dating pots

[Armand1]

Issues to do with dating pots from the Beazley for pot experts.

[Armand1]

How to date Beazley pots

You have a spreadsheet containing the Beazley's metadata for some fabric (e.g., Corinthian). It's sorted by fabric_style_2 (e.g., added colour, black-painted, black-figure etc.).

(i) Click on the hyperlink in the first column, url_active. It will take you to a Beazley entry.
(ii) Look at the pot
(iii) Click on the adjacent date cell.
(iv) You will see a little arrow indicating a dropdown menu of date choices. Enter one.

if you can't date a pot

If you cannot date a pot with confidence, put in "NA" (not applicable) from the dropdown menu (the last entry).

If you think that the pot simply isn't what the Beazley says it is (e.g., it's not Corinthian), enter NA and add a comment in the comment column explaining the problem (e.g, "not Corinthian").

customizing the dates

The options in the dropdown menu are based on a field in the date ranges sheet. You can change this as you see fit. You can, for example, alter the earliest and latest dates, or the increment. Currently, the options start at -1000 and go in 50 year increments e.g., -1000 to -950.
In general, I would advise not using increments finer than 25 years. And don't use overlapping increments (e.g., -451 to -400 and -425 to -375)

Additional information

The hyperlink will take you to an image of the pot and whatever metadata the Beazley have incorporated. But you can often click on an additional link that will take you to the original CVA sheet. This may contain additional information and, perhaps, a date. This can be useful, but in general it is a pain: it takes at least a few minutes to identify the CVA text associated with the pot, read it (in Italian, or French or German or English), identify the date, if any, etc. And since some CVAs are very old, I have no idea whether to still believe the dates. Ideally, you can just look at the image and instantly assess its date.

Issues

If problems arise, I'd like you to add a comment to this Github issues page. (You will need to sign up to Github, and we may have ask Stephen Marsland, who owns this Github repository to add you to it.) It's a neat way to communicate, and I'll get a notification of your issue and will respond promptly. It's better than email threads.

[Armand1]

Emilio Rodriguez-Alvarez, who has kindly agreed to date our Corithian pots for us, gives the following chronology in his recent dissertation. This seems like a very useful dating scheme for Corinth and, perhaps, would be more natural to use than the arbitrary 50 year divisions I programmed into the spreadsheet.

It's easy to programme new date ranges into the spreadsheet --- but if you, Emilio, have difficulty tell me and I'll send you a new one. Something like "720-690_EPC" would work well.

Chronology of Archaic Corinthian Decorated Pottery

Early Protocorinthian (EPC) 720-690 BCE
Middle Protocorinthian (MPC) 690-650 BCE
Middle Protocorinthian IA (MPCIA) 690-675 BCE
Middle Protocorinthian IB (MPCIB) 675-660 BCE
Middle Protocorinthian II (MPCII) 660-650 BCE
Late Protocorinthian (LPC) 650-630 BCE
Transitional (TRS) 630-620/615 BCE
Early Corinthian (EC) 620/615-595/590 BCE
Middle Corinthian (MC) 595/590-570 BCE
Late Corinthian (LC) 570-500 BCE
Late Corinthian I (LCI) 570-550 BCE
Late Corinthian II (LCII) 550-525 BCE
Late Corinthian III (LCIII) 525-500 BCE

But even a reduced chronology, something like:

Early Protocorinthian (EPC) 720-690 BCE
Middle Protocorinthian (MPC) 690-650 BCE
Late Protocorinthian (LPC) 650-630 BCE
Transitional (TRS) 630-620/615 BCE
Early Corinthian (EC) 620/615-595/590 BCE
Middle Corinthian (MC) 595/590-570 BCE
Late Corinthian (LC) 570-500 BCE

would be great. Though perhaps come to a decision about 620/615 -either date, or the median, not both since two dates will cause problems downstream in the analysis.

I might add that I would really like your dates to go back into the Beazley. I haven't discussed this with Thomas Mannack, but I am certain he'd be glad for them. (This is part of my more remote agenda to increase the utility of the Beazley beyond Attic BF and RF.)

