Handmade Burnished Ware at Teichos Dymaion: pots, people and technological practice in Late Mycenaean Greece

The end of Late Bronze Age in Greece is recognised for its dynamism and shifting patterns of international connections between different regions of the Central and Eastern Mediterranean. Perhaps most significant for this period is the increasing evidence of contacts between Italy and its eastern neighbours. Mycenaean Achaea seems to have held a key role in this “Italian Connection”. A key element in understanding these mobilities is the appearance of handmade burnished ware (HBW) in Mainland Greece, Crete and Cyprus in the Late 13th-12th Century BCE, seemingly transplanted into areas using high quality wheelmade fineware. While it is now becoming widely accepted that the origin of this new class of pottery should be sought in Southern Italy, there is increasing evidence that HBW comprises a more diverse phenomenon. This project looks at this pottery class and its diversity in the specific context of Teichos Dymaion, in Achaea, an important anchorage located at the first landfall for maritime traffic coming from Italy. Based on a chaîne opératoire approach and using thin section petrography to complement the visual assessment of the assemblage, it approaches HBW by the concept of pottery tradition, to produce a localised understanding of the pottery rooted in both technology and style. The results reveal a HBW assemblage that shares a series of common practices distinctively different from the more canonical Mycenaean pottery, which it is suggested correspond to pottery traditions foreign to Achaea. Technological variability within this group, however, suggests a more diverse picture, hinting at evolving practices and perhaps at multiples groups of potters.