Egyptian Blue Production and Lead Metallurgy in a Late Hellenistic Workshop on Kos (Greece): A Case of Multicrafting

A well-preserved late Hellenistic workshop in the agora of Kos provides a rare opportunity to examine pigment production embedded in a multicrafting setting. Excavations of a room in the eastern stoa have revealed fire-structures, Egyptian blue pellets, a range of mineral earth pigments, litharge rods, lead slag, tools and other production debris, demonstrating both pigment manufacture and lead metallurgy within a single workshop space. This archaeological evidence points to an alternative mode of Egyptian blue production, one that departs from procedures described in ancient literary sources and those inferred from other archaeologically known workshops.