[EmilioRodriguezAlvarez]

Hello everybody:

I am glad I can help in this fantastic project. Sorry for the delay with this reply about the dates.

I thought it would be a good idea to summarize my position on the issue of dating Greek pottery, just for the sake of clarity. I am of course more than happy to adapt these ideas to the needs of the research, but I think they can also be a good contribution to the debate, so here they are.

The problem with the dating system in Greek pottery, as I wrote in a recent research proposal for the Marie Curie IF is that:

“To date, archaeology has played merely a subsidiary role (on the historical narratives of trade during the Archaic period), focusing almost exclusively on the provision of artefacts as fossilized evidence for the existence of these connections. This is especially true for pottery finds; which become heavily individualized, isolated most times from their archaeological context, and must play the role of artefact, context, and cultural marker. Within this interpretative framework it is difficult to develop new research lines, and broader anthropological questions remain unanswered.”

This is, we put the pots in “boxes”, according to their decoration and, secondly, to their profile. When we say, for example, that a pot is EPC (720-690BCE), we are not able to give, in most cases, a more accurate date; this is, we cannot say if this pot was manufactured in 711BCE or 698BCE. The main issue I detect with this system, and I explain this more extensively in my dissertation, is the lack of overlap in the dates. All pottery styles I know from other parts of the world and time periods always overlap; they are introduced while another one is being produced, develops, and then fades away while a new style(s) is introduced. But in Greek pottery we have these boxes that do not only deny the overlap but also other important factors such as use-life and postdepositional processes. Archaeological context should confront this model, but since for most excavations we do not have excavation records that fulfill the standards of our discipline, we cannot implement common tasks in ceramic analysis as seriation.

So, to sum up, the canonical dates may not be perfect, but considering how spread they are on the field I think it should be our first option if we want the results to be applicable and widely used by scholars working with Classical pottery. And, that is why I find this research so fascinating, bearing this problem in mind I would not discard that the results of the analysis may point perhaps to new ways of addressing these issues, helping us to improve the role and function of chronologies in Greek historical archaeology.

Addressing issues more specific for the research, I would suggest to use the reduced chronology, which I find safer, since many pots do not have enough traits to be associated to, let us say, MPCIIB, and we can only be certain about its ascription to EPC or MPC. Regarding the 5950/590 dates, there is no strong, stratigraphic or contextual evidence to support them. They act more as a safe range of dates due to the dissargrement of the experts. My suggestion is to take for all cases the lowest date. It would be consistent, so we avoid issues of replicability in the future. I intend to start reviewing the material during the weekend, so if I encounter any issue on the spreadsheet with the new dates I will let you know.

[Armand1]

Welcome to our Github project Emilio! Super. I agree. The phylogeny, if we get that far --- and I think we will --- will yield a probabilistic estimate of branch dates constrained by the tip dates (dates of vases) which go into the priors (it's a Bayesian model). It's a starting point, that can --- and surely will -- always be modified by further discoveries or alternate dating schemes that the future will produce. We just want referees to say, yes, that's reasonable.

A note: I was wrong in thinking that we shouldn't use overlapping date ranges. Suppose you normally use:

(MC) 595-570 BCE
(LC) 571-500 BCE etc.

But then you come across some pot you can't decide whether it's MC or LC. You can always put in:

(MC/LC) 595-500

The only reason not to multiply date options in the spreadsheet is simplicity. For every vase you have to make a decision. It's easier, faster, to decide between 7 options rather than 20. So you will have to decide where the trade-off between accuracy and efficiency lies.

Good idea for the weekend.

[Armand1]

Emilio has given us our first dates! He has successfully dated 2901/3095 Beazley Corinthian pots. This is an amazing accomplishment. Corinthian is the 2nd largest fabric after Athens --- and a very important one since it's clear that a variety of Athenian pot shapes come from there. He'll be posting some info about what he did and issues arising.

[Armand1]

Some notes on the dating of Corithian pottery from Emilio Rodríguez-Álvarez

These notes are a summary of my own personal ideas on the general dating of Greek painted pottery and, more specifically, the issues encountered while trying to date the list of objects for this research. They do not to solve all analytical problems with Corinthian pottery, but I think they point out to some recurrent issues that we can encounter (I have encountered indeed repeatedly) when trying to apply modern, non-descriptive analytical techniques to these artifacts. The current guidelines of scholarship, as I briefly described here, can have a great effect on the datasets employed, and bias our results if not handled with care.

