Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-5nwft Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-05T14:10:16.462Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Middle Minoan Pottery of Knossos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Duncan Mackenzie
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the sketch of the pottery of Knossos that appeared in the Journal of Hellenic Studies for 1903, pp. 157–205, it was sought to give a general account of Knossian ceramic development on the basis of such finds as were to hand up to date.

Since then, however, further evidence has been accumulating such as serves to bring into clearer outline particular phases in development. This happens to be specially true of the Middle Period. The object, accordingly, of the present paper, which I undertake by kind permission of Dr. Arthur Evans, is to examine the new ceramic materials in so far as they are illustrative of the successive phases of Middle Minoan ceramic development.

The results of a special examination of the pottery found in Early Minoan deposit up to date are to the effect that the two kinds of ground, respectively light and dark, coexist from the very beginning of the use of paint in Cretan ceramics. Thus it can no longer be a question of the one kind of ground supervening upon the other at any later stage but only the problem of the relation to each other, throughout the course of their collateral development, of two kinds of background which co-exist from the beginning and so co-exist in virtue of a technical principle which is as old as any decorative art.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 26 , November 1906 , pp. 243 - 267
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1906

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See B.S.A. x. 21, 22, 26.

2 Our Pls. VII. and VIII, like Pls. V., VI., VII. in J.H.S. xxiii., are after drawings by Mr. Halvor Bagge.

3 The spiral repeated as a unit but not as a chain also occurs in the prehistoric pottery of Egypt and it is possible that it is from here it drifted into the Aegean. It recurs in the early geometric pottery of Palaikastro and Gourniá. The chain of connected spirals occurs apparently fust in the Aegean at some time early in the Middle Minoan Age.

4 The M. M. l. ‘butterfly’ motive itself is the direct descendant of the hatched triangles in pairs joined at the apex so common in the previous Third Early Minoan Period. See B.S.A.. x. 198 and 199, Fig. 2, d, i.

5 Compare the seal impression, B.S.A. ix. 20, Fig. 9, for a wild goat with somewhat similar curving horns. Our earlier picture has already in common with the original seal the profile movement to the right which is so popular in Minoan Art.

6 The pyxis found along with the jugs with ‘butterfly’ motive shown in B.S.A.. ix. Fig. 65, b affords the curions spectacle of a survival into this period of the original Neolithic white-filled incisions alongside and independently of their differentiated elements.

7 Mon. Ant. xiv. 699, Fig. 9 shows the fragment of a vase in the same barbotine style as our Pl. VII. 13 and the vase from the North Quarter of the City at Knossos referred to above. The rippled appearance of this particular style suggests an earlier phase in the process of development, which later became stereotyped in the painted rippled surfaces of M. M. III. and L.M.I.

8 For this tholos-tomb see Memorie del r. Istituto Lombardo, xxi. 248–252. The tholos-vases, Tav. ix. Figs. 21, 22. The barbotine vases, Tav. vii. Fig. 16. Compare also for Knossos, the two cups with blistered surfaces in J.H.S. xxiii. 167Google Scholar, Fig. 1, items 5, 6, which appear in a similar M. M. I. context.

9 See B.S.A. x. 10–12, Fig. 3; XI. 218, note 2; Mem. Ist. Lomb. loc. cit. Tav. xi. Fig. 29.

10 See Hogarth-Welch, , J.H.S. xxi. 87Google Scholar, D. 88, Figs. 15, 16; B.S.A. ix. 308, Fig. 8.

11 It is possible now to conjecture that this was probably also the case with the polychrome vases just cited in comparison which are presupposed by the curious fragments shown in Pl. VII. 17, 18 and Pl IX. 6.

12 Compare the white punctuations of Pl. VII. items 3 and 4, and of Pl. IX. 6 and, for the continuity in tradition, Early Minoan, examples like B.S.A. x. 199Google Scholar, Fig. 2, h, j, and Neolithic, originals, such as J.H.S. xxiii. Pl. IV. 15–17, 21, 25, 27, 30Google Scholar. The cup, ib. Pl. VI. 2, shows the white punctuated band motive of the Neolithic fragments 15, 16 surviving into the M. M. II. Period. The zigzag, in white of the alternate bands on this cup looks equally early in origin, and it seems at length to attain to decorative finality once for all as rim-band to the beautiful cup ib. Pl. V. 2. Compare the Neolithic fragments ib. Pl. IV. 22, 26, 31. The lines of white punctuations in a single series of these fragments recur in the M. M. I. and II. Periods, as in PI. VII. 7, 8,10 and PL VIII. 5–8, 11, 18, 20.

13 Polychrome double axe-like figures arranged vertically occupy an analogous position on the beautiful M. M. II. bowl shown in J.H.S. xxiii. Pl. VI. 3.

14 For a white latticed circle of this kind at the M. M. I., stage see B.S.A. ix. 95Google Scholar, Fig. 65, q.

15 For the lattice motive at the Early Minoan, stage see B.S.A. x. 198–9Google Scholar, Fig. 2.

16 For a red and a black cable pattern of this kind at the M. M. II. stage see the polychrome cups in J.H.S. xxiii. Pl. V. 3 and Pl VI. 4.

17 Compare the latticed circles joined by transverse bands of the E. M. III. Period in B.S.A.. x. 199, Fig. 2, itemsf, k.

18 For the ‘candlestick’ see also B.S.A. viii. 91, Fig. 51, 2; 92, Fig. 52.

19 The spirals here appear as black discs joined by pairs of transverse tangents just as as if we had to do with the double in black of tile similar motive in white of the panelled vase from Phaestos referred to in previous passages. Have we not here indeed the original of the spiral chain itself surviving on its own account alongside of that from the Early Minoan Age?

20 The allocation to Magazine 5 in the passage and Figure cited in the text rests upon an oversight.