Unpublished Black-topped Pottery from the Eton-Myers Collection (ECM 844, ECM 1210, ECM 1211, ECM 1225, and ECM 1226)

Abstract Representing the choices of Egyptologists like Brugsch and Newberry in addition to Major Myers, the Eton-Myers collection is stunningly sophisticated for the time of its assembling. It includes 14 pots and sherds of black-topped ware, a hallmark of the early Predynastic Period in Egypt. Despite their attractive shapes and decorative effects, the pots of this type belonging to the collection remain unstudied. Like most black-topped pots in museum collections today, they lack provenience or any other information about their precise dating. Therefore, this paper studied five black-topped vessels from the Eton-Myers collection by analyzing their attributes. The paper identified their forms and dating based on Petrie and later revisions by Kaiser and Hendrickx. The vessels that have the numbers ECM 844, 1226, 1211, 1210, and 1225 were dated to Naqada Ib, NIb, NIc-IIa, NIIb-c, NIIb-d1 respectively. Since the main aim of attribute analysis is to reconstruct the cultural context in which pottery was made, this study described the conditions of the periods the pots were dated to. Additionally, this study was able to show the conditions of the periods that were reflected in the features of the black-topped pots part of the Eton-Myers collection. For instance, a general tendency towards replacing open forms with restricted shapes could be explained by the rise of trade. Hence, pottery attributes can be used to date and reconstruct the general context of unprovenienced black-topped pottery from the Eton-Myers collection. A pot’s function, on the other hand, may be confirmed by its form and residue-analysis. This paper calls for the application of the latter archaeometrical approach, which represents the most recent phase of the development of pottery studies, to further enhance our understanding of the contents traded in black-topped pottery between Egypt and its neighbors towards the end of its prehistory.