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A Minoan potter's wheel with ‘marine’ decoration from Skhinias, Mirabello district1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

Theodore Eliopoulos
Theodore Eliopoulos
Affiliation:
Agios Nikolaos Museum, Crete
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Abstract

A Minoan potter's wheel is published, with the peculiar element of appliqué relief sea-shells. The object was found by chance a few years before World War II near the village of Skhinias, in the Upper Mirabello region of NE Crete, and remained unknown until now. It is the first instance of real decoration on a potter's wheel. It can be dated between MM II and LM I and could have come from Malia.

Type
Articles
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 95 , November 2000 , pp. 107 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 2000

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References

2 Evely 1988, 94, cat. no. 81 refers to a wheel from the ‘Neapolis area with Linear A inscription? No other details. MM III-LM 1 probably’. The entry seems to represent a fusion of some vague information about the Skhinias wheel and the Skhinias inscribed pithos fragment (see below, n. 10), both of which were deposited in the Neapolis Collection before 1964. This article uses Evely's technical and morphological terminology. After his article the most important contributions to the field of Minoan potting are the excavation of an LM I A pottery workshop at Zominthos (Ergon 1988, 169–71; BCH 113 (1989), 690Google Scholar), the publication of the MM II Atelier de Potier at Malia (Poursat, J. C., ‘Artisans minoens: les maisons-ateliers du Quartier Mu’, in Le Quartier Mu iii (Ét. Crét. 32; Paris, 1996), 23–43Google Scholar), the excavation of the LM III ‘Potters' Quarter’ at Gouves (D. Vallianou, TEXNH, 333–43 and ‘Κεραμικὴ τεχνολογἱα στη μινωικὴ Κρἡτἡ ᾿’ in Ancient Greek Technology, Proceedings. First International Conference (Thessaloniki, 1997), 487–503Google Scholar) and the excavation and graphic reconstruction of an LM I workshop at the farmhouse near Pitsidia (Vallianou 1995, 1036–46). For another LM I B workshop excavated at Mochlos see Soles, J. and Davaras, C., Hesp. 63 (1994), 422CrossRefGoogle Scholar and J. Soles, TEXNH, 425–30. Consult also Michaelidis, P., ‘Potters' workshops in Minoan Crete’, SMEA 32 (1993), 7–39Google Scholar and F. M. Carina, ‘Pottery workshops at Phaistos and Haghia Triada’, TEXNH, 317–22, esp. n. 4 for bibliography.

3 There are two catalogues of the Neapolis Collection in the Agios Nikolaos Museum: one probably compiled by E. Mavroides c. 1940 and another by J. Sakellarakis in 1964, when the older one was temporarily mislaid. For the latter see A.Delt. 20 (1965), Chr. 565Google Scholar. In the Sakellarakis catalogue the wheel had been renumbered 185.

4 van Effenterre, H., Nécropoles du Mirabello (Ét. Crét. 8; Paris, 1948), p. xiiGoogle Scholar.

5 See C. N. Petrou-Mesogeitis, ‘῾Αρχαιολογικἁ πεπραγμἑνα ᾿Ανατ. Κρὴτης ᾿’ (1937–8), in ᾿Επετηρἱς '῾Εταιρεἱας Κρητικῶν Σπουδῶν (1939), 530–8. It is mentioned there that the exhibition, in one of the rooms of the Neapolis High School, was opened in 1938 with finds from Dreros and antiquities from the Neapolis area offered by various donours.

6 This document was found in the archive of the Neapolis Archaeological Collection. The archive mainly covers the period from 1930 to 1945 and contains interesting correspondence from Mavroides to the directors of the Herakleion Museum (Marinatos and later Platon). Some of these documents will be published by the present author.

7 Pendlebury, J. D. S., The Archaeology of Crete (London 1939), 56 and map 4, p. 76Google Scholar and map 5, p. 124 and map 7, p. 177 and map 9, p. 315 and map 17, p. 373 and map 23 respectively.

8 Van Effentere (n. 4), 5, pl. 28.

9 According to the entries of the old catalogue they include: no. 1 (a small Hellenistic relief bowl), no. 2 (a Roman lamp inscribed with the name ΠΡΕΙΜΟΥ), no. 3 (a handleless ribbed Roman bowl), nos. 4, 162, and 163 (three Hellenistic or early Roman jugs), no. 166 (the Minoan potter's wheel published here), and no. 878 (a Linear A sherd, see next note). For nos. 1–4 there is the note ‘brought by N. Bilios (?), 22 Aug. 37’. For nos. 162, 163 and 166 there is the note ‘collected by Emm. Mavroides’. For no. 878 ‘collected by Emm. Mavroides, 1938’. In the archaeological notes published by Mavroides in the periodical Dreros (Neapolis, 1937Google Scholar) there is no mention of the wheel.

