Bichrome Tripod Bowl with Painted Bands

Cypro-Geometric III to Cypro-Archaic I, c. 850–600 BCE · Bichrome ware · Wheel-made body with applied legs

A deep, round-bottomed bowl with a plain, slightly thickened rim. It stands on three solid legs, roughly cylindrical and tapering to rounded tips, joined to the underside of the body. The exterior has a pale buff surface decorated with horizontal bands. A dark band edges the lip, and several narrower dark bands run round the upper wall. Below them lies a broad band of red, framed by further dark lines. Fine horizontal ridges on the body suggest it was thrown on the wheel. The interior is pale and plain. The paint is worn and blurred, and the lower body and legs carry grey and cream accretion.

Commentary

Red and dark paint laid directly on a pale ground places the bowl in the Bichrome class of Cypriot Iron Age pottery. The tripod bowl was not new to the island. Åström traced the deep tripod bowl of Proto White Painted ware, at the very start of the Iron Age, to Syro-Palestinian models [1]. Stone tripod bowls were made in Cyprus from the end of the Middle Bronze Age into the Iron Age [6].

Painted tripods continued through the Cypro-Geometric and Cypro-Archaic periods. A Bichrome III tripod krater in Berkeley (UCLMA 8/290) has a pale orange to buff slip, black and red paint and an unslipped interior, much like the surface here, though its three legs are loops [2]. It is dated to Cypro-Geometric III. A shallow bowl of Bichrome Red I (IV) ware in the Pierides Foundation Museum, Larnaca, stands on three legs linked by bars. It carries concentric bands inside and out, and dates to Cypro-Archaic I [3]. A round dish on three V-shaped legs in Boston (177618), with painted bands, is dated to about 700–600 BCE [4].

Solid, tapering legs of the kind seen here are best matched in the same horizon. At Kourion-Kaloriziki, Tomb 31 held a Coarse Ware cooking pot with "three tall thin legs tapering toward the feet" (K 964), dated to Cypro-Archaic I [5]. The same early Cypro-Archaic I burials at Salamis Tomb 31 produced a Black Slip tripod bowl, which Karageorghis compared to stone vessels [6]. The plain legs of this bowl recall those stone and coarse-ware vessels, while its surface follows the painted fine wares.

The decoration is simple banding, with none of the concentric circles, lattice or figured motifs that would narrow the date. The parallels cluster in Cypro-Geometric III and Cypro-Archaic I, and a range of c. 850–600 BCE is given here. A small painted tripod bowl of this kind would have served at table or held offerings, and most complete examples come from tombs.