• 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