• m10-cor-6-10
    Overview of rim sherd. (©Archaeological Exploration of Sardis/President and Fellows of Harvard College)
  • m10-cor-6-20
    Drawing. (©Archaeological Exploration of Sardis/President and Fellows of Harvard College)

Early Protocorinthian Linear Kotyle Fragment

Date
Ca. 720-690 BC, Lydian
Sardis or Museum Inv. No.
P96.002
Material
Ceramic
Object Type
Pottery
Pottery Shape
Kotyle
Pottery Ware
Early Protocorinthian
Pottery Attribution
Site
Sardis
Sector
PC
Trench
PC
Locus
PC Zone 2
B-Grid Coordinates
*88.6 - 88.35
Findspot
PC Zone 2; found in 1960
Description

Late EPC. Fragment of rim and upper body. Exterior: two horizontal lines of glaze at the rim. In the handle zone, a bird faces to right next to a series of vertical bars. The type is transitional between the soldier bird and the wirebird. It has the kind of tail common to the soldier bird, but the single bent leg typical of the wirebird. The vertical bars, of which fourteen remain, stay well within the confines of the framing horizontal lines and are evenly spaced. Eight horizontal lines are preserved in the upper body. Interior glazed. Clay: hard and fine.

The only example of either soldier birds or wirebirds yet found at Sardis, this piece dates before the true wirebird described by Coldstream: a bird with a single bent leg and a blob-shaped body that appears at the end of EPC (supra, "Kotylai with Linear Decoration," 11). Two bases from EPC kotylai were also found in the same zone at PC (see Cor 7, Cor 8).

Dimensions
P.H. 0.05; P.W. 0.045; Th. 0.003
Comments
Cf. Burr, “Geometric House” 567, fig. 26, no. 102, wirebird with thin neck but without a tail; for soldier birds, Anderson, “Old Smyrna” pl. 21, no. 23; for wirebirds, Brokaw, “PC Kotyle” fig. 5, a tall kotyle with rays at the base dated late in EPC. Some of these birds have a short tail, but none have the long thin neck of both Cor 6 and Burr's no. 102.
See Also
See also: R8, No. PC 41
Bibliography
Author
JS