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A Mycenaean Pictorial Vase of the Fifteenth Century B.C. from Laconia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

K. Demacopoulou
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Extract

The large pictorial jug published here (Plate 12 a-d) was discovered in 1966 in a plundered Mycenaean chamber tomb at the site Melathria, near the village of Skoura in Laconia. Skoura is close to Sparta, opposite to and east of the Vapheio tholos tomb, on the east side of the river Eurotas.

It is a most unusual Mycenaean vase, remarkable for its pictorial decoration at such an early date. In view of the shape of the vase and its linear decoration, it seems to be one of the earliest pictorial vases yet found on the mainland of Greece.

The jug, which is now exhibited in Sparta Museum (Inv. no. 5533), has been restored from fragments, and large pieces of the belly have been completed with plaster. It can be described as follows: Tall jug with cut-away neck (Plate 12a). Light brown clay, polished yellow-pink surface, lustrous red paint which in places has adhered badly and flaked away.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 66 , November 1971 , pp. 95 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1971

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References

Abbreviations, other than those customary in BSA:

BM = Catalogue of Greek and Etruscan Vases in the British Museum, vol. i, Part i: Prehistoric Aegean Pottery by E. J. Forsdyke (for numbers prefixed by ‘A’); Part ii: Cypriote, Italian and Etruscan Pottery by H. B. Walters (for numbers prefixed by ‘C’).

Ch. T. = Wace, A. J. B., ‘Chamber tombs at Mycenae’, Archaeologia lxxxii (1932).Google Scholar

FM = Furumark, motive number (MP).

FS = Furumark, shape number (MP).

MP = Furumark, Arne, The Mycenaean Pottery. Analysis and Classification (Stockholm, 1941).Google Scholar

MV = Furtwängler, A. and Loeschcke, G., Mykenische Vasen (Berlin, 1886).Google Scholar

1 This work was undertaken in Oxford with the help of a scholarship from the British Council. I am most grateful to Dr. H. W. Catling for his constant assistance and encouragement. I am also indebted to Mr. J. H. Crouwel for discussion and criticism.

2 The site was previously unrecorded. Reports of the excavation and the finds, including the jug, have been published in AAA i (1968) 1, 37–41 and ADelt xxii (1967) B1, 197–9, with an illustration of the jug in pl. 141c. See also the map of the Spartan plain in Waterhouse, H. and Simpson, R. Hope, ‘Prehistoric Laconia, Part I’, BSA lv (1960) 71Google Scholar, fig. 1, pl. 24, where the village of Skoura is shown.

3 Cf. FM 46 for the spirals and FM 44 for the concentric arcs. This type of spiral, with a filling of concentric arcs, is not common. The closest parallel to our jug is a three-handled jar from Ialysos with almost the same decoration on the shoulder: cf. BM A 829.

4 Cf. Stubbings, F. H., ‘The Mycenaean pottery of Attica’, BSA xlii (1947) 47.Google Scholar

5 The neck of this jug is not cut away at the back, but it has the same decoration of broad vertical curved stripes, each of them outlined by two narrow curved stripes.

6 Cf. MP 605.

7 Ibid. A fragment of this shape with the same decoration occurred in the deposit of the L.H. IIIA I pottery from the Atreus Bothros at Mycenae; cf. French, Elizabeth, BSA lix (1964) 248Google Scholar, pl. 68c.

8 Catling, H. W. and Millett, A., BSA lx (1965) 213.Google Scholar

9 From the L.H. IIIC cemetery at Perati, Iacovides, Sp., PAE 1958, 25Google Scholar, pl. 23d.

10 This cannot be absolutely certain, of course, because most of the pictorial material yet found is fragmentary, particularly on the Greek mainland; cf. Catling and Millett, loc. cit. 214.

11 Cf. the list of the Mycenaean pictorial compositions given by Furumark, MP, 431 ff. and 451 ff.

12 Papadimitriou, I., PAE (1954), 72Google Scholar, figs. 5–6.

13 Catling, H. W., AA 1970, 27Google Scholar, fig. 4.

14 Cf. Iacovides, see above, n. 9.

15 For example, the armed male figures on the krater fragment from Enkomi in the British Museum, BM, C 339, and on the Aradhippou ‘Homage krater’ in the Louvre, Karageorghis, V., Mycenaean Art from Cyprus (Nicosia, 1968) pl. iv.Google Scholar

16 It was normal practice, among pictorial artists drawing human figures, to show the face in outline, whether the bodies had been drawn in outline or silhouette. See MP 449.

17 Ibid.

18 Examples of this technique are: the fragment from the Acropolis of Athens, cf. Montelius, Oscar, La Grèce préclassique (Stockholm, 1924) fig. 501Google Scholar, showing a part of a woman(?) whose robe has a cross-hatched filling; and a sherd from Mycenae showing a horse, the belly of which also has a cross-hatched filling, cf. MV, pl. xxxviii. 392.

19 Karageorghis, V., BCH xc (1966) 305Google Scholar, fig. 16b.

20 Montelius, see above, n. 18.

21 Cf., for example, the body of the nude attendant on the krater fragment from Enkomi in the British Museum, BM, C 339. See also FM 1. 21–6.

