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Pottery from Karphi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 October 2013

Mercy Seiradaki
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Extract

This article should have been published in BSA xxxviii with the rest of the Karphi material. That it was not was due to the fact that in 1939 the pottery was insufficiently mended for drawing and photography. Most of the text was written by the beginning of 1940 and approved by John Pendlebury before his death. I can only apologize for subsequent delays and admit that I have forgotten much which might have been relevant.

Methods: The pottery from each room and each strosis was carefully collected and labelled. During the first two seasons it was then brought to Tzermiadho for study, but in 1939 arrangements were made for dealing with it on the site, which greatly simplified the work.

At first sherds were washed by women from the village, but the difficulties of washing were so great that it was soon decided that all those that were painted, or probably painted, would have to be washed by one of ourselves if their patterns were to be preserved. Even so there were many instances where no treatment which we could devise would remove the mud without also removing the colour, if not the entire surface. Eventually only such coarse sherds as seemed to be worth making up, or to represent new types, were washed at all, since brushing in plain water, which was all that these would stand, had so little effect that sorting was just as easy without it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 55 , November 1960 , pp. 1 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1960

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References

1 Dr. N. Platon, Mr. S. Alexiou, and the staff of the Herakleion museum have, as always, been most helpful. Photographs are the work of Messrs. J. Pendlebury, J. Carter, N. Coldstream, and E. Androulakis. I am also much indebted to Mr. M. S. F. Hood for help and encouragement.

2 It may be said at once that, even when there was enough depth of earth to take levels separately, no distinction between the pottery of upper and lower could ever be made. See BSA xxxviii. 78, 12 and 80, 23.

3 These are now in the museum at Neapolis.

4 In the following pages plain numbers denote rooms or streets in Karphi city, M and a number a tomb at Ta Mnemata, and A and a number a tomb at Astividhero. On the Figs, provenances are given according to type sequence, not according to position on the page.

5 In many cases, although types could be noted, sherds were too fragmentary for numbers to be accurately determined.

6 Op. cit. 134. Pottery of any later date is too scanty to merit a special section. The only whole vase is the Geometric one from M 1 (Plate 11b top right).

7 BSA xxxvi. 72.

8 BSA xxxviii. 27 (Cup 5). The colour is less brilliant than at Karphi.

9 Op. cit. pl. xxiv. 6.

10 Op. cit. pl. xxiv. 5.

11 Op. cit. 63 and 67.

12 ibid. 109.

13 A few possibly restorable specimens are still in boxes in the Herakleion museum.

14 BSA xxxviii. 117. Most unfortunately I cannot now and any sherds from this type, except the square leg shown in Plate 12b, and it was never drawn. It was noted in three rooms only (43, 84, and 147). I believe its rim and outline resembled those of Krater 4, but that it was shallower and had a rounded base. Its legs were angular and its andles in some way unusual.

15 Specimens of this also cannot now be found. It was not drawn, but photographs of three examples are shown in Plate 2a–c.

16 PM i. 578.

17 BSA xxx. 68.

18 Decorated tripod legs seem to have been a traditional fashion in Lasithi, BSA xxxviii. 31, tripods 5 and 6.

19 The development of live forms from abstract ones also occurs with painted decoration, see p. 31.

20 BSA xxxviii. 80.

21 Mr. Sinclair Hood tells me that many sherds from similar objects were found outside the tombs at Ailias, Knossos.

22 Cf. BSA xxxviii, fig. 18. 4.

23 Op. cit. 95.

24 114 seems to be connected with 106 and is just across the road from 116, in both of which cult objects were found. 26 and 28 are in the same building as 27, where the rhyton with three bulls' heads, &c., occurred. 58 and 80 are part of the ‘Priest's House’. Whether these places were really household shrines, or whether they were shops in which offerings could be bought en route for the Temple, remains for speculation.

25 Cf. the goddess in a hut-urn from the Spring Chamber at Knossos, PM ii. 129, fig. 63. A detached figure, apparently from a kalathos, was found in 85, BSA xxxviii, pl. xxxii. 2. 514.

26 PM ii. 134, fig. 68.

27 BSA Suppl. 86, fig. 70; ADelt 1920, 161.

28 Cf. BSA vi. 105, fig. 35, from the Dictean Cave. Evans, however, regards the larger examples from the Spring Chamber as incense burners, PM ii. 135.

29 AC 309.

30 BSA xxxviii. 80.

31 Op. cit. pl. xxxii. 1.

32 Cf. BSA xlii. 53.

33 A very similar vessel is dated by Brock, J. to late Protogeometric, Fortetsa 153.Google Scholar

34 Cf. BSA xlii. 24.

35 Cf. PM ii. 136.

36 This shape does not seem to have been noted from any other site. Logically it should be the immediate forebear of that with an open neck, which J. Brock considers to have been invented at the end of the Protogeometric Period, Fortetsa 153.

37 PM ii. 137.

38 Pendlebury had already adopted this term in BSA xxxvii and xxxviii. It is more descriptive than ‘close’ and less cumbersome than ‘middle-east Cretan’. The latter also tends to imply that the style originated in Crete, which is not proved.

