Philia culture

The Philia culture (or Philia group) existed on the island of Cyprus in the Middle and Late Bronze Age between 2400 and 1600 BC.

Discovery

The culture was first identified by Porphyrios Dikaios in 1942 at Philia (Laksia tou Kasinou) in the Ovgros valley of Cyprus. Diakos discovered pottery, known as "Red Polished Ware", from the start of the Bronze Age in Cyprus which was also found in Anatolia from the Early Bronze Age II period.^[1]

Pottery

The Red Polished Ware pottery was a significant change in the lineage of ceramic ware on the island; mainly in decoration rather than morphology. The pottery was always handmade. The completed pot was coated with a mixture of liquid clay and this was then polished to give the work its important smooth finish. The quantity of iron oxide in the clay combined with later incised decorations allowed for a variety of decorations to be applied.^[2]

Further discoveries showed that this type of ceramic ware was not limited to the Ugarit area as further examples were later found over most of the island. The finds were concentrated in the middle section of the island running from north to south. Excavations on Kissonerga in south west Cyprus have uncovered over 300 shards of Red Polished Ware including a small jar with lime-filled incisions.

The type which has attracted most interest in archaeology is a globular jug which has a vertical cut-away spout and is usually traced to Cilicia.^[3]

Finds of this type of pottery have also been found in other areas of the middle east including at Tarsus, Troy (Hisarlik) and others in western Anatolia.

Access

There are examples of this pottery in Vienna and in the Getty collection. The British Museum has a bowl found in a tomb on the slopes of Vounous in Cyprus. This particular bowl however is thought to have originally been used for storing dried seeds.^[2]

• Red Polished Ware
• 

  Base-ring-ware
  ^{Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna}

• 

  Bowl with Cattle and Vulture
  ^{Getty Villa, California}

• 

  Red polished ware
  ^{Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna}

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Red polished ware.

References

1. ↑ Stewart, J.R., Dikaios, P. (1972). "Part 1A". The Swedish Cyprus Expedition:The Stone Age and The Early Bronze Age in Cyprus IV. Lund. p. 202.  |accessdate= requires |url= (help)
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Red Polished War Bowl". Highlights. British Museum. Retrieved 22 November 2010. 
3. ↑ Goldman, Hetty (1956). "From the Neolithic Period through the Bronze Age". Excavations at Gözlü Kule, Tarsus 2. Princeton. pp. plate 263.  |accessdate= requires |url= (help)

Further reading

• Atwood Barlow, Jane; Diane R. Bolger; Barbara Kling (1992). "Early Red Polished Ware and the Origin of the "Philia Culture"". Cypriot Ceramics. Reading the prehistoric Record (University of Pennsylvania). ISBN 978-0-924171-10-9 http://books.google.com/books?id=bgvifnTtVloC&pg=PA29&lpg=PA29&dq=Philia+SCE&source=bl&ots=f7jhNT0hY6&sig=Oujyb213VVFQyt5jLNV7XxPRyv0&hl=de&ei=q4ceTMDZDY_fOOCp5YsM&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Philia%20SCE&f=false.  Missing or empty |title= (help)

External links

• Red Polished Ware bowl British Museum page for a bowl in the museum - Complete with history of Polished Red Ware