Featured Ancient Mediterranean Pottery

A relative worked for a company that made oceanographic equipment like cameras, remotely operated vehicles, etc. This was salvaged from an ancient shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea by one of his customers, and given to my relative. Does anyone have any idea what culture (Greek, Roman, or ??) this might be from, and possible age? It stands 7 inches tall, and appears to be a utilitarian storage vessel for some food commodity. It is glazed inside and out (cream inside, green outside), except where age and nature has removed it.

 

Try looking at confit pots.

 

It certainly does look like a confit pot:

http://www.definingfrance.com/2016/01/31/confit-pots/

Most ancient Greek and Roman pottery did not have vitreous glazes such as on your pot.

 

After looking at confit pots, I thought I would add that there is no evidence of there ever being handles.

 

at 9 oclock there's an excess of material...
and 11 0clock , a round dent as if a handle was pulled away from the face of the pot.....

Just sayin....

 

This glaze colour combination was used for a lot of household pottery in the south of France. Fishermen and other seamen used it too. We still see a lot of it here in Europe, but evidence of it having been in the sea lends it added charm.
You speak of an ancient seawreck, this wouldn't have been from an ancient wreck. I suspect it could have been lost near the ancient site by a later fishing or merchant vessel in rough seas.

 

From the photo, it does look like that could be a handle pull-away scar at the 9 oclock position. But inspecting it in hand, it does not appear to be the case, and on the opposite side is undamaged glaze that could never have sported a handle. I get the sense y'all have concluded the piece is relatively recent and French. I think you should at least hold open the possibility for other explanations (just as I hold open the possibility it is not ancient pottery).

The only outfits that could afford the oceanographic equipment my relative sold would be sophisticated diving companies and institutions that had an idea of what they were doing. I remember when this piece was brought back in the 1960's. I only wish I had asked more about it before my relative passed away. I know from research that one of their customers was working on a 4th century Roman wreck off Turkey around that time, but I have no way of knowing now whether this piece is related to that. I just asked my brother, who is a few years older. His memory is similar to mine, except he said the customer retrieved it from the Aegean Sea (a detail my memory was more fuzzy on).

 

I've seen a fair bit of Roman pottery. This isn't a Roman or Greek glaze. French is entirely feasible, a couple of hundred years old perhaps. The green is wrong for mediaeval.

 

Perhaps the sophisticated diving company/institution was willing to give this piece away because they recognized it was not an ancient piece. Legitimate underwater archeology is usually conducted by groups that would transfer any artifacts they found to a museum or similar institution.

 

"I think you should at least hold open the possibility for other explanations"

We don't care one way or the other......it's yours . not ours....

BUT.....from photos...we can only offer our honest opinions from what we see....and if we see a 2000 year old pot....we will say so...to the best of our ability ..... if we don't....we will not be dissuaded by your hopes and dreams !!

Get thee to a Museum.....or a Gallery...or auction house specialist ....and pay them for an authentication !!
When you pay for it, you're more likely to believe what's said.....rather than a bunch of kind folks working for you for free and offering their best opinions..!!!

 

Similar pot.

https://www.etsy.com/se-en/listing/727358537/antique-french-confit-pot-provence

 

I apologize for offending. It certainly wasn't my intention. I appreciate the opinions, and the confit pot is a lead I'll follow. I'm not married to a conclusion. I have no problem debunking family myths and I don't care if it is worth 50 cents or a 1000 dollars.
Over time I've become the family archivist for both my, and my wife's family, because I have an interest in history. I have no desire to sell anything, although I have given things away when I find a better home for them. What I'm trying to do is identify and gather as much information as I can on things I think may be interesting historically, so the next generation knows what they are, and doesn't chuck out things that should be kept. I've spent a crazy amount of time (and a fair amount of money) researching a wide variety of things, and in the case of paper items, learning how to properly conserve them. I seriously try to avoid being a help vampire, and try to work things out myself before reaching out for help/opinions. But I can't become knowledgeable in everything. There is not enough time left in my life. And I can't afford to have everything appraised, because it's expensive, there are many things, value is not an important interest anyway, and that's what appraisers focus on.
In the case of this pot, I assumed it might be old, as I was told. The relative was a senior executive in one of the leading technology companies for oceanographic exploration in the 1960's and 1970's. He knew Cousteau, and many of the leading people in Oceanography during those years. I have film of him sailing with Ron Church, Cousteau's cinematographer and submersible pilot, interspersed with footage he shot of Cousteau's submersible, which was carrying a lot of equipment from his company. I got to tag along as a kid a few times and meet some of these oceanographers. I later learned that he and his company were also involved in a lot of the Navy stuff described in the book "Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage". So I figured there was a reasonable chance that if someone in the Mediterranean he had a business connection to had given him that pot, it might be something interesting. Might.

Here is a photo of the bottom that was requested. Also another side shot. I have found some confit examples that share a lot of features with this. The two departures I see from a lot of confit pots is that the base is not as narrow compared to the mouth, and it never had handles. I assumed that the reason the bottom half had no glaze is because the top half was embedded in sand/silt, and the bottom had most of the destructive effects of sea life and concretions, as opposed to being by design. But that was just my speculation.