frneware from Polis on Cyprus. This is in the service of a larger project that I’ve been describing over the last few weeks. 

It’s been slow going and quite frustrating, but words on the page count especially when it’s writing Wednesday.

Fineware

Scholars have generally argued that Eastern Sigillata A, produced somewhere in Syria or elsewhere in the northern Levantine coast, and Cypriot Sigillata produced somewhere in Western Cyprus or on the neighboring Anatolian coast constitute the two most common forms of Roman period fine ware on the island. For the deposits in E.F2 at Polis the ratio of CS to ESA is around 4:1. This reveals the dominance of CS at the site during the Roman period.

The area of the trenches S06 and T06 represents a series of contexts associated with the leveling fill for the basilica, the construction of the apse of the church, and earlier Roman activities associated with the construction of various walls, the levigation pool, and the kiln. As a result, trenches T06 and S06 produced more chronologically narrow contexts than the area as a whole with a number of clear Roman period contexts present. Since many of the contexts are relatively small, we aggregated the material from both trenches to produce quantitatively meaningful sample of Roman period artifacts. These two trenches, with their numerous Roman contexts, produced a different story. They revealed a more even ratio of ESA to CS which approaches 3:2 (57.7% CS and 42.3% ESA). This may speak to the comparatively earlier date of Roman material present in the complicated S06/T06 assemblage in general compared to the more diachronically representative assemblage from E.F2 more broadly.

The differences between the larger, diachronic and area-wide assemblage from E.F2 and the small, more chronologically narrow assemblage from trenches T06 and S06 reveals some of the complexities for understanding the circulation of Roman fine wares on Cyprus. For example, in the immediate hinterland of Paphos, the substantial sample of Roman fine wares from the unstratified surface assemblage from CPSP produced a wide range of CS forms which appeared in a 3:2 ratio with ESA. What distinguished this assemblage from EF2 at Polis is the quantity of imported Italian and Aegean imports which presumably offered an alternative both to Eastern imports and regional Cypriot Sigillata.

This interpretation would align with the long-standing positions of John Lund, John Hayes, and others who advocated for a western Cyprus center for the production of Cypriot Sigillata perhaps in the region of Soloi, Paphos, or the southern coast of Anatolia. They argue that in Western Cyprus, ready access to CS mitigated the popularity of ESA particularly in the later 1st and early 2nd century of our era. At Paphos, for example, Italian imports complement CS forms evidently at the expense of ESA. After the middle of the 2nd century, however, stratified deposits become less common and our understanding of the latest forms of CS become correspondingly less clear. Conversely, on the Eastern part of the island ESA was more common in relation to CS until the 2nd century AD when CS became the most common fine ware (Marquié 2002).

The challenge of understanding the assemblage at Polis, then is both one of chronology and one of regionalism. Chronologically, the larger, Late Roman assemblage of material from across the area of E.F2 captured residual examples of a wider range of CS forms that were later and more common than ESA forms in Western Cyprus after the 1st century AD. Material from trenches S06 and T06, in contrast, produced more earlier forms of ESA which reflected the generally earlier date of deposition throughout this trench and the clear mingling of earlier deposits — such as the one that produced the lamps — with later deposits in the local constitution of the basilica leveling fill.

The diversity of forms present in the S06/T06 assemblage offers a window into the distribution of ESA and CS at Polis. The forms present in these levels are unsurprisingly similar to those found at Paphos and from the CPSP survey with even the rarer forms such as CS31 and CS41 appearing elsewhere in Western Cyprus either on the Canadian Palaiopaphos Survey Project, the House of Dionsysios, or excavations at the Paphos Agora. Further east, The Amathous gate cemetery at Kourion lacks the earliest forms of CS while producing most of the later forms including CS31 and CS41. The assemblage of CS from Kition-Bamboula was similar and included the less common later forms CS41 and the more common CS29. In contrast, the smaller inland site of Panayia-Ematousa produced only some of the most common forms present at Polis (CS11, CS12, CS22, and CS40).