The main issue to remember when dealing with any Greek historical pottery datasets is that we are not dealing with the standard collection of finds retrieved from one or many archaeological excavations, and cross-referenced by their stratigraphic units. All dates, what goes first, what goes later, are only based on the ascription of the finds to any given chronological style. Furthermore, these styles do not overlap, so a piece must be Early Protocorinthian (720-690 BCE) or Middle Protocorinthian (690-650 BCE). I do not want to extend myself on the multiple issues this unique way of assessing pottery chronology causes in Corinthian and Greek archaeology (there is an extensive analysis of this issue in Chapter 3 of my dissertation), but I think it is important to take them into account when applying statistical analyses to these finds, since they can eventually bias the outcome.

This list, or any other list you may find in the literature, does not correspond to the production, use, and discard patterns of ancient Corinthians, but to the aesthetic and intellectual interest of former scholars. A quick look to the it will reveal how this contains only decorated pieces; daily-life, monochrome shapes are not listed, not usually considered in the final publication of the excavations reports because the absence of decoration prevents any accurate dating (in the absence of proper stratigraphic sequences). In other pottery traditions we would rely on the stratigraphic position of the finds and its relation to other absolute-dating methods (e.g. C14) to establish if not a short-range date at least a sequence of finds. Thus, the dating only applies to decorated vessels, and it is its decoration (mostly) which determined the dating of the pottery. This feedback system makes the artifact itself both the dating method and the dated object, not allowing for cross-dating checking. This means that, if not decorated, artifacts are not usually analyzed, leaving enormous amounts of data outside the published, hence the analytical, record.

For example, a quick look at the list will show that the most numerous shapes recorded are the aryballoi and the alabastra. What is the reason for this? It could be alleged that Corinth was famous for its perfumed-oil industry, which is absolutely true, but this bias in the record is not caused by that. Scholars interested in the artistic aspect of pottery analysis prioritize full profiles, so small shapes like the aryballoi and the alabastra preserve better, not because of their small size, but because of their recovery context. These shapes contained perfumed-oil which, among other uses, was an essential element of the funerary rites and, thus, almost every burial of the Archaic period (the cemeteries of Syracuse and other colonies of Magna Graecia were essential for the establishment of the Protocorinthian-Early Corinthian chronology) contains one or more examples. However, while Petrie in the cemetery of Abydos established the seriation of Egyptian pottery styles by allowing the overlap of one or more styles in any given period, Greek archaeology scholars created clearly defined boxes for each one. But what should we do with hybrid styles? Let us consider some examples.

In books devoted to the study of Greek pottery we usually find “famous vases” artifacts with a given name. For example, if we want to illustrate the miniaturistic friezes of the MPC we will include in our work a picture of the Macmillan aryballos, located in the British Museum; if we want to illustrate the development of large shapes in the EC we will use a picture of the Eurytios krater. By relying on these vessels the definition of any given period is very easy: this is clearly a MPC while this other is clearly an EC. They are like points in an imaginary line. The problem arises not in these points, but in the gap between them. Many vessels that we can find in museum storage rooms and in catalogs like the Beazley archive (that is why the latter is so useful, because it brings the diversity of the finds to the scope) fall into these gaps, that is why many of them remain undated or only very broadly dated (Protocorinthian vs. Corinthian): they constitute shades of grey removed from the easily identifiable points in the line. A careful look at the ovoid and pyriform aryballoi will show the progress from one profile to the other (something the literature on the topic recognizes)… but where is the change? How do we decide that an aryballos stops being ovoid and starts being pyriform?. By illustrating this pottery tradition with already famous pieces we over-standardized the shapes, ignoring their parametric ranges.

