Grave Finds from the Village of Eski Oba in the District of Tire

Abstract

Ceramic grave finds recovered from the village of Eski Oba in the Tire district of İzmir province, which, today, are preserved in the Tire Museum, comprise three lecythus specimens, two Ephesus-type oil lamps and one lantern. This group bears significance in the context of the chronology of Late Hellenistic ceramics and the evolution of vessel types. It also sheds important light on the site of Tire (Teira) itself, which boasts a number of ancient settlements. Assignment of the group to the second half of the 1st century B.C. was determined by the formal characteristics of the vessels and their development with dated analogies from similar contexts. The lecythus examples in this grave assemblage conform to parallels from dated contexts at Ephesus, Cyprus and Alexandria. As for the Ephesus-type oil lamps, analogies in terms of form and decoration have been recovered at Ephesus, Sardis, Delos, Pergamum, and Antioch. While the lecythus form is noted for its extended persistence, the fact that the oil lamps are of the Euphesus type, whose occurrence was restricted to a brief time span, is important in view of their two different forms, both from a typological standpoint and in terms of chronology. The chronological data supplied by the group serve to assist in the dating of the lantern form.