Coupe à bec

Spouted bowl

Of all the different kinds of containers, the simple bowls were by far the most fabricated by the Cycladians. Varying from just a few centimeters to over sixty centimeters, their diameter generally measured between ten and twenty centimeters. Most of these bowls had a thickened or “rolled in” edge, and some of them had a small circular notch to secure their stability. In this regard, the Barbier-Mueller example is utterly characteristic.

The multifunctional, simple marble bowl was intended to hold a wide range of objects and substances – related to rites and funeral rituals. But they could also hold or cover other elements. A great many examples prove that ritual paint was stored and mixed in them. Terra cotta bowls with “rolled in” edges were also found in burial places, even though they did not show any traces of paint. If we refer to the few excavations made in dwellings, the marble bowls do not seem to have been generally reserved for domestic use.

The spouted bowl with smooth wall, more practical to pour liquids, is a variation of the simple bowl. As shown by the Barbier-Mueller example, it often had a strong horizontal tenon right under the edge, on the opposite side of the beak. The tenon was built as a thumb or finger grip. The dimensions of these bowls varied: the smallest such as a tenon-less unpublished model could measure less than 4.6 centimeters long, and the biggest well preserved pieces could have a length four times superior to that. The Barbier-Mueller container is average size.

Some spouted bowls show traces of paint. Others were probably used to pour water or oil into a simple bowl holding pigments that had previously been grinded on a palette. Everything leads us to believe that spouted bowls were also used as symbolic oil lamps for the deceased, their beak being meant to hold a wick.

The simple bowl soon replaced the Early Cycladic I kandila to become the most common container. This phenomenon can be easily understood from a pragmatic point of view: the much lesser labor-intensive fabrication was all the more rapid. On the other hand, it becomes less obvious from a functional point of view since, in the Early Cycladic I, the kandila and the bowl did not have the same use. Several factors need to be considered. As soon as the Cycladic statuettes started being painted, the sculpted details were gradually abandoned, and the monovalent kandila, whose execution required a lot of work, soon became out of fashion. Many objects discovered in the Early Cycladic II context were likely to be connected to cosmetic painting, either on idols, or in all likelihood on the deceased, if not on both. Among these artifacts, the simple bowl was probably considered more useful than the storage jar for the simple reason that it could fulfill several purposes: it could hold water, but also pigments and paint [1].

Published in: Zimmermann 1993, fig. 10, p. 137

[1] About simple bowls in the Early Cycladic II, see Getz-Gentle 1996, p. 99-105; for spouted bowls: p. 109-112.