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THE CARGO OF POTTERY FROM THE POINT IRIA WRECK: CHARACTER AND IMPLICATIONS Yannos Lolos

Assistant Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology, University of Ioannina

In this paper we consider the date and character of the cargo of pottery from the Point Iria wreck, excavated by the Hellenic Institute of Marine Archaeology in 1990-1994 (see Pennas 1992; Pennas,Vichos and Lolos 1995; 1996a;1996b; 1999; Lolos 1995; Lolos, Pennas and Vichos 1995; Vichos and Lolos 1997; Karageorghis et al. 1998). Its implications are also examined within the general context of sea trade and contact between the major coastal centres in the Mediterranean towards the end of the 13th and at the beginning of the 12th century B.C.

The importance of the cargo of pottery from the seabed off Point Iria in the Argolid is certainly much greater than its limited size might suggest. It is one of the very few ceramic assemblages that have so far been recovered from the wreck of a Late Bronze Age merchant ship in the Mediterranean, shedding new light on the character and content of long-distance maritime trade ca. 1200 B.C. It contains 24 complete, fully restored or partly preserved pots, in addition to a Cypriot pithos which was located earlier but is now unfortunately lost (Lolos 1995, fig.18). In my view, these pots seem to have formed the main bulk or a large part of the cargo of pottery, but probably not the whole of the cargo.

The pottery comprises three main groups: a Cypriot group of Late Cypriot IIC/IIIA date, of 8 vases; a Cretan group of Late Minoan IIIB2 date, of 8 vases; and a Helladic/Mycenaean group of Late Helladic IIIB2 date, of 9 vases.

All three groups are characterized by the presence of large transport vessels. Prominent in the first group are stoutly made Cypriot pithoi which had various functions (Fig. 1). The second is made up of coarse-ware stirrup jars of Cretan origin (Fig. 4). The third is dominated by large two-handled jars of Helladic/ Mycenaean appearance (Fig. 5 ).

Firstly, with regard to the Cypriot group in the ship’s cargo, this contains well known Late Cypriot IIC/IIIA ceramic types.These include three (3) handleless pithoi with relief decoration on the shoulder (Fig. 1), parts of a fourth pithos, a heavy broad-based jug of the Plain White class (Fig. 2), fragments of another, smaller, jug of similar type and a juglet with a rudimentary trefoil mouth (Fig. 3). Two of these types, the pithos and the juglet, are represented by examples in the Cypriot pottery from the Uluburun wreck (Bass 1987, 711: top left; Pulak 1997, 242, fig. 10).

The Cypriot pithos with a piriform, ovoid or ovoid-conical body, cylindrical neck and multiple relief band or bands on the body is a diagnostic type in the repertoire of Late Cypriot IIC/IIIA pottery. Pithoi of this general shape, with or without handles, often exceeding one meter in height, occur at various sites in Cyprus: Hala Sultan Tekke, Pyla-Kokkinokremos, Kalavassos-Agios Dimitrios, Myrtou-Pigades, Maa-Palaiokastro and others ( Vichos and Lolos 1997, 323-324; also P. Εstrφm’s paper in this volume).

Like the characteristic Syro-Palestinian or Canaanite amphora, represented by at least 149 examples mostly containing terebinth resin in the cargo of the Uluburun ship (Bass 1987, 709; Pulak 1997, 240-241, fig. 9), the Cypriot pithos belonged to a class of durable transport vessels that travelled great distances across the Mediterranean in the late 14th and the 13th century B.C. It should be stressed that the circulation of Cypriot pithoi extends from Ugarit and Cyprus to the region of Agrigento in southern Sicily and to Antigori in southern Sardinia ( Karageorghis 1993, 584, fig. 3; Ferrarese Ceruti, Vagnetti and Lo Schiavo 1987, 19,36, fig.2.5), which gives an indication of the commercial ties and connections between the different countries. In this context, special reference should also be made to a fragment of a large jar of “Levantine” type recently published from Punta d’ Alaca on the island of Vivara in the Gulf of Naples (Missione Archeologica Vivara, 33).

According to the evidence gained from the Uluburun wreck and from storerooms and other areas in Cypriot settlements, pithoi of this distinctive type were used for storing and transporting olive oil or fruit; as containers for transporting small fine Cypriot vases; and also as “ancient refrigerators”, sunk in the ground (see P. Εstrφm’s paper in this volume).