10 Dunbabin, T. J., ‘Archaeology in Greece, 1939–1945’, JHS 64 (1944), 88Google Scholar; It is published by Brice, W. C., Inscriptions in the Minoan Linear Script of Class A (Oxford, 1961), 28Google Scholar, II 25, pl. 24 and Godart, L. and Olivier, J. P., Recueil des Inscriptions en Linéaire A, iv (Ét. Crét. 21–4; Paris, 1982), 97–9Google Scholar, SK Zb 1. In 1999 it was returned to the Neapolis Collection.

11 Evely 1988, 101. For some wheels from the Archanes area with incised patterns see Sakellarakis, J., Archanes, i (Athens 1997), 321–2Google Scholar. The painted crosses on the EM II mats from Myrtos have been interpreted as playing some part in the placement of handles and spouts (for references see Evely 1988, 96). A new wheel from the LM I farmhouse at Pitsidia has a number of peculiar impressed elements, Vallianou 1995: 1040, fig. 5.

12 Evely 1988, 100–6.

13 Generally on relief decoration of sea shells see Kaiser, B., Untersuchungen zum minoischm Relief’ (Bonn, 1977), 113–18Google Scholar and Fost 1982, 100–3. The latter examines ‘marine’ plastic decoration on pottery: cockleshells, argonauts, tritons, barnacles, etc. For more MM pottery decorated with plastic cockleshells, see Betancourt, P., Kommos, ii (Princeton, 1990), 165Google Scholar. An interesting object on exhibit at the Agios Nikolaos Museum (no. 7728) and not included in Foster 1982 is a clay stand with appliqué argonauts. It was originally in the Myrtos School Collection of antiquities but is thought to come from the Mesara, Cadogan, G., Acts of the 3rd Cretological Congress (Athens, 1973), 36Google Scholar. Cf. also sherds with cockleshells from Diaskari on exhibit at the Agios Nikolaos Museum no. 8744 (also not included in Foster 1982).

14 Foster 1982, 92.

15 Poursat, J. C., Les ivoires mycéniens (Paris, 1977), 104, 105Google Scholar.

16 e.g. recently Sakellarakis, J., Archanes, ii (Athens, 1997), 502, figs. 491, 493Google Scholar.

17 Matthäus, H., Die Bronzegefäße der kretisch-mykenischen Kultur (PBF 2, 1; Munich, 1980), 335Google Scholar.

18 Foster, K. P., Aegean Faience of the Bronze Age (New Haven and London, 1978), 92, 93Google Scholar.

19 Hawes, H. B., Gournia (Philadelphia, 1908), pl. 11, no. B16Google Scholar.

20 Higgins, R. A., Greek and Roman Jewellery (London, 1961), 78, 79Google Scholar; Xenaki-Sakellariou, A., Οι θαλαμωτοἱ τἁφοι των Μυκηνὼν (Athens, 1985), 307Google Scholar, pls. 5, 7, 38, 79, 87, 113, 114, 119, 136, 137. Relief cockleshells are of cource found worldwide and in many periods as decoration on vases. For the Hellenistic period see e.g. Drougou, S., ‘῾Ημὶτομοι σκὺφοι με πλαστικὲς επιθετες αχὶβὰδες’, in Μνὴμη Δ . Λαζαρὶδη (Thessaloniki, 1990), 86–98Google Scholar.

21 Evans, , PM i, 519, fig. 378Google Scholar; Vandenabeele, F., ‘Le monde marin dans les sanctuaires minoens’, Aegaeum, 7 (1991), 239–51Google Scholar for sea shells in sanctuaries. Nilsson, M., The Minoan–Mycenaean Religion 2 (Lund, 1950), 153Google Scholar had expressed reservations for any ‘religious’ use of cockleshells, allowing only for the triton shell to be thus used.

22 Evely 1988, 100, 101. See also some more recent chronological observations on the types of potter's wheels in Quartier Mu, iii. 112 (Neo-Palatial type 3A already introduced in the Proto-Palatial period) and in Vallianou 1995, 1045.

23 Poursat, J. C., ‘Reliefs d' applique moulés’, in Le Quartier Mu, ii (Ét. Crét. 24; Paris, 1980), 116–32Google Scholar; Foster 1982, no. It should be noted that relief clay cockleshells and triton shells on sherds have also been found at Mavrikiano, near Olous (H. van Effenterre, (n. 4), 4, pl. 3), Mavrikiano is not near Malia as Foster (1982, 100 n. 103) stated but a site not far from Skhinias. These could also be related to the Malia workshop. They are also deposited at the Neapolis Archaeological Collection (no. 212); and it is noteworthy that their fabric seems similar to that of the Skhinias wheel.