Pottery and More Pottery

It was a bright and really clear in Polis this morning. As we walked to the apotheke, there was a really nice view back down the valley towards the sea, and the ancient site. Today we continued working through the excavated levels we had decided to target. I have to admit that so far this season, the pottery in Polis has been fairly nondescript, and mainly consists of undifferentiated coarsewares. Since my area of interest is the Late Roman period, I like finding Late Roman finewares like African Red Slip (ARS), Phocaean Red Slip (PHW), and Cypriot Red Slip (CRS). It was not until close to the end of the morning that we finally ran across a box with a bit of nice Roman fineware in it. One interesting sherd was a handle of CRS form 11, which is a two-handled basin with heavy horizontal rims. It has a very distinctive handle, and we only found a few of these at PKAP during our survey, while there seem to be lots here in Polis.

(Bill providing his head as a reference for the size of the CRS 11 handle)

Since new flavors of potato chips seem to be lacking on Cyprus this year, I have decided to branch out and try other snacks. Today I tried barbecue flavored cashews. Since I am a big fan of cashews and I like barbecue flavored chips, this seemed like an interesting combination I might like. These cashews had an interesting flavor. The first flavor I tasted was a dry, roasted cashew taste. Then there was a mild hint of barbecue flavor, and it was nice. Unfortunately, this was followed by a strange aftertaste that overwhelmed the earlier flavors. I would have to give it a (**) 2. Bill, a bit more of a connoisseur, said that the cashews were very dry and the faint barbecue flavor reminded him that just like a very dry martini where the vermouth bottle was only passed over the martini, so too the barbecue sauce bottle must have been only passed over these cashews.

RSM

Advertisement