The Cypriot pottery from Sir Leonard Woolley´s Excavations

Beginning with Sir Leonard Woolley`s final report on his excavations at Tell Atchana, ancient Alalakh, the chronology of the site`s 16th and 15th B.C. levels VI through IV has been largely based on the imported Cypriot pottery: this in spite of the fact that Woolley published only a fraction of the material and not infrequently -as this volume points out- his classifications were incorrect. The first aim of this study was therefore to classify and publish all the Cypriot pottery from the site preserved in collections in Turkey and England, and to re-evaluate its significance for the site`s chronology. The resulting catalogue of approximately four hundred vessels is lavishly illustrated by photographs, many in colour. The volume opens with a concise analysis of the architecture and material culture of levels VII through II, with special attention to the find spots of the Cypriot sherds from their first appearance in level VI through their last in level II. Although no Cypriot pottery was found in level VII, reconstructions of Alalakh`s history in the second millennium require consideration of its important archaeological remains, and especially of its archives, which provide evidence for dating the start of level VI. There is a separate treatment of the spatial and typological distribution of the largest concentrations of Cypriot imports in the level IV palace and tombs, and an attempt to interpret these both in terms of chronology and of social history. The detailed discussion of the wares and shapes in chapter 3 pursues the questions of chronology and social meaning through a comparative analysis of the export assemblage throughout Canaan. Chapter 4 is a critical assessment of the chronologies for Alalakh that have been proposed on the basis of textual as well as archaeological data, folding in the new evidence of the Cypriot pottery. The author argues for lowering the dates for levels VI through IV by approximately a generation.