Aryballoi are an exception regarding the evolution of the profile, and although most shapes vary across time (e.g. taller vs. shorter profiles on kotylai, another common shape) most of them are dated by the decoration they carry. This creates what I call a unilinear model of evolution in the artistic depictions, from the high quality of the earlier periods to the mass production and quick, bad drawing of the Late Corinthian. But, and that is why I call this model unilinear, there is only room here for one direction. From good to bad. This denies the possibility of low quality vessels in other periods (not all potters would have been incredibly skilled artisans) and also leaves us with inconsistencies on the decorative motifs. For example, the friezes of hoplites that are very common in the EC aryballoi disappear in the MC and come back, in very poor quality, in the LC: why do not we have them in the MC? How do we classify examples that (literally), are not so good but no so bad either? The problem of relying on quality of execution and decorative motifs finds another example in the komast dancers (friezes of male figures dancing and jumping). This motif is very common on the MC period for many vessels (especially cups), but if they appear on an aryballos they are assigned to the EC, never later.

I do not want to extend myself on this issue not given the impression this topic is unfathomable. But in my experience, after having analyzed these artifacts for a long while, I have concluded that some of these shortcomings can cause problems in statistical analyses.

See Emilio's dissertation for a deeper discussion of these issues

[EmilioRodriguezAlvarez]

And of course if I can be of any help please let me know. I will be more than happy to clarify, discuss, or correct any point that may not be clear. With best wishes, Emilio

