XX11 CATALOGUE OF VASES.

another member of the extensive ' spiral and maeander' family of Central Europe
(p. xviii). Similar types occur in Italy.1

A common element in Thessaly and Macedonia is Minyan ware in imitative
or derivative forms (A 81-3, A 115-7). These may have Balkan or Central Greek
or Hellespontine origin, and it is not possible to assign definite chronological
position to types so wide-spread and so persistent in their primitive or
degenerate phases. The Anatolian tradition which they represent is seen again
in jugs and cups of the Early Iron Age (A 1130 : p. xliv).

Mycenaean contact was slight in the North Aegean, on the European as
well as the Asiatic side. In this respect it is noteworthy that native imitations
of Late Mycenaean pottery have been distinguished in the scanty material from
Macedonia (A 1034),2 while in southern areas such local fabrics very rarely
break through the uniformity of that highly perfected style.

IV.-SOUTH GREECE.

THE name Helladic has been given to the Pre-Hellenic civilisation which
occupied the mainland of Greece south of Thessaly. It is properly applied to all
the periods of this culture, (which are fixed, like the nine Cycladic periods, to
correspond with those of Crete),3 and to such products as belong to the locality ;
but the outstanding feature of the prehistoric Mainland, of which the earlier
phases have lately been revealed, is its subjection to diverse foreign influences,
as shown by the many varieties of its pottery and by their sudden and continual
changes. Thus the Early Helladic material has close connexions with Cycladic
and Minoan ; Middle Helladic pottery is partly Cycladic in kind, partly Anatolian,
with a later revival of Minoan influence; and the Late Helladic Age shows
wholesale introduction of Cretan products and methods, rapid extinction of the
native arts, and the establishment of the colonial Minoan style which is known as
Mycenaean. Although pottery of all Helladic periods has been found on many
sites, the sequence of the different wares has been recorded only in a single and
partially excavated mound near Corinth.4 It must therefore not yet be assumed
that the series is complete or that its chronological relations are established.

The earliest pottery from Korakou is dark-faced Burnished Ware, a roughly
hand-made fabric with red, brown or black surface, often decorated with incised
or impressed.patterns. The same kind of pottery belonged to the Cycladic islands
where, as on the Mainland, it is poorly represented on the town-sites (p. xxviii), and

1 M. Mayer, Molfetta u. Afatera, p. 276.

2 J.H.S., loc cit. s

3 See p. xi, and A. J. Evans in Palace of Minos, i, p. 558. The attempt of some recent excavators
of Mainland sites to substitute a different arrangement of the periods is mistaken and impracticable. See
/M.S., xliii, p. 89; Menghin-Hoernes, Urgeschichte d. Hid. Kunst1 (1925), p. 805.

4 C. W. Blegen, Korakou (American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1921).