A foreign market revisited. New evidence of Mycenaean and Aegean-related pottery from Schiaparelli's campaigns (1905-1909) at Deir-el-Medina

The analytic research of Martha Bell (1982) has shown the cemetery and the village of Deir el-Medina to be one of the most important sites for Aegean-Mycenaean pottery in the Nile valley during the New Kingdom. Bell published material chiefly found during excavations of the IFAO (1922-1951), but information about the first excavations carried out by the Italian mission (1905-1906 and 1909) are still scarce. A recent reassessment of the private archive of Ernesto Schiaparelli (1856-1928) in Turin and Rome has provided an unpublished manuscript about the first explorative campaigns in the Theban Valley. This paper aims at investigating the large amount of Mycenaean and Cypriot pottery stored in the Egyptian Museum of Turin. The assemblage (approximately one hundred potsherds and a dozen complete vases) can be dated to the 18th and 19th Dynasties and, in Aegean terms, to the Late Bronze Age IIIA2 and IIIB. It mostly includes pottery that can be divided into different fabric classes: the main bulk encompasses pottery of Cypriot fabrics, such as jugs and bowls of Base-Ring I and II ware and White Shaved ware. Some sherds are related to the White Slip II ware and of particular interest is the evidence of juglets of Black Slip Wheel-made ware. The amount of Cypriot and Mycenaean pottery found either in the necropolis or in the related settlements, if joined with the oldest catalogue, suggests that Deir el-Medina played an important role as a trade hub probably from the beginning of the 18th Dynasty onwards.