Writing Wednesday: Roman Fineware from Polis

Over the last few days, I’m grinding out a bit of text based on an assemblage of frneware from Polis on Cyprus. This is in the service of a larger project that I’ve been describing over the last few weeks. It’s been slow going and quite frustrating, but words on the page count especially when it’s writing Wednesday. Fineware Scholars have generally argued that Eastern Sigillata A, produced somewhere in Syria or elsewhere in the northern Levantine coast, and Cypriot Sigillata produced somewhere in Western Cyprus or on the neighboring Anatolian coast constitute the two most common forms of Roman period fine ware on the island. For the deposits in E.F2 at Polis the ratio of CS to ESA is around 4:1. This reveals the dominance of CS at the site during the Roman period. The area of the trenches S06 and T06 represents a series of contexts associated with the leveling fill for the basilica, the construction of the apse of the church, and earlier Roman activities associated with the…