Black-Glazed Pottery with Stamped and Incised Decoration from Underwater Research near Ak-Burun Cape

Abstract

Unbroken and fragmented black-glazed vessels were one of the most informative categories of pottery found during underwater excavations by the expedition of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the area of the port of Panticapaeum near Ak-Burun cape (about 480 in total). Items decorated with stamped and incised ornaments, brought to the Bosporus from Attica, Asia Minor and Corinth, accounted for a significant percentage. They date back from the last quarter of the 5th — the second half of the 2nd century BC. The set of shapes and combinations of decorative elements are, generally, quite standard, somewhat inferior in diversity to the pottery finds from the urban layers of Panticapaeum. New impressions that have not been seen before can be identified, as well as identical stamps, which made it possible to cautiously assume the possibility of manufacturing several pairs of vessels in the same workshop. Fragment of a Stemless cup of the first quarter of the 4th century BC with a unique decoration on the inner surface is of particular interest: Silenic masks surrounded by stylized pine cones. There are no analogies to such images, but stylistically, the closest examples come from Southern Italy.