Articles about Albania

The Phenomenon of Mattpainted Pottery in the Northern Aegean.
Introduction, Overview and Theories

by Barbara Horejs

(3 October 2007)

The term mattpainted pottery was first used by A. Furtwängler and G. Loeschke in their classification of pottery from Grave Circle A in Mycenae. It quickly gained wide use in research as the designation for a category of pottery with dull, lustreless, that is, ‘matt’ painting. In the course of time different chronological and technological appearances accumulated under this very flexible nomen. The spectrum ranges from the wheel-made and handmade polychrome ware of Middle Helladic southern Greece, to handmade pottery of the Late Bronze Age – with bichrome and monochrome ware in West Macedonia and monochrome ware in Central Macedonia – and the Iron Age phenomenon of mattpainted handmade pottery in Epirus and Albania.

Seaborne Contacts between the Aegean, the Balkans and the Central Mediterranean in the 3rd Millennium BC – The Unfolding of the Mediterranean World

by Joseph Maran

(21 May 2008)

In the last decades the research interest in the study of pre-Mycenaean contacts of the Aegean region with the geographical zones to the north and west has considerably diminished. While until the early 1970ies there was still much debate going on about aspects like the northern links of cord-decorated pottery or of the origin of the tumuli in Greece, already ten years later such subjects and the whole problem of possible Balkan connections of the earlier parts of the Aegean Bronze Age had almost disappeared as research topics of Aegean Archaeology. The question arises why this was the case.

Prehistoric Pottery from Lofkënd, Albania: From Bronze to Iron Age in the Balkans

by Seth Pevnick, Esmeralda Agolli

(17 February 2010)

The Lofkënd burial tumulus in the Mallakaster region of Albania, jointly excavated by a team from the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA and the Albanian Institute of Archaeology in Tiranë over four seasons (2004-2007), revealed 85 ancient and 15 modern burials, containing a total of over 150 individuals. On the basis of the vertical and horizontal stratification of the tombs, together with secure AMS 14C radiocarbon dates from human bone and charcoal, the Lofkënd burials can be dated to the period from the 14th to the 9th centuries B.C.

Aegeo-Balkan Prehistory

The Phenomenon of Mattpainted Pottery in the Northern Aegean. Introduction, Overview and Theories

Introduction, Overview and Theories