Lustrous Wares of Late Bronze Age: Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean

The term "Lustrous Wares" includes three groups of Late Cypriot Bronze Age wheel-made pottery ware: Red (RLWM), White (WLWM) and Black Lustrous Ware (BLWM). This volume contains eighteen papers presented at a meeting held at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in November 2004, organized by the Cyprus department of SCIEM 2000 and the Institute for Egyptology of the University of Vienna. The papers focussed on three main topics: First, the geographical distribution of the three types of pottery ware in the eastern Mediterranean, in order to clarify trade connections; RLWM, for example, can be traced to Anatolia. Second, the chronological appearance of the ware as a tool to synchronise the neighbouring cultures of the eastern Levant. And third, the origin of the ware; current research has been stimulated by technical developments in analytical methods. In addition, two studies on similar wares are included. The volume presents the results of new and ongoing investigations about Lustrous Ware as well as methodological analyses of pottery in general, with a special focus on chronological questions of the Eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age.