39 Especially from Mouliana, , PM iv. 372Google Scholar, fig. 311. The close association between stirrup-jars, large and small, and octopus patterns, plain and fancy, throughout their histories still requires explanation. A list of late octopus-decorated stirrup-jars is given by Skeat, T., The Dorians in Archaeology 25Google Scholar; cf. also BSA xlii. 23.

40 One (without handles) from a L.M. III burial at Pakhyammos was found containing a necklace, Κρητικὰ Χρονικά 3 (1954) 403.

41 Cf. PM ii. fig. 63, which has handles as in type 1. See also below, p. 28, where a basket-work connexion is suggested for both shapes, although admittedly the pyxides may be derived from L.M. II alabastra.

42 AC 309. They continue into Protogeometric (BSA xxix, pl. vi. 11) and the larger Karphi examples have parallels in ‘straight-sided pithoi’ from Fortetsa which Brock, J. dates to Protogeometric B, Fortetsa 147.Google Scholar

43 BSA xlii. 43.

44 BSA Suppl. 94.

45 ADelt 1920, 155, fig. 2. This is said to be L.M. III.

46 AE 1904, 35, pl. 2. Evans derives this pattern from double-axes embedded in pillars (PM iv. 349), and Stubbings terms a rather similar Attic design a ‘disintegrated cephalopod’ (BSA xlii. 40), but neither explanation seems altogether satisfactory.

47 Cf. PM iv. 312, where a bronze tankard from Gournes is illustrated as well as the clay one from the Dictean Cave with octopus and chequer patterns. Evans attributes the latter to L.M. IIIA, but its resemblance to the Karphi tankards is striking and it may well be an offering from that city.

48 Below the spout is a panel of zigzag lines. Next this on either side a panel of chequers. Then, on the left, the ‘windmill’ pattern shown in Fig. 22a, and on the right, first the panel with a foliate spray of which the leaves have, rather surprisingly, turned into fishes (shown in Plate 8c), and then two conventionalized double-axes, one above the other, divided by four horizontal lines and with half-circles as filling (cf. Fig. 22b). There must have been another panel under the handle, but this part is missing.

49 BSA Suppl. 85, fig. 68. 2, shows an earlier example of this decoration, and Brock, J., Fortetsa 143, pl. 21, 291Google Scholar, a Protogeometric A one.

50 BSA xxxviii. 77.

51 Unfortunately I cannot now find this, but believe that it suggested a metallic original.

52 Types 7–9 should be compared with vessels shown by Desborough, V., Protogeometric Pottery, pls. 31 and 32.Google Scholar

53 Cf., however, the ‘horseman’ krater from Mouliana, , which may well be contemporary, PM iv. 345Google Scholar, and V. Desborough, op. cit. 269 f.

54 V. Desborough, op. cit. pl. 33; BSA xxxix, pl. vii. 4. For shape and size cf. also kraters from Marmariane, , BSA xxxi. 30Google Scholar, which mostly have double handles similar to those of type 10; also the ‘Warrior Vase’ from Mycenae.

55 Cf. Vrokastro 150, fig. 89a, c, for similarly bulging stems, and also ringed kylix-stems from Ithaca, , BSA xxxiii. 63 and xxxix. 13.Google Scholar

56 BSA xxxviii. 129.

57 PM ii. 136.

58 BSA vi. 84 fig. 26. We were shown one from the Papoura which may well be Geometric in date.

59 The clay ‘palette’ from 149, BSA xxxviii. 131, is probably such a door, though rather larger than usual.

60 PM ii. 128. Cf. also 4 (1950) 441 and BSA xlix. 221 for two larger model shrines. The latter example has been described as a hut, but its inside ledge suggests a shelf for miniature cult objects, on the principle of the Shrine of the Double Axes.

61 PM ii 129.

62 BSA x. 214.

63 It may be worth comparing with a Janus-headed vase in the Ashmolean from Piskokephali, no. AE 1102. In this the faces are large and the neck tapers to a point, but its style shows considerable affinity with the Karphi goddesses and its ears are pierced, perhaps for ear-rings or the attachment of a garland, as are those of the two largest of the goddesses.

64 Vrokastro fig. 96d.

65 Evans, , Prehistoric Tombs at Knossos 96.Google Scholar

66 PM iv. 145.

67 As does an earlier example from Gournia, , PM ii. 139.Google Scholar

68 PM iv. 145.

69 AE 1937, 286 and Alexiou's recent article in Κεητικὰ Χεονικά 12 (1958).

70 See p. 17, n. 38.

71 For the probable history of the period see BSA xxxvii. 196.

72 Cf. PM iv. 295.

73 Cf. QDAP v. 90, where Heurtley gives references to vases in this style.

74 AC 261 and BSA xxxvii. 196.

75 PM iv. 100.

76 Its apparent connexion with the L.M. II Palace style also looks less improbable from this angle. Evans suggests textile influence on the chequer pattern, PM iv. 348, and on a jar from the Royal Villa one can, if one chooses, practically see the stitches (PM ii, fig. 231). For what it is worth, relations between Crete and the mainland were probably closer during L.M. II than at any other time; see BSA xxxvii. 196.

77 Cf. the way in which embroidered towels and blankets are, even now, handed down in the female line from generation to generation under the dowry system.