22 For example, the corslets on the Warrior Vase from Mycenae, MV, pl. xliii, and on other pictorial sherds with warriors: cf. AM lxxxii (1967) pls. 1–2, figs. 33–4, and Popham, M. R. and Sackett, L. H., Excavations at Lef kandi, Euboea 1964–66 (London, 1968) 20Google Scholar, figs. 39–41. All these examples are, of course, at least two hundred years later. Cf. also the corslets on the painted warrior stele from Mycenae, Tsountas, Chr., AE 1896, 8 ff.Google Scholar, pl. 1.

23 Verdelis, N., AE 1957 Suppl. 16–18, fig. 2Google Scholar; AM lxxxii (1967) 8ff., 21, figs. 7–17 and 23. 2.

24 Verdelis, , AM lxxxii (1967) 29 ff.Google Scholar; Snodgrass, A. M., Kadmos iv (1965) 99 ff.Google Scholar

25 Verdelis, AE 1957 Suppl. 15; AM lxxxii (1967) 7.

26 Snodgrass, op. cit. 98.

27 Lorimer, H. L., Homer and the Monuments (London, 1950) 199–201Google Scholar, pl. ii. 4.

28 Cf. BM, C 339, and V. Karageorghis, Mycenaean Art from Cyprus, pl. iv.

29 Karo, G., Die Schachtgräber von Mykenai (Munich, 1930) pl. xcvii. 443, 445, 447, pp. 103–4.Google Scholar Some similar knives have also been found in the Vapheio tholos tomb, but they have no ring on the top of the handgrip like those from Mycenae; cf. Tsountas, Chr., AE 1889, 158, pl. 8. 9.Google Scholar

30 Charitonides, S., ADelt xvi (1960) A, 85.Google Scholar

31 Cf. Stubbings, F. H., Mycenaean Pottery from the Levant (Cambridge, 1951) pl. 11. 20Google Scholar; Schaeffer, C. F. A., Enkomi-Alasia i (Paris, 1952) 121Google Scholar, fig. 51, pls. 17–18.

32 Cf. FM 1. 1, 3, 4, 6, 8.

33 BM, C 339.

34 The tassel usually hanging from the swords on pictorial scenes indicates that they were provided with a sheath, cf. MP, 239; FM 1. 1, 3, 6.

35 Ch. T. pl. xviii.

36 Cf. MP, 240, FM 1. 36–8, 40. See also CVA, Br. Mus. i, pl. 8. 12; Stais, , AE 1895, pl. 10. 13Google Scholar; N. Verdelis, AE 1956 Suppl. 6, fig. 10; Benson, J. L., AJA lxv (1961) pl. 107Google Scholar, figs. 33–4, and pl. 108, fig. 38; and Ch. T., pl. xviii.

37 It has been observed that the earliest painters of Mycenaean pictorial vases were the most accomplished, and that their successors became gradually more incompetent; cf. Catling, , AA 1970, 29.Google Scholar

38 Dawkins, R. M., BSA xvi (1909–1910) 8Google Scholar, fig. 3, and also MP 450.

39 Buschor, E. and von Massow, W., AM lii (1927) 46Google Scholar, fig. 26, and also MP 450.

40 The sherd is unpublished. It was found during the excavations at Ay. Stephanos conducted in 1960—3 by Lord William Taylour, to whom I am indebted for permission to mention it here. See ADelt xix ( 1964) B 1, 146.

41 Cf. ADelt xxiii (1968) A 188; AAA i (1968) 1. 39; ADelt xxii (1967) B 1, 199.

42 Catling, and Millett, , BSA lx (1965) 214 and 219Google Scholar; and Catling, , AA 1970, 29.Google Scholar

43 MP 246 ff.

44 Verdelis, AE 1956, Suppl. 6, figs. 9–14.

45 Ergon 1968, 8, fig. 6.

46 Papadimitriou, loc. cit. (see above, n. 12).

47 Åkerstrom, Å., Atti e Memorie dello Congresso Internazionale di Micenologia, i (1968) 58, pls. 1–3.Google Scholar

48 See MP 436 and 440; Pottier, , BCH (1907) 245–6Google Scholar; Rodenwaldt, G., Tiryns ii. 153–4Google Scholar; Demargne, P., La Crète dédalique (Paris, 1947) 167–8Google Scholar; Immerwahr, S. A., AJA xlix (1945) 540–4Google Scholar, and AJA lx (1955) 148 n. 11; and Charitonides, op. cit. 87 (see above, n. 30).

49 Catling, , AA 1970, 29.Google Scholar

50 Stubbings, , BSA xlii (1947) 60.Google Scholar

51 e.g. a spouted two-handled jar from Monemvasia is decorated with the same spirals and arcading which are shown on a silver oinochoe from the Vth Shaft Grave. Cf. ADelt xxiii (1968) A, pl. 68a–b with G. Karo, op. cit. (see above, n. 29) pl. cxxxiv. See also other specimens in Catling, , AA 1970, 30.Google Scholar