DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4758#0032
INTRODUCTION. XXXI
as Melian Black-and-Red.' The second style (L.C. I) was evidently designed to
rival late Minoan pottery, and appears to have achieved its object, for the Cretan
vases which it imitated are hardly known at Phylakopi. It has been called the
Red-and-Black style, because the red pigment was used in it to imitate Late
Minoan varnish, and the black for minor touches which were done with white
paint in the Cretan ware (p. xxxvi). The lively effect was got with dots of black,
or with black-latticed bands instead of white-barred ones. The same decorative
principle had been tried by Early Helladic painters (p. xxiv). This Cycladic style
is no mere copy of the Minoan. It is a free rendering of Cretan subjects in Melian
materials, and so pure is the Minoan spirit, so independent the local methods,
that a school of Cretan artists established in Melos must probably be assumed
to have produced these vases. Towards the end of this period the importation
of Cretan (L.M. lb) or Early Mycenaean pottery was general, but still the local
style went on, and even in the Late Mycenaean ware of Phylakopi there are some
pieces2 that have the porous clay and the dull paint of the long-established
Melian fabric.
VI.—CRETE.
The island of Crete is the only Aegean district in which the civilisation of
the Bronze Age can be traced back in unbroken sequence to local neolithic
culture. Remains of the Stone Age have been found in many parts of Crete,
but by far the most considerable lie on the site of the Palace at Knossos, where
the hill of Kephala is actually made of such material, like a Thessalian magoula,
and where the deposit is much deeper than at any other neolithic station in
Europe.3
Three degrees of evolution have been distinguished in the Neolithic pottery,
according to its position in the Lower, Middle or Upper strata. Even the Lower
levels reveal a well advanced condition. Their fragmentary material shows simple
open forms in dark-coloured clay, whicli sometimes has a burnished surface but
is seldom decorated with incision. The colour of the earliest ware is usually
brown ; in the Middle strata the pottery has a dark burnish, and is the first
finished representative of the wide-spread ' black Mediterranean ' family (p. x).
At its best it is highly polished, often rippled in order to intensify its. lustre, or
carefully incised with linear and dotted patterns closely resembling those of the
kindred but much younger fabrics that prevailed from Troyi to Sicily6 and
beyond (A 403 : Fig. 83). White and even red fillings have been noted in the
incisions (p. xiii, note 2), and in the following Sub-Neolithic period some
1 On these polychrome styles see Dawkins and Droop, loc. cit., p. 10.
2 In the Ashmolean Museum.
3 Palace of Minos, i, p. 34.
' Schliemann, Ilios, p. 216.
* Peet, Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy, fig. 46.
as Melian Black-and-Red.' The second style (L.C. I) was evidently designed to
rival late Minoan pottery, and appears to have achieved its object, for the Cretan
vases which it imitated are hardly known at Phylakopi. It has been called the
Red-and-Black style, because the red pigment was used in it to imitate Late
Minoan varnish, and the black for minor touches which were done with white
paint in the Cretan ware (p. xxxvi). The lively effect was got with dots of black,
or with black-latticed bands instead of white-barred ones. The same decorative
principle had been tried by Early Helladic painters (p. xxiv). This Cycladic style
is no mere copy of the Minoan. It is a free rendering of Cretan subjects in Melian
materials, and so pure is the Minoan spirit, so independent the local methods,
that a school of Cretan artists established in Melos must probably be assumed
to have produced these vases. Towards the end of this period the importation
of Cretan (L.M. lb) or Early Mycenaean pottery was general, but still the local
style went on, and even in the Late Mycenaean ware of Phylakopi there are some
pieces2 that have the porous clay and the dull paint of the long-established
Melian fabric.
VI.—CRETE.
The island of Crete is the only Aegean district in which the civilisation of
the Bronze Age can be traced back in unbroken sequence to local neolithic
culture. Remains of the Stone Age have been found in many parts of Crete,
but by far the most considerable lie on the site of the Palace at Knossos, where
the hill of Kephala is actually made of such material, like a Thessalian magoula,
and where the deposit is much deeper than at any other neolithic station in
Europe.3
Three degrees of evolution have been distinguished in the Neolithic pottery,
according to its position in the Lower, Middle or Upper strata. Even the Lower
levels reveal a well advanced condition. Their fragmentary material shows simple
open forms in dark-coloured clay, whicli sometimes has a burnished surface but
is seldom decorated with incision. The colour of the earliest ware is usually
brown ; in the Middle strata the pottery has a dark burnish, and is the first
finished representative of the wide-spread ' black Mediterranean ' family (p. x).
At its best it is highly polished, often rippled in order to intensify its. lustre, or
carefully incised with linear and dotted patterns closely resembling those of the
kindred but much younger fabrics that prevailed from Troyi to Sicily6 and
beyond (A 403 : Fig. 83). White and even red fillings have been noted in the
incisions (p. xiii, note 2), and in the following Sub-Neolithic period some
1 On these polychrome styles see Dawkins and Droop, loc. cit., p. 10.
2 In the Ashmolean Museum.
3 Palace of Minos, i, p. 34.
' Schliemann, Ilios, p. 216.
* Peet, Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy, fig. 46.