Pottery

The clay pottery of Hellas comes in many shapes and sizes and is used to hold all manner of raw and finished materials.

Common Shapes

• The amphora was a tall, two-handled storage vessel for wine, corn, oil, or honey;
• The hydria, a three-handled water jug;
• The lecythus, an oil flask with a long, narrow neck, for funeral offerings;
• The cylix, a double-handled drinking cup on a foot;
• The oenochoe, a wine jug with a pinched lip;
• The crater, a large bowl for mixing wine and water.

History & Usage

Everyday use

Plain black-slip pottery used in everyday life for storage, preparation, and serving of food and drink.

Cultural Significance and Usage

Decorated pottery used for religious ceremony and by noble and royal households.

Refinement

Stages of pottery manufacture include:

• Digging for clay (sources were often proprietary and kept secret from other potters
• Preparing the clay;
• Forming the pot (the wheel is one technique but not the only one
• Drying for half hour to an hour, trimming excess clay, then drying for a couple of days for small items to a few
• Weeks for large storage vessels;
• Refining the shape by trimming excess clay;
• Decorating with orange slip (a slurry similar to the clay) and added white and purple, incisions, and relief lines;
• Drying again;
• Firing for about two days total from preheat, firing, to cool down;
• Unloading the kiln; and
• In rare instances, adding additional color and firing again.

Historicity Note

Pottery styles in the real world change over time. The Late Fourth Age pottery we have depicts animals, plants, sea creatures, and other nature themes borrowed from the motifs of Krete. With the Bronze Age Collapse, styles became simpler geometric shapes for a period of time. Fourth Age pottery predates the start of the "black figure" technique developed in the 730s BCE in Korinth and "red figure" technique of the 500s BCE in Athens. Our use of figures on pottery is perhaps anachronistic culturally, but would not have been technologically impossible and the archaeological record is incomplete.

Type

Ceramic