Glossary of Archaeological Terms

A characteristic Mycenaean vessel for transporting and storing wine, olive oil and perfumed oils. Its vertical neck is closed, and liquid is poured through a separate spout beside it. Stirrup jars also served as grave offerings: their contents were evidently considered useful in the afterlife.

A bronze folding mirror with a disc-shaped body and an omega-shaped handle. It consists of two hinged circular sections, with the reflecting surface inside. Handles were used to open and close it. Many examples have engraved or relief decoration on the cover.

Mirrors were everyday grooming accessories, as they are today. Closely associated with women, they accompanied them throughout life and were also placed in graves as offerings. Mirrors found in sanctuaries of female deities served as votive offerings.

The application of a glass-like coating to the surface of a vessel. Glazing makes pottery waterproof, gives it a lustrous appearance and enhances its painted or incised decoration.

A coffin of marble, stone or clay, sometimes decorated with sculpture or painting, used to hold the dead in various periods.

A pseudo-sarcophagus consists only of a relief slab forming the front of a tomb, set within an arcosolium (an arched burial recess). It was particularly widespread in the Middle Byzantine period.

The bowl that held tobacco in a long-stemmed pipe (çubuk). Usually made of fine clay, these bowls often had elaborate decoration. Tobacco spread rapidly from the West among the peoples of the Ottoman Empire. Beyond personal enjoyment, pipe smoking became a social custom and a ritualised practice among Greeks and Turks. From the mid-19th century, the spread of hand-rolled cigarettes gradually displaced the traditional long-stemmed pipe.

A votive offering is an object dedicated to a deity or sacred place as an expression of devotion, gratitude or supplication. This practice occurs in many ancient religions, notably those of Greece and Rome.

Continuing as a religious practice to the present day, the votive offering gives material expression to faith and forms a link between people and the divine.

In architecture and sculpture, an astragal is a relief ornament comprising bead-like elements alternating with small discs. It may accompany Ionic or Lesbian mouldings on architraves and columns of Ionic or Corinthian buildings.

Astragaloi, the ankle bones of cloven-hoofed animals, were also used as knucklebones in a popular game played from antiquity into the last century.

A vessel used at the symposium for mixing wine with water, from Mycenaean times through Classical antiquity. Its importance in the Mycenaean world is reflected in the notable examples of figurative vase painting on kraters of the 13th and 12th centuries BC.

An object placed in a grave with the deceased. It might be valuable, used in daily life or especially cherished during the person’s lifetime.

Examples include artefacts, weapons, vessels, tools and jewellery.

Grave offerings provide important evidence concerning the identity and social status of the deceased, as well as beliefs about the afterlife. Their origins can also reveal commercial or cultural exchange.

Their materials and manufacturing techniques help us understand technological development and artistic trends in different periods.

The word rhyton derives from the Greek verb meaning “to flow”. Rhyta were important ritual vessels in the ancient Near East, the Aegean, Minoan Crete and mainland Greece during the Mycenaean and later periods.

Rhyta were used for libations: offerings of liquids such as wine, honey or oil to deities or the dead. Held with the mouth upwards, they released liquid through an outlet hole.

They could also serve as pouring vessels to control the flow of liquid, or for filtering certain liquids.

Rhyta occur in many forms, including conical, ovoid, pear-shaped, cup-shaped, animal-shaped and human-shaped examples.

Their presence and decoration illuminate worship and ritual practices, as well as commercial and cultural interaction.