Pithos
| Pithos | |
|---|---|
 | |
 | |
| Material | Ceramic |
| Size | Approximately the size of a human, some larger, some smaller. |
| Writing | Sometimes inscribed with an identifying mark. |
| Created | Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age |
| Discovered | Most frequently at large administrative centers |
| Present location | Circum-Mediterranean |
Pithos (/ˈpɪθɒs/,[1] Greek: πίθος, plural: pithoi πίθοι) is the Greek name[2][3] of a large storage container. The term in English is applied to such containers used among the civilizations that bordered the Mediterranean Sea in the Neolithic, the Bronze Age and the succeeding Iron Age. Pithoi were used for bulk storage, primarily for fluids and grains; they were comparable to the drums, barrels and casks of recent times. The name was different in other languages; for instance, the Hittites used harsi-.[4]
Secondarily, discarded pithoi found other uses. Like the ceramic bathtubs of some periods, the size of a pithos made it a convenient coffin. In Middle Helladic burials in Mycenae and Crete, sometimes the bones of the interred were placed in pithoi. The ancient Iberian culture of El Argar used pithoi for coffins in its B phase (1500–1300 BC).
The external shape and materials were approximately the same: a ceramic jar about as high as a man, a base for standing, sides nearly straight or generously curved, and a large mouth with a lid, sealed for shipping.
Jars of this size could not be handled by individuals, especially when full. Various numbers of handles, lugs, or some combination thereof, gave a purchase for some sort of harness used in lifting the jar with a crane.
Pithoi were manufactured and exported or imported over the entire Mediterranean. They were used most heavily in the Bronze Age palace economy for storing or shipping wine, olive oil, or various types of vegetable products for distribution to the populace served by the palace administration. Consequently, they became known to the modern public as pithoi when western classical archaeologists adopted the term to mean the jars uncovered by excavation of Minoan palaces on Crete and Mycenaean ones on mainland Greece.
The term has now been adopted into the English language as a general word for a storage jar from any culture.[5] Along with this universality has come a problem of distinguishing the smaller pithoi from other types of pottery. Many ceramics are not any easily classifiable shape. If they were used for transport or storage, they are likely to be called pithoi, even though they are not the size of the palace pithoi, and even though the forms might well have fit other types. Reconciliation of pre-classical pottery types with classical types has long been a problem of classical archaeology.
Etymology[]
Pithos has two irreconcilable derivations, classical and Mycenaean. On the one hand, it was a well-used word of the Iron Age in Greece, dating to as early as the works of Homer.[6] Julius Pokorny and other professional linguists developed a derivation from Proto-Indo European *bhidh-, "container", that followed all the rules of language change and moreover was related to Latin fiscus, "purse", from which English obtains "fiscal".[7] Regardless of the real derivation, a pithos certainly seems to be a large purse containing economic goods in quantity. The derivation would have been elegant, tracing fiscality back to prehistoric Greece, it was thought, taking its place with oikos, "house", the origin word for economic, and others. At that time Greek and Latin were believed to have had a common ancestor other than Proto-Indo-European.
Contemporaneously with Pokorny's epic dictionary, Linear B was first being deciphered, and various analyses were being put forward that Greek and Latin were not all that similar. There was no need to prove that developments in Latin were necessarily parallel to those in Greek. If bh- became f- in Latin, it would not necessarily do so in Greek.
The pithos was proposed to appear as