DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42779#0027
PREHISTORIC PERIODS 7
goes. The abrasive file, the burin, and the drill are all alike
exactly the tools which we should expect to find in hard-
stone sculpture of the Minoan age. But the one exception
is an important one. The gouge is not an instrument which,
as far as we know, was known either to the wood-carver or
to the hard-stone carver and lapidary of Minoan times.
There is, as will be shown below, ample evidence for the use
of the flat chisel, at any rate, in woodwork, and its use on hard
stone, while extremely improbable, must not be wholly
ruled out. But the use of the gouge is quite unusual, in fact
unique. This is the only Minoan work in hard stone in which
its use is known. That the grooves of the skirt are cut by a
gouge is certain. They are not the kind of grooves which an
abrasive can make, for their surfaces are striated by the
gouge-blade in many instances and their outlines have the
characteristic unsteadiness of outlines defined by the gouge.
Lines made by the flat chisel have the same unsteadiness
(see below, p. 140 and Fig. 66). These vertical grooves show
the starting-point and the end of each stroke. They are not
steady and even but shaky and narrow at top and bottom.
Such would be true of any gouge mark of an inch in length
made by the gouge on hard stone with swift strokes.
The fact that these grooves are so made seems to me
to make acceptance of this statuette as genuine impos-
sible. As we have seen, the technique of Minoan work in
hard stone followed rigidly the technique of the gem-cutter
and the lapidary. But here we find a tool in use which was
not known in Minoan times1 and which first came into use
in Greek lands in the sixth century b.c. It may, of course,
be argued that its use here is the only evidence for its
existence as a Minoan tool, and this is a possible line of
defence. But against this it must be urged that this hypo-
thetical Minoan gouge would, of necessity, have been
1 Petrie in Tools and Weapons (1917), p. 22, states: ‘It (the gouge) is almost
entirely a northern tool, there being only three (Bologna, Vetulonia, Athens)
from all the Mediterranean area. . . . There are hardly enough examples to
trace the course of varieties.’
goes. The abrasive file, the burin, and the drill are all alike
exactly the tools which we should expect to find in hard-
stone sculpture of the Minoan age. But the one exception
is an important one. The gouge is not an instrument which,
as far as we know, was known either to the wood-carver or
to the hard-stone carver and lapidary of Minoan times.
There is, as will be shown below, ample evidence for the use
of the flat chisel, at any rate, in woodwork, and its use on hard
stone, while extremely improbable, must not be wholly
ruled out. But the use of the gouge is quite unusual, in fact
unique. This is the only Minoan work in hard stone in which
its use is known. That the grooves of the skirt are cut by a
gouge is certain. They are not the kind of grooves which an
abrasive can make, for their surfaces are striated by the
gouge-blade in many instances and their outlines have the
characteristic unsteadiness of outlines defined by the gouge.
Lines made by the flat chisel have the same unsteadiness
(see below, p. 140 and Fig. 66). These vertical grooves show
the starting-point and the end of each stroke. They are not
steady and even but shaky and narrow at top and bottom.
Such would be true of any gouge mark of an inch in length
made by the gouge on hard stone with swift strokes.
The fact that these grooves are so made seems to me
to make acceptance of this statuette as genuine impos-
sible. As we have seen, the technique of Minoan work in
hard stone followed rigidly the technique of the gem-cutter
and the lapidary. But here we find a tool in use which was
not known in Minoan times1 and which first came into use
in Greek lands in the sixth century b.c. It may, of course,
be argued that its use here is the only evidence for its
existence as a Minoan tool, and this is a possible line of
defence. But against this it must be urged that this hypo-
thetical Minoan gouge would, of necessity, have been
1 Petrie in Tools and Weapons (1917), p. 22, states: ‘It (the gouge) is almost
entirely a northern tool, there being only three (Bologna, Vetulonia, Athens)
from all the Mediterranean area. . . . There are hardly enough examples to
trace the course of varieties.’