The ‘double stoking tunnel’ of Greek kilns

Abstract

It has been and still is widely supposed that some Greek kilns had a stoking tunnel that was divided lengthwise into two parts. The evidence is the representation of a kiln on the Corinthian clay plaque illustrated on Plate 7b. It is of the second quarter of the sixth century B.C. and was found in 1879 in the deposit at Penteskouphia near Corinth. This representation is interpreted usually as a horizontal plan; at one end, misplaced for clarity, is the chimney, which should rightly be on the top, and at the other end is the stoking tunnel, divided down its length by a wall. Recently M. Bimson has protested that the view on the plaque is a vertical section across the chamber of the kiln, and that the support below the floor is a wall that does not extend into the tunnel. That the plaque gives a section is true, but it is a section along the kiln and the support is a pier, probably circular. This was presumably so evident to Furtwängler, who first published the plaque, that he did not argue the interpretation; but it seems that after all argument is needed.Many of the plaques from Penteskouphia are decorated on both sides and ours is one of them. The side opposite that with the kiln is illustrated on Plate 7a. It shows a man and the hind part of a boar. Since the right edge is broken and it is very rarely that any of these plaques shows an incomplete figure, it can be calculated that we have less than half of the original scene. The same must be true also of the side with the kiln and, since very few of the plaques combine two scenes on one side, there must be a considerable extension of this scene to the left. An examination of the other published plaques with kilns leaves little doubt of what that extension was. The regular view of a kiln is from the side, usually an elevation, but in two instances a partial section (Plate 7c–d). Often there is a workman busy at the stoke-hole or the chimney. In the two sectional views just mentioned faggots can be seen in the stoking tunnel and embers or other small pieces are spilling into the near part of the lower chamber.