…

On Wed, 19 Feb 2020 at 10:18, Armand Leroi ***@***.***> wrote: Comments on dating pots from Emilio SOME NOTES ON THE DATING OF CORINTHIAN POTTERY Emilio Rodríguez-Álvarez These notes are a summary of my own personal ideas on the general dating of Greek painted pottery and, more specifically, the issues encountered while trying to date the list of objects for this research. They do not to solve all analytical problems with Corinthian pottery, but I think they point out to some recurrent issues that we can encounter (I have encountered indeed repeatedly) when trying to apply modern, non-descriptive analytical techniques to these artifacts. The current guidelines of scholarship, as I briefly described here, can have a great effect on the datasets employed, and bias our results if not handled with care. The main issue to remember when dealing with any Greek historical pottery datasets is that we are not dealing with the standard collection of finds retrieved from one or many archaeological excavations, and cross-referenced by their stratigraphic units. All dates, what goes first, what goes later, are only based on the ascription of the finds to any given chronological style. Furthermore, these styles do not overlap, so a piece must be Early Protocorinthian (720-690 BCE) or Middle Protocorinthian (690-650 BCE). I do not want to extend myself on the multiple issues this unique way of assessing pottery chronology causes in Corinthian and Greek archaeology (there is an extensive analysis of this issue in Chapter 3 of my dissertation), but I think it is important to take them into account when applying statistical analyses to these finds, since they can eventually bias the outcome. This list, or any other list you may find in the literature, does not correspond to the production, use, and discard patterns of ancient Corinthians, but to the aesthetic and intellectual interest of former scholars. A quick look to the it will reveal how this contains only decorated pieces; daily-life, monochrome shapes are not listed, not usually considered in the final publication of the excavations reports because the absence of decoration prevents any accurate dating (in the absence of proper stratigraphic sequences). In other pottery traditions we would rely on the stratigraphic position of the finds and its relation to other absolute-dating methods (e.g. C14) to establish if not a short-range date at least a sequence of finds. Thus, the dating only applies to decorated vessels, and it is its decoration (mostly) which determined the dating of the pottery. This feedback system makes the artifact itself both the dating method and the dated object, not allowing for cross-dating checking. This means that, if not decorated, artifacts are not usually analyzed, leaving enormous amounts of data outside the published, hence the analytical, record. For example, a quick look at the list will show that the most numerous shapes recorded are the aryballoi and the alabastra. What is the reason for this? It could be alleged that Corinth was famous for its perfumed-oil industry, which is absolutely true, but this bias in the record is not caused by that. Scholars interested in the artistic aspect of pottery analysis prioritize full profiles, so small shapes like the aryballoi and the alabastra preserve better, not because of their small size, but because of their recovery context. These shapes contained perfumed-oil which, among other uses, was an essential element of the funerary rites and, thus, almost every burial of the Archaic period (the cemeteries of Syracuse and other colonies of Magna Graecia were essential for the establishment of the Protocorinthian-Early Corinthian chronology) contains one or more examples. However, while Petrie in the cemetery of Abydos established the seriation of Egyptian pottery styles by allowing the overlap of one or more styles in any given period, Greek archaeology scholars created clearly defined boxes for each one. But what should we do with hybrid styles? Let us consider some examples. In books devoted to the study of Greek pottery we usually find “famous vases” artifacts with a given name. For example, if we want to illustrate the miniaturistic friezes of the MPC we will include in our work a picture of the Macmillan aryballos, located in the British Museum; if we want to illustrate the development of large shapes in the EC we will use a picture of the Eurytios krater. By relying on these vessels the definition of any given period is very easy: this is clearly a MPC while this other is clearly an EC. They are like points in an imaginary line. The problem arises not in these points, but in the gap between them. Many vessels that we can find in museum storage rooms and in catalogs like the Beazley archive (that is why the latter is so useful, because it brings the diversity of the finds to the scope) fall into these gaps, that is why many of them remain undated or only very broadly dated (Protocorinthian vs. Corinthian): they constitute shades of grey removed from the easily identifiable points in the line. A careful look at the ovoid and pyriform aryballoi will show the progress from one profile to the other (something the literature on the topic recognizes)… but where is the change? How do we decide that an aryballos stops being ovoid and starts being pyriform?. By illustrating this pottery tradition with already famous pieces we over-standardized the shapes, ignoring their parametric ranges. Aryballoi are an exception regarding the evolution of the profile, and although most shapes vary across time (e.g. taller vs. shorter profiles on kotylai, another common shape) most of them are dated by the decoration they carry. This creates what I call a unilinear model of evolution in the artistic depictions, from the high quality of the earlier periods to the mass production and quick, bad drawing of the Late Corinthian. But, and that is why I call this model unilinear, there is only room here for one direction. From good to bad. This denies the possibility of low quality vessels in other periods (not all potters would have been incredibly skilled artisans) and also leaves us with inconsistencies on the decorative motifs. For example, the friezes of hoplites that are very common in the EC aryballoi disappear in the MC and come back, in very poor quality, in the LC: why do not we have them in the MC? How do we classify examples that (literally), are not so good but no so bad either? The problem of relying on quality of execution and decorative motifs finds another example in the komast dancers (friezes of male figures dancing and jumping). This motif is very common on the MC period for many vessels (especially cups), but if they appear on an aryballos they are assigned to the EC, never later. I do not want to extend myself on this issue not given the impression this topic is unfathomable. But in my experience, after having analyzed these artifacts for a long while, I have concluded that some of these shortcomings can cause problems in statistical analyses. See Emilio's dissertation <https://www.academia.edu/11290963/Forming_Identities_Technological_Choices_and_Pottery_Manufacturers_in_Archaic_Korinth> dissertation for a deeper discussion of these issues — You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#11?email_source=notifications&email_token=ANVQYA3VJY2JFJ3OLBNBBWLRDT2PHA5CNFSM4JID4EZKYY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOEMG7IJA#issuecomment-588117028>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ANVQYA6RRALGANLDTRR3TBDRDT2PHANCNFSM4JID4EZA> .

-- Emilio Rodríguez-Álvarez, Ph.D. Mediterranean Archaeology, School of Anthropology, University of Arizona https://arizona.academia.edu/EmilioRodr%C3%ADguez%C3%81lvarez https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Emilio_Rodriguez-Alvarez https://archaeostuff.wordpress.com/

[Armand1]

Comments and queries on this:

This list, or any other list you may find in the literature, does not correspond to the production, use, and discard patterns of ancient Corinthians, but to the aesthetic and intellectual interest of former scholars. A quick look to the it will reveal how this contains only decorated pieces; daily-life, monochrome shapes are not listed, not usually considered in the final publication of the excavations reports because the absence of decoration prevents any accurate dating (in the absence of proper stratigraphic sequences).

This is important to know. Ideally, I would like to be able to make a general statement about the shapes that the potters of a given place and time (e.g., Corinth 690-650 BCE) made. But I am aware that our data are based on decorated pottery mostly found in graves and therefore potenitally biased to whatever the funerary market demanded. We can't do anything about that. But I do want to know this: is there a universe of pot shapes, made in Corinth 690-650 BCE, that were decorated and therefore not exported that we are missing?

