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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 September 2013
These differing conclusions, regarding early Euboean trade at Al Mina, from leading Students of the School may seem to contain the seeds of another internecine, Lelantine War. So, since the author has a homely interest in the Plain, and counts the two contestants among his friends, he thought he might intervene, though with no pretence to the same expert knowledge of the period in question and with a strong vested interest in Euboean enterprise.
The point at issue is the source of a distinctive group of sherds from Al Mina, probably the earliest Greek pottery found on that site; they belong to rather shallow skyphoi, or cups, decorated on each side with two groups of compass-drawn semicircles pendent from the lip and usually overlapping.
1 In Greek Geometric Pottery 357 where he ascribes the foundation of Al Mina to the Euboeans with the Cycladic islanders as probable collaborators. His later views are to be found in Geometric Greece 90, 93–4, where the earliest Greek sherds at Al Mina are described, surely exaggeratedly, as “a handful”.
2 Popham, Sackett and Themelis (editors), Lefkandi I, Plates, Pl. 33, though some of the profiles are clearly wrongly inclined.
3 Geometric Greece 66, 93–4: Tell Abu Hawam sherd with profile in Desborough, PGP pl. 26, 4.
4 Op. cit. Fig. 28 compared with Desborough, PGP pl. 25.
5 We are grateful to the authorities of the Ashmolean Museum and of the School at Athens for allowing these samples to be taken from sherds in their collections and for the material to be illustrated. The Chalcis sherds have been illustrated by Boardman in BSA lii Plate 1(a) where our 1 = his 2, 2 = 4 and 3 = 5.
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16 Potassium (K) was not then considered helpful. The 80% confidence levels may be too restrictive and have been criticised by Wilson, A.L. in Archaeometry xviii (1976) 55.Google Scholar In the light of his predictions it may be of interest to note that of the present Lefkandi and main Al Mina groups, only one sherd falls within the 80% ranges of its own group on all elements, 4 are out on one element, 3 on two elements, 8 on three elements and 2 on four elements.
17 The Lefkandi LBA ranges (plus the analysis of a modern brick from Lelantine clay) and the Chalcis ranges are given in Catling, and Millet, , Archaeometry xi (1969) 8Google Scholar, Table I. Volos Group II is given in BSA lviii (1963) 102, Table 3.
These analyses were made before the 1970 recalibration at Oxford and are comparable; as too any results published prior to that date. The pendent-semicircle skyphos sherds from Lefkandi were analysed after this recalibration, so these results, in Table 4, are stated together with a conversion of the old Lefkandi ranges to approximate to the new calibration. For interest, three analyses are added, in that table, of pendent-semicircle skyphoi made by the Oxford Laboratory at the request of Professor J. Boardman in the past. I am grateful to Helen Hatcher, Robert Hedges, Richard Jones and John Boardman for making these results available to me.
The recalibrated Lefkandi ranges have already been given in BSA lxxiii (1978) 161, Table V, where recalibrated results for Mycenae are also set out. The S. Italian analyses were made after the new calibration, Prag, et al., Archaeometry xvi (1974) 169–74Google Scholar and Table 6; Table 4 sets out the factors used to convert the pre-1970 results so that they approximate to the later results.
18 The analyses are given in Catling, et al., BSA lviii (1963) 102Google Scholar, Table 3 where 1 and 2 (Mycenae and Berbati) may be compared with 22 (Atchana), Atchana having higher values for Al, Mg, Fe and Mn in particular. The Tell el Amarna (21) results for corresponding ‘Argive’ exports, however, are nearer the Argive values, though in this case Fe is ‘boosted’.
