DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42779#0075
44 THE AGE OF TRANSITION
tenth century. Sparta may, perhaps, serve as the key-site
for the latest of the invading folk. For proto-Achaeans and
for Achaeans there is an archaeological content,1 tenuous
and elusive, but definite. Within it there is no room for any
of the arts and crafts except perhaps for painting. The
‘Warrior Vase’ from Mycenae shows at once the northern
panoply, the survival of fine Mycenaean glaze-paint as a
medium of painting, and that particular love of exact repeti-
tion and abstract conception of form which we shall see is
the very soul of the ‘geometric’ art of the tenth, ninth, and
eighth centuries.
But glaze-paint, itself a fine technical invention, survived
the gap between 1200, when the ‘Warrior Vase’ was painted,
and 950, when ‘geometric’ vases used the same paint ex-
clusively for their designs. In some places, like Amyclae,
it was improved by being given a metallic lustre, itself also
a trick inherited from the Minoan world, for Kamares ware
uses exactly the same kind of paint.
But there is no stonework which we can associate with
proto-Achaeans or with Achaeans, unless we attribute to
them the latest of the stelae from Mycenae (see above, p. 35).
Nor do we find it in use again until the tenth century. In
the earliest ‘geometric’ deposits2 we find small seals both
of steatite and of other stones hard and soft. Steatite, once
so popular in Crete, has apparently not been forgotten. Its
convenient softness has made it desirable for a generation
of craftsmen who had little invention and limited tools. For
the ‘geometric’ seal-stones that we find follow one technique
and one only. They are from first to last cut with a knife,
even when they are of hard stones, though in those cases the
cuts become mere scratchings. ‘Geometric’ seals or gems
are common enough. For the use of seals had not been
forgotten, and the new invaders had found here and there3
1 V. G. Childe, The Aryans, pp. 50 ff.
2 Pendlebury, Aegyptiaca, 1930, p. 114.
3 At Sparta, Artemis Orthia, pi. cciv, b and c, and B. M. Quarterly,
iv. 2, p. 34.
tenth century. Sparta may, perhaps, serve as the key-site
for the latest of the invading folk. For proto-Achaeans and
for Achaeans there is an archaeological content,1 tenuous
and elusive, but definite. Within it there is no room for any
of the arts and crafts except perhaps for painting. The
‘Warrior Vase’ from Mycenae shows at once the northern
panoply, the survival of fine Mycenaean glaze-paint as a
medium of painting, and that particular love of exact repeti-
tion and abstract conception of form which we shall see is
the very soul of the ‘geometric’ art of the tenth, ninth, and
eighth centuries.
But glaze-paint, itself a fine technical invention, survived
the gap between 1200, when the ‘Warrior Vase’ was painted,
and 950, when ‘geometric’ vases used the same paint ex-
clusively for their designs. In some places, like Amyclae,
it was improved by being given a metallic lustre, itself also
a trick inherited from the Minoan world, for Kamares ware
uses exactly the same kind of paint.
But there is no stonework which we can associate with
proto-Achaeans or with Achaeans, unless we attribute to
them the latest of the stelae from Mycenae (see above, p. 35).
Nor do we find it in use again until the tenth century. In
the earliest ‘geometric’ deposits2 we find small seals both
of steatite and of other stones hard and soft. Steatite, once
so popular in Crete, has apparently not been forgotten. Its
convenient softness has made it desirable for a generation
of craftsmen who had little invention and limited tools. For
the ‘geometric’ seal-stones that we find follow one technique
and one only. They are from first to last cut with a knife,
even when they are of hard stones, though in those cases the
cuts become mere scratchings. ‘Geometric’ seals or gems
are common enough. For the use of seals had not been
forgotten, and the new invaders had found here and there3
1 V. G. Childe, The Aryans, pp. 50 ff.
2 Pendlebury, Aegyptiaca, 1930, p. 114.
3 At Sparta, Artemis Orthia, pi. cciv, b and c, and B. M. Quarterly,
iv. 2, p. 34.