Against a frequent reproduction of the Penteskouphia pinakes’ images of potters at work, even as illustrations in history school textbooks, the knowledge of their life and deposition context is less comprehensive. In this volume H. tries to address this knowledge gap. Although having catalogued all the pinakes preserved in Paris, Berlin and Corinth, H. chooses to analyse only a part of the iconographic repertoire, the one with potters at work (9% of the corpus), by virtue of its originality and, at the same time, its absence in the repertoire of other Corinthian pottery, in which it finds no further comparison. The work consists of eight chapters and seven appendices and relies on the collaboration of I. Tzonou Herbst and J. Herbst, who contribute Chapter 2. The volume ends with an exhaustive bibliography of 30 pages and useful indexes of museums and ancient sources cited.
In the introduction H. summarises previous studies on the subject and proposes an innovative multidisciplinary approach to the study of a portion of the corpus: H. aims to combine iconography, ethnoarchaeology and experimental archaeology. In this chapter H. also underlines the great quantity of pinakes found at this specific site, through comparisons with other sites in the area of Corinth in which pinakes were found together with other types of offerings (table 1.1, p. 9).
In the second chapter Tzonou Herbst and Herbst aim to solve the problem of the topographical setting, clarifying the exact place of recovery of the pinakes, brought to light under fortuitous circumstances at the end of the ninth century and subsequently excavated by American archaeologists of the ASCSA in the early twentieth century. A thorough work of comparing notebooks leads the authors to place the discovery site ‘200 m west of the “main road” and some 70 m in vertical elevation downslope’ (p. 37). Contrary to what was claimed by R. Scranton, the authors establish that the findspot is only one and is to be placed along the route of the ‘beaten path’, which led from Corinth to the Peloponnese (fig. 2.2, p. 28). They remark on the unclear nature of the deposit and, for this reason, cautiously advocate new investigations in the area.
The ambitious third chapter deals with the pinakes’ ‘Manufacture, Function, Epigraphy and Chronology’. H. connects the production of the pinakes with that of the Corinthian column kraters’ handle plates, to which they are similar in size and shape. This is central for the interpretation of the corpus, and it seems to influence the general reading of the deposition context. Other significant questions addressed in this chapter are the possible orientation of double face pinakes (table 3.3, p. 66) and the distribution of iconographical themes and their percentage. The number of unclear scenes is astonishing (the majority), while the second subject represented on the pinakes is Poseidon (fig. 3.33, p. 67).
Regarding the chronology, H. is sceptical about some previously proposed chronologies and suggests a correction, framing the production of the Penteskouphia pinakes within the middle of the sixth century bce. However, H. does not suggest new attributions or datings for fragments she collected and documented, proposing that this could be a goal of further studies.
Chapter 4 provides a detailed catalogue of the pinakes with craftsmen's images, analysed in the next chapter, which offers an iconographical and epigraphical analysis. The first section focuses on the means of production, such as the potter's wheel or the kilns depicted in the pinakes, which are compared with images present in other figurative repertoires, especially from Athens and Boiotia, but ‘in Corinth, depictions of the potter's craft are limited to the Penteskouphia pinakes … and a terracotta kiln model recovered in the Potter's Quarter’ (p. 198). H. adds to the epigraphic corpus three new inscriptions, previously unpublished, but hints that others could come from the fragments not yet washed, stored in the Corinthian museum. It is striking that personal names on pinakes are never accompanied by the term ‘kerameus’ (p. 218).
Chapter 6 is packed with information. H. puts her many years of experience in experimental archaeology to good use. In addition to a typology of kilns, H. focuses on potter's wheels and other tools used in pottery workshops. The breadth of the chronological range, which goes from the Archaic to the Byzantine age (and beyond), is motivated by the conservatism of this kind of structure, which remains unchanged both in space and time. H. does not overlook the aspect of the availability of clay in the area, while highlighting the impossibility of making a direct and specific connection between the clays used in the production of pinakes and the sources present in the surroundings of Corinth.
Accurate, extensive and enlightening is the research about the workforce and job organisation inside the pottery production sites. H. makes use of comparisons drawn from numerous contexts, not exclusively Archaic (such as Prinias in Crete), as well as from literary, epigraphic and historical sources. H. concludes that it is possible to imagine for the Greek world a family production model consisting of a workshop equipped with one or two furnaces with a small crew of four/six workers, specialised in the production of specific shapes.
In the conclusion H. suggests that the Penteskouphia pinakes were functional to the existence of a small shrine that could be placed within one or more potters’ workshops. The purpose of the deposition of these artefacts was to appease the anxieties and concerns of the Corinthian potters, which saw their trade and sales weaken, a sort of Corinthian potters’ ‘swansong’. In this local sanctuary, located on the edge of a road, buyers or pilgrims could also have dedicated pinakes.
On a religious plan, the prevailing presence of Poseidon as the represented divinity and therefore titular of the cult can be justified in two ways: on the one hand, Poseidon could help with the supply of raw material, on the other, he could cause beneficial earthquakes, useful for the opening of new sources of clay. Moreover, as regards the marketing of the product, he was regarded as controlling shipping across the sea.
Thanks to this study, we now know that the pinakes preserved in Berlin, Corinth and Paris number 1,023, and the catalogue provides an unexpected starting point for further studies focused on this material, which remained unpublished for about 130 years. The work has many other merits, such as the excellent set of drawings and colour photographs, summary tables and, above all, the useful appendices. On the other hand, it concentrates more on some features while neglecting others, for example the stylistic and iconological aspects; and although it leads to progress in the knowledge of this unique context, it is unfortunately still a partial study.
The scientific truth about the findspot of the Penteskouphia pinakes remains an archaeological utopia. The excavation context, even if identified with higher precision by the Herbsts, remains irretrievably lost, not only because the archaeological excavation is inexorably destructive, but also and above all because none of the investigations carried out between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries were suitably documented or followed the principles of a stratigraphic excavation. Doubts still remain about the materials found together with the pinakes.
