Continuity and Change in the Local Production of Hellenistic and Early Roman Cooking Pottery from Nea Paphos (Cyprus)

This paper concerns the Hellenistic and Early Roman cooking pottery originating from the area of Nea Paphos, Cyprus. Macroscopic examinations conducted on a few thousand local vessels and their fragments provided the detailed characterization of this group of pottery in terms of the appearance of fabric, typology, and chronology. The integration of these data with the results of laboratory analysis of selected samples revealed that the local production of cooking pottery changed through time in terms of clay composition, shapes, surface treatment, and firing techniques. The transformations observed within the local cooking pottery manufacture seem to correlate with political and social changes as well as the development of Nea Paphos.