Black-on-Red Biconical Juglet with Disc Mouth

Cypro-Archaic I–II, c. 700–475 BCE · Black-on-Red ware · Wheel-made

A small, squat juglet with a depressed biconical body on a low disc base, a short narrow neck and a wide, flat disc mouth. A strap handle springs from the edge of the mouth and drops to the shoulder. The orange-red slip carries matt black paint in a spare scheme: a band round the neck, a single double-ringed circle set on the shoulder, a group of fine lines at the shoulder carination and a broad band with a thin companion line at the belly. The handle is washed in black. A large patch of whitish deposit covers one side of the body, where the slip is also lost, and the base is worn back to the pale clay.

Commentary

The fabric and decoration place the juglet in the Black-on-Red ware of the Cypriot Iron Age: a wheel-made body in fine reddish clay, a red slip and ornament in matt black, with the concentric circle as the chief motif [1]. The shape, a low biconical body with a disc mouth and a handle from rim to shoulder, corresponds to the biconical juglets that Gjerstad listed among Black-on-Red III (V), the Cypro-Archaic II stage of the ware, with forerunners among the depressed jugs of Black-on-Red II (IV) [1].

The closest parallel we know of is a juglet from Amathus in the British Museum, 1894,1101.539, catalogued as Black-on-Red III and Cypro-Archaic II (H. 9.5 cm). It has the same biconical body on a raised disc base, narrow neck, disc mouth and strap handle from shoulder to rim [2]. Gjerstad's Black-on-Red III (V) biconical juglets, with the handle running from rim to shoulder, have the same profile [1].

That comparison favours a date in the later part of the ware's history, within Cypro-Archaic II (c. 600–475 BCE). A wider range is safer. Gjerstad's stages are a typological sequence, and closely related small juglets occur earlier than his scheme predicts [3, 4]; the ware itself was in production from c. 900 BCE [5]. The decoration here is also more economical than the crowded circle groups of the fullest Black-on-Red II (IV) style, which fits a later placement without proving it. A range of c. 700–475 BCE covers both possibilities.

Small closed juglets of this ware are usually taken as containers for perfumed oil, both in Cyprus and in the large export trade to the Levant. The small capacity and narrow neck suit that reading, but no residue analysis of a Cypriot Black-on-Red juglet has yet been published, so the contents remain an inference. The disc mouth would have allowed a thin stream to be poured or dabbed.

The single circle on the shoulder is a modest reduction of the ware's usual grammar. Whether such pared-down juglets came from particular workshops is an open question that only fabric analysis could address.