As regards the Cretan pottery from the Point Iria wreck, it consists exclusively of coarse ware stirrup jars of the tall commercial type (see Fig. 4). They form an important underwater group of 8 vessels almost equivalent in size to that consisting of jars of similar type from the Uluburun wreck. They are made of coarse clay, which according to Dr. Peter Day came from Central Crete (see his communication in this volume). All except one lack the vertical tubular spout, and one example (No. A86/1, here Fig. 4: 2) preserves a simple painted decoration of a double band on the body and a spiral on the disk of the false spout, a popular motif used on the disks of many LM/LH III examples of the shape from Crete and the Greek Mainland.

This type of tall stirrup jar, used primarily for storing and transporting olive oil (a basic product of the Mycenaean export trade), is well known from numerous examples, many of them inscribed in Linear B, from the Old Kadmeion at Thebes, Orchomenos, Kreusis, Eleusis, the so-called House of the Oil Merchant and the House of the Wine Merchant at Mycenae, Tiryns, Midea, Pylos; and also from Chania, the Cave of Mameloukos, Knossos and other Cretan sites (e.g. Catling et al. 1980 ; Haskell 1981 ). It is worth noting that both the name of the jar ( ka-ra-re-we, χλαρεύς) and its ideogram appear in texts in the Mycenaean (Linear B) Script at Pylos and Knossos.

This specialized ceramic type had a remarkable distribution throughout the Mediterranean in the 14th and 13th century B.C., covering the whole of the Mycenaean trading world from the Syrian coast and Cyprus in the East to Canatello near Agrigento in southern Sicily, the island of Filicudi north of Sicily and Antigori in Sardinia in the West ( P. Day, personal communication (for the Canatello examples); Vagnetti 1991, 279, no. 85, fig. 4b, pl. IX: 7; Ferrarese Ceruti, Vagnetti and Lo Schiavo 1987, fig. 2.4: 3).

To turn now to the Mycenaean pottery in our cargo, the largest of the pots in this group are three (3) plain, two-handled jars of traditional Helladic type (see Fig. 5), which have close parallels in plain or banded Late Mycenaean jars from major centres in the Peloponnese: Prosymna in the Argolid (Blegen 1937, fig. 430) and the Palace of Nestor at Ano Englianos in western Messenia ( Blegen and Rawson 1966, figs. 373: 818, 374: top right, 384: nos. 611, 601).

Of special importance is amphora A99 (Fig. 6 a-b). It exemplifies a common Late Mycenaean ceramic type ( Furumark 1941, shape 69, also Blegen 1937, figs. 177: 316, 303, 289, 455: 134, 116, 118), but the two incised marks or symbols on the flattened handles are of interest, since they are the only examples of “writing” on a pot or object from the wrecked cargo. They are not unlikely to be related to the Cypro-Minoan 1 Script and seem to have belonged to a distinctly Cypriot system of marking pots dictated by the needs and conditions of trade and barter at the time, and currently under study by Nicolle Hirschfeld (1993). They are closely matched by incised marks on the handles of two Late Mycenaean pots found in Tomb VI at Minet-el-Beida, the port of Ugarit in Syria (Schaeffer 1949, fig. 59: 1 e, j) and on Cypriot copper ingots from the cargo of the Uluburun wreck (Sibella 1996, 9, 10, fig. 1: 6a).

Examples of fine Mycenaean ware from the site of the Iria wreck are:

-An almost complete spouted deep bowl krater ( Fig. 7a-b, H. 21 cm.), which has parallels in finely decorated kraters of LH III B2-LH III C: early date at Tiryns, Athens and Mistros in central Euboea ( Kilian 1988, 108, fig. 8, and here Fig. 8; Mountjoy 1995, 45-46, fig. 60; 1997, fig. 14: 90; Tsirivakos 1969, fig. 3 (from Tomb A); Sapouna Sakellaraki 1995, 64). Like other pieces certainly belonging to the ship’s cargo (A 58, A 55), the krater (A36) was located at some distance away from the main concentration of pottery finds (see Pennas, Vichos and Lolos 1996, 8-9, 12-13). In view of its Late Mycenaean counterparts and complete state of preservation, it seems safe to assume that it belongs with the ship’s cargo.

-Also, two fragments of deep bowls of well-known Late Mycenaean types (Figs. 9, 10), one of which, A100 (Fig. 10), preserves remnants of painted decoration in the form of a characteristic panelled pattern-triglyph (Furumark 1941, motif 75; Mountjoy 1986, 121, 123, figs. 148: 24, 159: 1, 161: 9) and is assignable to the final phase or the end of the Late Helladic III B2 period. Thus, its occurrence in the cargo provides us with useful evidence for the precise dating of the Iria wreck. Like the above mentioned bowls, two fragmentary plain cooking pots ( now restored: Karageorghis et al. 1998, p. 34: 28, 31) could have belonged to members of the ship’s crew. Fragments of one of these (cook-pot A 23/A 90) lay in the heart of the main concentration of ceramic finds.