For example, if you look at the local archaeology (rather than export grave goods) are there lots of water pitchers-- the sort of vessel that village women have carried water from the well to the home since time immemorial?

There must be, right? And other shapes not represented in the Beazley? If so, then we have to be cautious and acknowledge that our study does not represent the universe of pot shapes made at any time and place, but a very biased subset. Which is fine --- as long as we know.

[Armand1]

Emilio notes that the``Macmillan aryballos, located in the British Museum'' is not in the Beazley. That's odd: you'd have thought that a famous British vase would be in there. (Not all the CVAs have been digitized due to copyright issues, so perhaps it's catalogued but there is no image. The list I gave you is just those with images.)

Are our ~3000 Corinthian vases a reasonable sample of known decorated vases? That is, allowing for the remit of the Beazley are there conspicuous classes of vessels that are missing or underrepresented?

[Armand1]

All dates, what goes first, what goes later, are only based on the ascription of the finds to any given chronological style. Furthermore, these styles do not overlap, so a piece must be Early Protocorinthian (720-690 BCE) or Middle Protocorinthian (690-650 BCE).

Thus, the dating only applies to decorated vessels, and it is its decoration (mostly) which determined the dating of the pottery.

This has always been a concern to me. And I find the literature on the dating of decorated vessels very opaque. Decorated vase scholars have developed a very elaborate system of dating on stylistic criteria, which often seems to assume some unstated assumptions about the evolution of style. But my impression, too, is that these styles are, variously, anchored by archaeology or other information (e.g., reference to historical events as in some Attic Panathenaic vases etc).

My hope is that by adopting quite broad date ranges (EC, MC etc) as you have, we are reasonably safe. We're not pinning our chronology on a hypothesized succession of hypothesized painters and dating them to the decade, as is often done in the literature on Attic and Italian BF and RF.

So, my question is: how likely is it that your dates are radically wrong? For example, when you say that this vase (I pick one at random)

is Late Protocorinthian 650-630 --- a 20 year range --- what might it be? As early as 690 (your MPC)? As late as 620 (your Transitional)? Allowing that these boundaries are based on stylistic conventions, surely archaeology at least anchors it to the 7th Century and not the 8th or the 6th?

If that's true, then I don't think we have to worry that much. Our analyses will aggregate, and look at the evolution of vase shapes, at a pretty coarse temporal level --- at least at first. Of course, we can do all the finer analyses we want on this or that fabric. But if we can say that we have the right century then I think I am reasonable happy at this stage. We're looking at the big picture. However, we do want to to have a sense of the uncertainty of the estimates...

Note: I'm not asking whether your dates are wrong; I am asking whether the whole consensus system is likely to be wrong.

[EmilioRodriguezAlvarez]

Regarding the MacMillan aryballos: I recall reading the name and recognising the shapes of several museums such as the Louvre, the Ashmolean (this one has by far the best pictures). One option could be to use the open-access search engine of the web of the BM and download the pictures and the data from there. Essentially, it would produce a document similar to the already processed. Regarding the sample "significance", the proportions are correct. Any book or catalog on Corinthian-made pottery is going to contain many examples of aryballoi and alabastra, a lot of kotylai, some oinochoai and olpai, and then a few kraters and other shapes, so in that sense I see no issue with underrepresented shapes.

…

On Wed, 19 Feb 2020 at 10:44, Armand Leroi ***@***.***> wrote: Emilio notes that the``Macmillan aryballos, located in the British Museum'' is not in the Beazley. That's odd: you'd have thought that a famous British vase would be in there. (Not all the CVAs have been digitized due to copyright issues, so perhaps it's catalogued but there is no image. The list I gave you is just those with images.) Are our ~3000 Corinthian vases a reasonable sample of known *decorated* vases? That is, *allowing for the remit* of the Beazley are there conspicuous classes of vessels that are missing or underrepresented? — You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#11?email_source=notifications&email_token=ANVQYAYSOE537XEQDDT6BF3RDT5PPA5CNFSM4JID4EZKYY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOEMHB5QI#issuecomment-588127937>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ANVQYA5MLNGGQL6HKB2SHM3RDT5PPANCNFSM4JID4EZA> .

