• latw-149-1
    Bowl with spool-shaped attachments and marbled decoration. (Courtesy of the Vedat Nedim Tör Museum, Istanbul)

Bowl with spool-shaped attachments and marbled decoration

Date
Ca. 575-540 BC, Lydian
Museum
Manisa, Archaeological and Ethnographic Museum, 2206
Museum Inventory No.
2206
Sardis or Museum Inv. No.
P61.005
Material
Ceramic
Object Type
Pottery
Pottery Shape
Bowl with Spool-Shaped Attachments
Pottery Ware
Lydian Painted - Marbled
Pottery Attribution
Site
Sardis
Sector
Nec
Trench
Tomb 61.2
Locus
Tomb 61.2 Locus 1
Description
Broken and mended. Outside plastic features include a pair of perforated spool handles, eight vertical lugs (four on either side between handles), narrow band connecting handles and lugs at their mid-point. Height (not including handles) 0.065 m, diameter 0.283 m.
Comments
From a schist-lined cist burial in the Great Necropolis of Sardis (Inderesi region; Grave 61.2). The shape is Phrygian; the marbling slip decoration Lydian (precisely as with a sieve-spouted cup from a Sardis grave, now New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, no. 14.30.9, shown in reduced-scale facsimile, Greenewalt, “Bon Appetit!”). The shape is attested at Gordion, Ankara, and elsewhere, including Manisa in Lydia, by many examples in bronze, also in other media, including pottery and (pear) wood (Young 1981, 229-233; Kohler 1995, 203-204). The perforated handles might have held ring attachments of another material (cf. bowls of similar design from Gordion: Young 1981, 125-130 nos. MM 55-69 (bronze bowls with bronze ring handles), 60-61 nos. TumP 145, 146, probably 147 (wooden bowls with bronze ring handles). A closely similar bronze bowl was found in the Basmacı Tumulus near Güre, No. 158.
See Also
Baughan, “Lydian Burial Customs”; Greenewalt, “Lydian Pottery”.
Bibliography
Knudsen 1964; Greenewalt 1972, 122-123, 130-131; Gürtekin-Demir 2014, 227, cat. no. 6.
Author
CHG