The Cypriot Ceramic Cargo of the Uluburun Shipwreck

The ship that sank at Uluburun was carrying about 130 pieces of Cypriot pottery in its cargo, mostly fine bowls and juglets but also lamps and wall brackets. Some coarse-ware bowls, pitchers, kraters, and the pithoi may also have been intended as cargo. This ceramic shipment is diverse in substance and unassuming in quality. By tracing how the Cypriot vases spilled and broke apart during the shipwreck, it has been possible to determine that they were originally packed into three pithoi for transport. The odd assortment of vases suggests that this cargo was not acquired at a manufacturing center. More likely it was collected in the course of stops at one or several trading entrepôts, either in Cyprus or along the Levantine coast