-- Emilio Rodríguez-Álvarez, Ph.D. Mediterranean Archaeology, School of Anthropology, University of Arizona https://arizona.academia.edu/EmilioRodr%C3%ADguez%C3%81lvarez https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Emilio_Rodriguez-Alvarez https://archaeostuff.wordpress.com/

[EmilioRodriguezAlvarez]

Regarding the water pitchers: Let me illustrate my answer with a picture from my lovely working area at Corinth during my dissertation (the sea view was amazing). In this picture you can see numerous wooden trays. Their are just a fraction of all wooden trays containing pottery fragments from the potters' quarter at Corinth that were never recorder or analyzed. When I say never recorded I mean a basic counts/weight to at least have an estimation of the amount of pottery recovered from each deposit. That is the pottery I was looking at, being interested in technology and manufacturing, and the same Armand mentions in the previous email: the non-painted, many times even non-glossed daily life pottery. That is the scenario I found when I started with my dissertation, and for which I develop several protocols to "return" these pieces to mainstream analysis. One option we could consider is to extract the profiles from published drawings (common wares do not usually receive "photographic attention") and use the sorting-deposits techniques I used for my dissertation to establish a sequence ( I do not dare to say chronology) of these profiles. I could produce a similar spreadsheet to the one already analyzed and then the data could be incorporated to the general study.

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On Wed, 19 Feb 2020 at 10:34, Armand Leroi ***@***.***> wrote: Comments and queries on this: This list, or any other list you may find in the literature, does not correspond to the production, use, and discard patterns of ancient Corinthians, but to the aesthetic and intellectual interest of former scholars. A quick look to the it will reveal how this contains only decorated pieces; daily-life, monochrome shapes are not listed, not usually considered in the final publication of the excavations reports because the absence of decoration prevents any accurate dating (in the absence of proper stratigraphic sequences). This is important to know. Ideally, I would like to be able to make a general statement about the shapes that the potters of a given place and time (e.g., Corinth 690-650 BCE) made. But I am aware that our data are based on *decorated* pottery mostly found in graves and therefore hugely biased to whatever the funerary market demanded. We can't do anything about that. But I do want to know this: do you have a sense that there is a universe of pot shapes, made in Corinth 690-650 BCE, that were decorated and therefore not exported that we are missing? For example, if you look at the local archaeology (rather than export grave goods) are there lots of water pitchers-- the sort of vessel that village women have carried water from the well to the home since time immemorial? [image: late-19th-or-early-20th-century-black-and-white-photograph-showing-M0AHNE] <https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/8698079/74821149-1329d900-52fb-11ea-93f7-9542eddfc85d.jpg> — You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#11?email_source=notifications&email_token=ANVQYA3WCGASQF4O64XXYLDRDT4MDA5CNFSM4JID4EZKYY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOEMHA5MY#issuecomment-588123827>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ANVQYA2PMYUA2R2CEKS7HADRDT4MDANCNFSM4JID4EZA> .

-- Emilio Rodríguez-Álvarez, Ph.D. Mediterranean Archaeology, School of Anthropology, University of Arizona https://arizona.academia.edu/EmilioRodr%C3%ADguez%C3%81lvarez https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Emilio_Rodriguez-Alvarez https://archaeostuff.wordpress.com/

[Armand1]

Just browsing your classification, I note that some of your labels differ from the Beazley's. You call this vase LPC; the Beazley calls it transitional.

I believe you --- but be prepared to defend your assessment to Thomas. I don't know how attached he is to the Corinthian classifications in the Beazley. (He'll defend Attic BF and RF, his area of expertise, vigorously, but the other fabrics much less so I think.)

