| Minoan Pottery |
Article Index for Minoan |
Website Links For Minoan |
Information AboutMinoan Pottery |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT MINOAN POTTERY | |
| pottery | |
| minoan civilization | |
| minoan vase painting | |
| ancient greek vase-painting styles | |
|
Minoan pottery is more than a useful tool for dating the mute Minoan Civilization . Its restless sequence of rapidly-maturing artistic styles reveal something of Minoan patrons' pleasure in novelty while they help archaeologists assign relative dates to the strata of their sites. Pots that contained oils and ointments, exported from 18th Century BC Crete , have been found at sites through the Aegean islands and mainland Greece , on Cyprus , along the coatal Syria and in Egypt , showing the wide trading contacts of the Minoans. The extremely fine palace pottery called Kamares ware, and the Late Minoan all-over patterned "Marine style" are the high points of the Minoan Pottery tradition. Traditional chronology Sir Arthur Evans created a detailed chronology of the serial phases of the pottery styles in Minoan Crete, based on what he found at Knossos , with triple divisions each triply divided, a formula that has been retained, thus Early Minoan I II and III, Middle Minoan I II and IIIetc. Each subsection he divided into A and B, early and late. Usefully conceptualized in this artificially rigid serial organization, actual ceramics show blends of styles, either attesting gradual shifts in style or the conservative instincts of apprenticeship-trained potters and their patrons. A very general trend of facture was from dark decoration on a light background in the Early Minoan to white and red decorations on a dark wash of slip in Middle Minoan, and finally a return to the earlier manner of dark on light in Late Minoan. New body shapes for vessels also emerged and various styles of decoration are evident within Evan's chronology.
Early Minoan: EMI, EMII, EMIII (3000–2100 BCE) Early Minoan pottery evolved from the Final Neolithic without a severe break, one of many suggestions that Minoan civilization evolved ''in situ'' and was not imported from the East. Its other main feature is its consequent variety from site to site, which is suggestive of localism of Early Minoan social traditions. The early hand-shaped round-bottomed jugs and bulbous cups and jars (" Pyx es") were joined by " Chalice s", in which a cup combined with a funnel-shaped stand could be set on a hard surface without spilling: no ceremonial usage is implied. Favored decor includes burnished or incised line patterns. Painted parallel-line decors of Aghios Onouphrious ware were drawn with an iron-red clay slip that would fire red under oxidizing conditions in a clean kiln but under the reducing conditions of a smoky fire would turn black. Without much control over color, From this beginning, Minoan potters already concentrated on the linear forms of designs, perfecting coherent designs and voids that would ideally suit the shape of the ware. In EMII the geometric slip-painted designs of Koumasa ware seem to have developed from the wares of Aghios Onouphrious. '''Vasilike ware''' named for the Minoan site in eastern Crete, has mottled glaze effects, early experiments with controlling color, but the elongated spouts drawn from the body and ending in semi-circular spouts show the beginnings of the tradition of Minoan elegance. In the latest brief transition (EMIII), wares in eastern Crete begin to be covered in dark slip with light slip-painted decor of lines and spirals; the first checkered motifs appear; the first petallike loops and leafy bands appear, at Gornia (Walberg 1986). In north central Krete, where Knossos was to emerge, there is little similarity: dark on light linear banding prevails; footed goblets make their appearance. Middle Minoan I, II and III (c. 2050 – 1675 BCE) (Evans' "Old Palace" period corresponds with MMIB&ndas;MMIIIA.) The rise of the palace culture, of the "old palaces" of Knossos and Phaistos and their new type of urbanized, centralized society with redistribution centers required more storage vessels and ones more specifically suited to a range of functions. In palace workshops, standardization suggests more supervised operations and the rise of elite wares, emphasizing refinements and novelty, so that palace and provincial pottery become differentiated. In the palace workshops, the introduction from the Levant of the Potter's Wheel in MMIB enabled perfectly symmetrical bodies to be thrown from swiftly-revolving clay. The well-controlled iron-red slip that was added to the color repertory during MMI could be achieved only in insulated closed kilns that were free of oxygen or smoke. New styles emerge at this time: an Incised Style, the tactile Barbotine ware, studded with knobs and cones of applied clay in bands, waves and ridges, sometimes reminiscent of sand-dollar tests and barnacle growth, and the earliest stages of Kamares ware. Spirals and whorls are the favorite motifs of Minoan pottery from EM III onwards (Walberg). A new shape is the straight-sided cylindrical cup. |
|
|