A Syro-Palestinian Bowl Type

"A single type of artifact surviving from the ancient world can often give us a broad insight into many aspects of the culture from which it derives. Such a piece is a pottery bowl recently acquired by the Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. The bowl is said to have come from the Syro-Palestinian coastal area, which in the Hellenistic period was under the strong Hellenizing influence that moved eastward in the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great and took hold in the kingdoms ruled by his successors. Greek pottery, especially the so-called black-glazed wares (really covered with a sintered slip, often with stamped and rouletted decoration) and the molded relief bowls, were assiduously imported and then imitated in the Hellenized east. What is particularly interesting about the bowl published here is that it seems clearly to be a product of the Syro-Palestinian coastal area, imitating a shape that was imported from Greek lands. Its decoration, however, is unknown in Greece proper and is dependent, as we shall see, on east Mediterranean craft production."--First paragraph.Includes bibliographical reference