This Red-Polished Ware cup is of particular interest because of its high, spool-shaped foot and its basket handles crowned by birds modelled in the round. The bird-shaped attachments recall the models of birds and animals that decorate the horizontal bars on the twinnecked jugs of the Early Cypriot I period. Plastic decoration on vases was very popular during the Early and Middle Bronze Age on Cyprus, even though birds were usually rendered in a generic rather than specific type. Whether their presence had a symbolic meaning eludes us. We know that in later periods, doves were associated with the worship of Aphrodite as symbols of fertility, but there is no evidence that analogous beliefs existed in prehistoric times.