The volume, edited by Federico Manuelli and Dirk Mielke, offers a selection of papers presented at a workshop held during the 11th International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, in Munich in 2018. The book is available open access as a pdf for personal use, and comprises contributions assembled to illustrate painted pottery repertoires recovered from various Late Bronze Age (sixteenth to thirteenth centuries BC) sites in Anatolia and surrounding regions of Türkiye.
The book's 12 chapters include an Introduction presenting the state of the art—or the lack of it—on Late Bronze Age painted pottery from Anatolia and a concluding chapter summarising the achievements of the volume. The chapters proceed geographically anti-clockwise from the Black Sea via the Aegean coast to the upper Euphrates, with the last study focused on the Amuq Valley in southern Türkiye.
An introductory chapter by the organisers of the workshop conveniently summarises the issue at the centre of the volume: the limited presence of painted ceramics in the core and periphery of the Hittite state. The volume's aim, as implied by the title, is to highlight and analyse the appearance of painted traditions in the area under Hittite influence.
The Hittite state developed from a small Anatolian kingdom to one of the main role players in South-west Asia. In contrast to other contemporaries’ polities, Hittite material culture was restricted predominantly to the core area of this kingdom—principally the northern part of the Anatolian plateau. Nowadays, Hittite pottery is mostly seen as plain ware, wheel-made mass production, a definition that does not match the more complex reality. The existence of a series of painted pottery traditions around the centre of the Hittite state is further evidence of a multifaceted situation that characterised the development of this kingdom and its relationship with the surrounding regions.
This volume presents contributions written by scholars working at various Anatolian sites, which yielded large amounts of painted ceramic repertoires in connection with Late Bronze Age levels. The volume also includes two contributions (Kibaroğlu et al. and Fragnoli & Roadler) dealing with archaeometrical analyses that reveal new and important insights into site-specific recipes and production. As stated by Dirk Mielke (p. 51), painted pottery represents only part of the material identity of local populations living under Hittite influence. Exploring its distribution, chronology and motifs may help in understanding the multifaceted picture that was Late Bronze Age Anatolia, where local traditions, Hittite influence and the Levantine cultural sphere interwove to create a vibrant culture, which still, even after a century of research, is not fully understood. The contribution by Elif Ünlü emphasises the continuation of local traditions through painted pottery, despite the Hittite hegemony, and stresses the existence of a koiné encompassing Anatolia and the Eastern Mediterranean area (pp. 157–58). In the same thread, the paper by Federico Manuelli highlights how the cultural borders of different painted pottery traditions are ambiguous and sometimes show different channels of interrelationships (pp. 222–24).
Another strong point of the volume is the comparison that some chapters propose between Late Bronze Age assemblages and the painted productions belonging to previous periods, offering an overview of the development of this particular type of pottery throughout the second millennium BC.
Whilst seeking to represent as many Anatolian sites as possible, as duly pointed out by the editors in their introductory chapter, some relevant sites located in the Hittite periphery were not included among the contributions. Perhaps the volume would have benefited from the inclusion of sites located within the core of the Hittite state, in order to have a better overview of the presence—or absence—of painted traditions in the area. In addition to this, the volume does not offer a supra-regional discussion and comparison of the materials, leaving many essential research questions on the main subject of the volume unanswered.
Despite this, the volume is a welcome addition to the study of Hittite pottery repertoires. It has the merit of grouping together painted pottery assemblages retrieved from some of the most important sites located in the periphery of the Hittite kingdom. It also highlights the fact that, in defiance of the existence of cultural and geographical borders, the different regions under study are interrelated, often sharing motifs and shapes, hence displaying elements of local development, as well as inter-regional relationships.
I very much appreciate the editors’ effort in grouping together papers dealing with the most relevant sites under the Hittite's sphere. Read in conjunction with a recent volume (Glatz Reference Glatz2015), it can be a useful tool and up-to-date reference volume for the study of Late Bronze Age pottery in Anatolia.