It is worth noting that indirect “external” corroboration of the dating of the wreck at ca. 1200 B.C., or in the decade 1200-1190 B.C. at the latest, is provided by ceramic evidence found in the destruction level, inside Storerooms 32 and 38, in the palatial complex at Ano Englianos in western Messenia: here, versions of the tall coarse-ware stirrup jar and the large two-handled jar (seen in Figs. 11, 12, 13, 14), i.e. examples of the two Aegean types of transport vessels present in the Point Iria wreck coexist in the same destruction layer that has been dated by Carl Blegen and his successors at the palace site to the end of the Late Helladic III B2 period or to the transitional LH III B2/LH III C: early phase, at the latest ( Blegen and Rawson 1966, 421, figs. 373: no. 818, 374: top right, 384: nos. 611, 601, 389: no. 402, 390: no. 402; 1967, 32; Shelmerdine 1998, 88; Griebel and Nelson 1998, 97; Bennet 1998, 126; Lolos 1998, 18; see also Mountjoy 1997).

The Point Iria wreck is the third Late Bronze Age wreck in the Mediterranean to be systematically excavated, and the first in the Aegean area. It appears to be contemporary with the Cape Gelidonya wreck (Bass 1967; 1996, 25-35) and approximately a century later than the one at Uluburun on the south coast of Turkey (Bass 1987; 1996, 60-78; Pulak 1995; 1997; Fitzgerald 1997). It thus belongs to an advanced phase of the Late Bronze Age, at around 1200 B.C.

The geographical location of the pottery cargo off Point Iria is a direct indication of the existence of an important sea trade route along the south coast of the Argolid, clearly forming part of both a local Peloponnesian and a much wider network of “international” sea communications in the Late Mycenaean period. This route is further defined by a series of Late Mycenaean settlements and harbour-sites, absolutely or approximately contemporary with the Point Iria wreck, along the south and east coast of the Argolid and on the islands in the area (Lolos 1995, 66, fig. 1; Karageorghis et al. 1998, 28); and also by the find-spots of isolated coarse-ware stirrup-jar fragments found in the sea off Myti Kommeni in Dokos and in the vicinity of Kosta, opposite Spetses, in addition to a complete example raised from adjacent (?) waters, now on display in a seaside restaurant at Plaka, the port of Leonidion, on the east coast of Arcadia ( Lolos 1995, 77-78, fig. 22). The various find-spots of the complete or fragmentary vases from the sea bottom of this region may be viewed as “fixed points” along the routes of Aegean and foreign ships travelling in the Argolic Gulf and into the crossroads of the Saronic and the Argolic Gulfs in the Late Mycenaean period. Of the underwater finds in the Argolic Gulf, the transport stirrup jars in particular, whether remnants of shipwrecks or occasional jetsam, are safe indicators for maritime trade routes of the period in this part of the Aegean, no less instructive than the evidence for regular east-west sea-traffic offered by the five underwater sites with copper oxhide ingots identified along the south and southwest coast of Turkey (for which see Pulak 1997, 234-235).

The cargo from the Point Iria wreck provides further concrete evidence of trading and shipping during the Late Mycenaean period in the Aegean area and beyond. It also sheds some fresh light on one of the most critical periods in Greek and Cypriot Protohistory, in the course, or at the end, of which the collapse began of the great Mycenaean Koine in the wider Aegean area.

It is worth emphasizing that the mixed character of the pottery from the Point Iria wreck is a feature that can be identified in the pottery cargoes of nearly every ancient wreck (Parker 1990; Treister 1993; Wriedt Sorensen 1997) and reflects the nature and ways of maritime trade in Antiquity.

The basic proportion of the ceramic cargo of the Point Iria wreck, as is defined by the combined presence of Cypriot and Aegean ceramic types, including established types of transport vessels with an international distribution, has obvious analogies in the large cargo of pottery from the Uluburun wreck, of ca. 1305 B.C., and to some extent in that from the Cape Gelidonya wreck, of ca. 1200 B.C., comprising two Aegean coarse-ware stirrup jars and a fragmentary Cypriot pithos.

