DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4758#0033
XXX11 CATALOGUE OF VASES.
anticipations of white painting on black clay or wash. Carinated bodies,
projecting rims and vertical strap-handles were made in Middle Neolithic ware.
Such handles were developed from horizontally-pierced string-bosses; other
forms, perhaps derived from wood-work, anticipated the triangular wish-bone
shapes that were favoured in Cyprus and North Greece (p. xxi).1 The Upper
Neolithic pottery was better fired but not so carefully finished. It has clearer
body and surface-colours, brown or red, but less polish and hardly any incision.
Some sherds in this collection come from a house of the Late Stone Age at
Magasa in east Crete (A 404). This phase merges imperceptibly into the
Chalcolithic fabrics with which the Minoan Bronze Age begins.
Minoan pottery is so copiously represented and has been described else-
where 2 in such exhaustive detail, that it is only necessary here to indicate the
leading principles of its development. The logical scheme of the nine Minoan
periods has already been explained (p. xi). Early Minoan potters were
largely occupied with experiments: reception of foreign influences, elimination of
obsolete or unsuccessful processes, control of the black varnish medium, and final
establishment of the light-on-dark painted technique. The Middle Minoan age
explored all the possibilities of. this style, perfected abstract ornament and
ceramic forms, and initiated naturalistic art. Late Minoan painters returned to
the alternative dark-on-light method, and after a brilliant naturalistic phase, to
the formal representation which ended with inert conventionality.
The first pottery of E.M. I preserves the sub-neolithic character, and is
generally inferior in fabric to the true neolithic products. An odd shape that
survived from the Stone Age is the fiat ladle (A 408-9). Open bowls and
globular cups show the simple forms of this period. More advanced are stemmed
goblets and little pots with suspension-knobs (distinguished from the neolithic by
their vertical piercing) and tie-on lids. The last is a typical group which had
affinities with Cycladic and Anatolian forms (p. xiv) : such affinities must not
however be forced into definite synchronisms. Round bases are taken to be the
mark of E.M. I jugs, some of which are painted with close parallel and inter-
secting lines in red varnish,3 the important decorative medium which first
appeared at the end of the Stone Age. These jugs have gourd-like bodies and
stiff metallic necks, in contrast with the tensile Anatolian and Central Aegean
forms. The stemmed goblets that have been found have grey surface with dark
burnished lines imitating the grain of wood.4 Another grey fabric is true
Buechero, coloured all through the paste by chemical reduction.5 This was
finely made and very elaborately decorated with incised or impressed patterns
(A 414) : it represents a last refinement of the primitive Mediterranean ware.
• ' Palace of Minos, i, p. 59.
■ For references to excavators' reports see below, p. 70, to which add S. Xanthoudides, Vaulted
Tombs of Mesara, (1924). For the designs see Edith H. Hall, The Decorative Art of Crete.
3 Palace of Minos, i, figs. 25-6.
' Ibid., p. 59.
■"' See p. xii, note 2.
anticipations of white painting on black clay or wash. Carinated bodies,
projecting rims and vertical strap-handles were made in Middle Neolithic ware.
Such handles were developed from horizontally-pierced string-bosses; other
forms, perhaps derived from wood-work, anticipated the triangular wish-bone
shapes that were favoured in Cyprus and North Greece (p. xxi).1 The Upper
Neolithic pottery was better fired but not so carefully finished. It has clearer
body and surface-colours, brown or red, but less polish and hardly any incision.
Some sherds in this collection come from a house of the Late Stone Age at
Magasa in east Crete (A 404). This phase merges imperceptibly into the
Chalcolithic fabrics with which the Minoan Bronze Age begins.
Minoan pottery is so copiously represented and has been described else-
where 2 in such exhaustive detail, that it is only necessary here to indicate the
leading principles of its development. The logical scheme of the nine Minoan
periods has already been explained (p. xi). Early Minoan potters were
largely occupied with experiments: reception of foreign influences, elimination of
obsolete or unsuccessful processes, control of the black varnish medium, and final
establishment of the light-on-dark painted technique. The Middle Minoan age
explored all the possibilities of. this style, perfected abstract ornament and
ceramic forms, and initiated naturalistic art. Late Minoan painters returned to
the alternative dark-on-light method, and after a brilliant naturalistic phase, to
the formal representation which ended with inert conventionality.
The first pottery of E.M. I preserves the sub-neolithic character, and is
generally inferior in fabric to the true neolithic products. An odd shape that
survived from the Stone Age is the fiat ladle (A 408-9). Open bowls and
globular cups show the simple forms of this period. More advanced are stemmed
goblets and little pots with suspension-knobs (distinguished from the neolithic by
their vertical piercing) and tie-on lids. The last is a typical group which had
affinities with Cycladic and Anatolian forms (p. xiv) : such affinities must not
however be forced into definite synchronisms. Round bases are taken to be the
mark of E.M. I jugs, some of which are painted with close parallel and inter-
secting lines in red varnish,3 the important decorative medium which first
appeared at the end of the Stone Age. These jugs have gourd-like bodies and
stiff metallic necks, in contrast with the tensile Anatolian and Central Aegean
forms. The stemmed goblets that have been found have grey surface with dark
burnished lines imitating the grain of wood.4 Another grey fabric is true
Buechero, coloured all through the paste by chemical reduction.5 This was
finely made and very elaborately decorated with incised or impressed patterns
(A 414) : it represents a last refinement of the primitive Mediterranean ware.
• ' Palace of Minos, i, p. 59.
■ For references to excavators' reports see below, p. 70, to which add S. Xanthoudides, Vaulted
Tombs of Mesara, (1924). For the designs see Edith H. Hall, The Decorative Art of Crete.
3 Palace of Minos, i, figs. 25-6.
' Ibid., p. 59.
■"' See p. xii, note 2.