[EmilioRodriguezAlvarez]

On the accuracy of the dating: When you write: "Thus, the dating only applies to decorated vessels, and it is its decoration (mostly) which determined the dating of the pottery. This has always been a concern to me. And I find the literature on the dating of decorated vessels very opaque." I think you are making an excellent analysis. I could not have explained it better. The point in which I disagree, and that is why I insist on stratigraphy, is that this model is anchored in archaeology. In my opinion it is not, and I have substantially analyzed this, to the point of providing myself with specific examples on this issue. That is why I use the broad chronologies, because while disagreeing with them I find them a safer framework to work with. When I date a pot LPC I am confident (for a variety of stylistic reasons) that is was made, according to the traditional chronologies between 650-630 BCE.What I disagree with is:a) the accuracy of that date, and b) the lack of seriations. That is why many of the pots listed on the document were never dated, because, regardless of the inconsistency of the methodology when applied by different scholars, they present traits that belong to several periods; they are the greys in that ideal line I mentioned in the document I submitted a couple of days ago. When encountered with these issues, I considered all traits and dated the object to the period from which most of them belonged. In the case of lack of or evenly distributed traits I ascribed them to several periods, because I think that is a safer approach. I suppose that due to my training and experience I am too conservative, too rooted to the stratigraphy when dealing with this topic, but that does not mean that I deny the sequence, this is, that from a LPC decoration we move to an EC. I just want to face this topic as it is done in, literally, any other pottery tradition in archaeology. And it has been done indeed. The works of Guy Sanders (former director at Corinth) and Sarah James reassessing the chronology of Frankish and 4th c. pottery at Corinth are an undeniable example of what a properly excavated site can do on this issue. Unfortunately, we just do not have that for Archaic Corinth yet. In the meantime, there are several mathematical approaches that can help us to overcome partially these issues, and that is the approach that I take on my work. Sorry for the lengthy reply! Sanders, Guy D. R. 1987. ‘An Assemblage of Frankish Pottery at Corinth’. *Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens* 56 (2): 159–95. https://doi.org/10.2307/148169. James, Sarah Anne. 2010. ‘The Hellenistic Pottery from the Panayia Field, Corinth : Studies in Chronology and Context’. Thesis. https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/ETD-UT-2010-12-2355.

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On Wed, 19 Feb 2020 at 11:09, Armand Leroi ***@***.***> wrote: All dates, what goes first, what goes later, are only based on the ascription of the finds to any given chronological style. Furthermore, these styles do not overlap, so a piece must be Early Protocorinthian (720-690 BCE) or Middle Protocorinthian (690-650 BCE). Thus, the dating only applies to decorated vessels, and it is its decoration (mostly) which determined the dating of the pottery. This has always been a concern to me. And I find the literature on the dating of decorated vessels very opaque. Decorated vase scholars have evolved a very elaborate system of dating on stylistic criteria, which often seems to assume some unstated assumptions about the evolution of style. But my impression, too, is that these styles are, variously, anchored by archaeology. My hope is that by adopting quite broad date ranges (EC, MC etc) as you have, we are reasonably safe. We're not pinning our chronology on a hypothesized succession of individual hypothesized painters --- as is common in the literature on Attic and Italian BF and RF. So, my question is: how likely is it that your dates are radically wrong? For example, when you say that a vase is Late Protocorinthian 650-630 --- a 20 year range --- what *might* it be? As early as 690 (your MPC)? As late as 620 (your Transitional)? Allowing that these boundaries are based on stylistic conventions, surely archaeology at least anchors this vase (one of your LPCs) to the 7th Century and not the 8th or the 6th? [image: bc001001 jpe] <https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/8698079/74824160-c7c5f980-52ff-11ea-935b-85eee969a6f1.jpeg> — You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#11?email_source=notifications&email_token=ANVQYA5ZNUYM227CY6TGJ7LRDUAMXA5CNFSM4JID4EZKYY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOEMHFDZA#issuecomment-588141028>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ANVQYA4C7XSYRI3QLRQGPK3RDUAMXANCNFSM4JID4EZA> .

-- Emilio Rodríguez-Álvarez, Ph.D. Mediterranean Archaeology, School of Anthropology, University of Arizona https://arizona.academia.edu/EmilioRodr%C3%ADguez%C3%81lvarez https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Emilio_Rodriguez-Alvarez https://archaeostuff.wordpress.com/