Abstract

White Painted Wares, while not found in great numbers in any excavation, are the hallmark of the Middle Bronze Age on Cyprus. This makes them a critical marker for chronology. Paul Åström created the typology used today as his PhD thesis which was published in 1957. Åström examined material that came mainly from tomb groups, created a seriation of types based on both shape and decoration. This typology is used today to assign new finds to established types, but recently there have been some questions raised about the accuracy of Åström's work and its usefulness with newly excavated material, especially from settlement sites. The results of a preliminary petrographic analysis of the fabric of sherds from two sites on Cyprus raises the possibility that some of the types listed by Åström may be due to regional differences rather than chronological ones.