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Pendlebury, John D.
The archaeology of Crete: an introduction — London, 1939

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https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.7519#0117
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82 THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF CRETE

previous period, a cup with a small open spout. A number of
cups without this spout are known, some of them with a slightly
flaring foot and with or without a vertical handle.1 A more
elaborate shape is shown in PI. XIII, 4, /, which is to have a
long history. It is to be noted that the handles are always
either round or only slightly flattened in section. The strap
handle has not yet appeared. Many of these cups are of very
fine fabric, some of them almost meriting the term ' eggshell '.

An oval boat-shaped dish is occasionally found with an open
spout at one end and a knob or a horizontal handle at the other.2
An askos appears at Vasilike,3 and anthropomorphic vases of the
same type as the E.M.II vase described above (PI. XII, 3) at
Mokhlos and Koumasa.4 Anthropomorphic and theriomorphic
vases seem to be favourites in the Messara at this time. Xan-
thoudides figures6 bulls grappled by acrobats, small jugs
similarly grappled at the neck, a delightful fledgeling with its
beak open and a series of askoi in the shape of birds which bear
an astonishing resemblance to a middle Predynastic class in
Egypt.6 From the Messara also comes a queer type of vase
exactly like a pair of trousers with very thin legs, which re-
appears again in M.M.i.7

For the best examples of the new white on black decoration
we must look to the East (Fig. 11). No type of design which
appears in any other part of the island is here unrepresented.
Seager 8 would see two periods, examples from the second of
which only have been found in an unmixed stratum and that
in only one spot—the well at Vasilike. Typical of the first he
makes the cross-hatched lozenges and circles, of the second
the more conventional designs on the ' eggshell ' cups. But
although the fact that two subdivisions can be made out is of
great importance for the internal chronology of Crete in this
and the next period, it is safer first to view the designs as a
whole before drawing conclusions.

The great advance in design is the introduction of the
curvilinear and spiraliform motives. The rectilinear patterns
are merely an elaboration of those of E.M.n. The commonest

1 Trans. Penn. Univ., I, 194. 2 Ibid., II, 122. 3 Ibid., II, 120.

iMochlos, 64; V.T.M., 2.

6 V.T.M., all from Koumasa on PI. XXVIII.

6 J.E.A., XII, 52. Cf. Studies, II, 103, note and references.

7 V.T.M., PI. XXVIII, but cf. Studies, II, 44, for analogies from
Thessaly

8 Trans. Penn. Univ., II, 122.
 
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