Mottled Red Polished Knob-Lug Bowl

Early Cypriot II–Middle Cypriot I, c. 2200–1900 BCE · Red Polished ware · Hand-made

A deep, full hemispherical bowl on a rounded base, larger and more generously proportioned than most in the series. The rim is plain and slightly uneven, and at the left a stubby knob lug rises above it, angled upward and outward. The interior shows a smooth orange-red.

The exterior slip is a deep brick red with a good polish, crossed by a broad grey-black cloud that hangs below the rim at the centre and a second darker patch near the base on the right. Irregular white patches of calcareous deposit are scattered over the body, heaviest toward the base, and fine thread-like marks run across the surface, probably left by roots in the burial soil.

Commentary

This is a plain Red Polished knob-lug bowl, Stewart's Class XIII F2 [1], of the kind that filled the chamber tombs of the Early Cypriot north coast; Kehrberg counted it in every tomb in her sample, sometimes by the dozen [2]. Its Roman-numeral sub-ware is a matter of convention. Stewart classed the knob-lug bowl as Red Polished II, while Merrillees pointed out that many are technically closer to Red Polished III [3]. It is simplest to call it Red Polished ware and let the type label carry the classification. A date of Early Cypriot II–Middle Cypriot I follows the span of the type [6]; a plain bowl without context cannot be fixed more closely.

The surface is a clear example of mottling. Unlike black-topped bowls, where the potter reduced the rim on purpose, the dark clouds here fall where they will: one across the upper wall and another low on the opposite side. They mark contact with fuel or neighbouring pots in an open firing. Museum catalogues use "mottled" as a descriptive sub-label for exactly this effect, as on a single-lug bowl from Nicosia-Ayia Paraskevi in the British Museum [4]. An Ashmolean bowl from the same cemetery gives a comparable deep hemispherical profile [5].

The lug is a stubby knob; many lugs of this class are pierced for a cord, and no string-hole is visible on this one from the side shown. The upward tilt of the lug, standing proud of the rim, is a common variation within the class and may have given a thumb-hold when the bowl was lifted. Most complete bowls of this kind come from tombs, and the find-place of this one is not recorded.