Byzantine Fourteenth-Century Glazed Vessels Featuring Monograms Excavated in Cherson and the Castle of Cembalo

Abstract

This paper addresses the Byzantine vessels featuring monograms excavated in Cherson and in Cembalo, and their interpretation and significance for the life of the Greek population of the south-western Crimea. So far, archaeological researches discovered 15 vessels made in Byzantium, which showed monograms of the life of saints (“George,” “Michael,” and “Prodromos”), the family name “Palaiologos,” and also code letters “A” (“relic”) and “K.” These vessels were containers for holy water, and in a few cases, plausibly, for myrrh. These vessels were delivered to Cherson and Cembalo as gifts or eulogiai from Constantinople (?), as a part of ideological propaganda. The comparative archaeometric study of the three samples from Cembalo castle in a lab of the University of Lyon revealed one vessel’s similarity with the products of a fourteenth-century pottery workshop discovered in the vicinity of Istanbul. Although two samples more belong to a group different from the said workshop’s products, they still show similar technological parameters. The chronology of the vessels in question lays within the 1320s–1350s in Cherson and from the second half of the fourteenth to the early fifteenth century in Cembalo.