An element of differentiation, with reference to the ceramic contents of the other two cargoes, is the complete absence in the extant ceramic material from our wreck, of Syro-Palestinian wares, such as flasks, lamps and other small vessels of everyday use and pointed-based Canaanite jars, whose occurrence in the Argolid-Corinthia is documented from five (5) sites: Nemea- Tsoungiza, Mycenae, Argos, Tiryns and Asine (see Εkerstrφm 1975; Kilian 1988, figs. 24: 7, 25: 12, 13).

Although the cargo from the sea bed off Point Iria, as a “one phase” underwater ceramic group, finds no counterpart within the Aegean context, the co-existence and contemporary circulation of Aegean, Cypriot and even Syro-Palestinian wares is not out of place at major coastal sites in the 14th and 13th century B.C., like Tiryns, Chania (Kydonia), Poros near Herakleion and Kommos on the south coast of Crete (see Kilian 1978, 452, fig. 7; 1988, 121, figs. 24, 25; Kanta 1998, 41 ff.; Stambolides and Karetsou 1998, 56-58, 60-62, nos. 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 14, 15; also J. Rutter, in this volume).

Thus, the character of the ceramic content of the Point Iria wreck should be viewed as a reflection of a typical circulation pattern of specific types of transport vessels and products, within the context of long-distance maritime trade in the Eastern Mediterranean around 1200 B.C., rather than an element of the “uniqueness” of the specific cargo.

Some indications of the provenance of the ship and the “nationality” of its crew or merchant(s) on board the ship may be gained from the utility wares (i.e. Cypriot jugs and Mycenaean deep bowls and cook-pots), perhaps also from the incised “trade marks” on the handles of amphora A99 (Fig. 6a-b), which can be claimed to be connected to the Cypro-Minoan 1 Script.

These facts, taken with the location of the wreck, point to the coast of Cyprus, as the probable base of the ship, where large naval centres, with a role recently highlighted by Bernard Knapp (1997), flourished at Enkomi, Kition, the site at Hala Sultan Tekke (Alyke), Palaipaphos and Maa-Palaiokastro (Karageorghis et al. 1998, 26); or to the south coast of the Argolid, to important centres of naval power, also known from the Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad (Book II, lines 559-564) and from Hesiod’s Catalogue of Women (39, 94.96, b 14-11), to well-fortified Tiryns (Τίρυνθά τε τειχιόεσσαν), Mases, and well-harboured Hermione and Asine

(Ερμιόνην Ασίνην τε, βαθύν κατά κόλπον εχούσας).

LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 1. Point Iria wreck. Restored Cypriot pithoi.

Fig. 2. Point Iria wreck. Cypriot jug A 20.

Fig. 3. Point Iria wreck. Cypriot juglet A 97.

Fig. 4. Point Iria wreck. Group of Cretan stirrup jars.

Fig. 5. Point Iria wreck. Large two-handled jars of Helladic/Mycenaean type.

Fig. 6 a-b. Point Iria wreck. Mycenaean amphora A 99, with pot marks on its handles.

Fig. 7a-b. Point Iria wreck. Mycenaean spouted deep bowl krater A 36.

Fig. 8. Tiryns. Mycenaean spouted deep bowl krater (line drawing, from a photograph in Kilian 1988, 108, fig. 8).

Fig. 9. Point Iria wreck. Fragmentary Mycenaean stemmed bowl A 26.

Fig. 10. Point Iria wreck. Rim and wall fragment of Mycenaean deep bowl A 100 (Pres. H. 6.2 cm.).

Fig. 11. Palace of Nestor, Pylos. Banded two-handled jar (H. 38.4 cm.). After Blegen and Rawson 1966, fig. 374: top right.

Fig. 12. Palace of Nestor, Pylos. Plain two-handled jar (H. 76 cm.). After Blegen and Rawson 1966, fig. 384: no. 611.

Fig. 13. Palace of Nestor, Pylos. Plain two-handled jar (H. 88.3 cm.). After Blegen and Rawson 1966, fig. 384: no. 601.

Fig. 14. Palace of Nestor, Pylos. Coarse-ware stirrup jar (H. 43.8 cm.). After Blegen and Rawson 1966, fig. 390: no. 402.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

reproduced, by permission, from:
The Point Iria Wreck: Interconnections in the Mediterranean ca. 1200 BC Proceedings of the International Conference. Island of Spetses, 19 September 1998. Ed. William Phelps, Yannos Lolos, Yannis Vichos. Athens 1999. Pp. 268. ISBN 960-86282-1-0

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