139-158

Hellenistic impressed pottery in the museum of Chios

• Σημαντώνη-Μπουρνιά, Εύα

This article deals with a group of thirty sherds, all of them chance finds, deposited in the Museum of Chios between 1955 and 1965. They form a homogenous group as they are all made from a well levigated clay, containing thin mica particles, which fires hard and into a vivid orange red to orange brown colour with no grey core. Less than half of the material has its surface covered by a dull brown-red paint. The plate, either deep or shallow, seems to be the most popular shape in this group; next come small lekanides, small kraters, cylindrical jugs and three hemispherical bowls with outturned rim. All are decorated with the impression of small flat seals, mostly on or near the rim, which is a rather unusual feature since the normal arrangement is around the deepest part of the open shapes. The seals exhibit an interesting variation of motifs: different kinds of tongue pattern, egg and dart, dotted tongues, impressed circles, palmettes, stars, squares and triangles.The Chian group can be dated, on grounds of stylistic comparisons only, since no context is available, to the last quarter of the 3rd century and the beginning of the 2nd century BC.There is a noticeable affinity between our group and the plates of Eastern Sigillata A, which originated in Antioch in the late 2nd century BC and by 30 BC they had spread in Pergamon, Tarsus, Samaria, Hama, Dura-Europos, Samos and the Athenian Kerameikos. Their production stopped about the mid-lst century AD. Could the Chian group have served as their antecedent?

• History and Archaeology

• Αρχαιολογία
• Pottery, Greek
• Decorative arts

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