Marking Pottery in the Cypriot Hinterland: Examining Potmarks from the Late Bronze Age Farming Settlement at Arediou

This paper explores the evidence for marking pottery at Arediou, a Late Bronze Age farming settlement in the Cypriot hinterland. Three potmarks were discovered at the site in the course of excavations, adding to current knowledge of the practice of marking pottery on Cyprus and how this was embedded within the island’s socio-political and economic organization during the later second millennium BCE. Although the quantity is small, the diversity of wares, forms, and sign types is intriguing; this corresponds to patterns of marking observed elsewhere on the island and in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean generally. From the perspective of potmark studies, their rural provenience is what makes the Arediou corpus significant. It broadens the question of where and why potmarks had relevance and raises the question of the bounds of literacy and how the rural hinterland was embedded within wider exchange networks in the Late Bronze Age.