The pottery of the Bronze Age may be classified under two main headings: Painted and Unpainted Pottery. Of these the former is practically confined to the later tombs, and we naturally turn first to the unpainted pottery as taking precedence in chronology and development.
Almost the commonest, and probably the earliest, variety is the red polished ware, sometimes plain, but generally ornamented with incised patterns or reliefs (see Plate [XI]., Nos. 3, 4, 7).[[828]] The polished surface, which seems to betoken a great advance in technique, was doubtless produced by means of a burnisher. In some varieties the surface is black, a result due to the action of smoke in firing. The commonest forms are a globular bottle with long neck and handle, a plain bowl, a cooking-pot on feet, and a two-handled globular amphora; besides composite and abnormal forms. None of these vases have any kind of base except the cooking-pots.
The incised patterns, when they occur, are scratched in deeply before firing, and often filled in with white; the patterns, which tend to become more and more elaborate, consist of zigzags, wavy lines, chequers and lozenges, network patterns, and concentric circles. Ornament in relief is applied in the form of strips of clay, often worked into the shape of rude figures of trees, snakes, animals, or simple patterns. Many tombs and even cemeteries, as at Alambra, Agia Paraskevi, and elsewhere, contain no other form of pottery; but though these are undoubtedly earlier than the mixed tombs, the red ware in a degenerate form continues long afterwards.
There is also a small class of black-slip ware, covered with a thin dark lustreless slip which flakes off easily. The ornamentation, which is seldom absent, is generally in the form of a straight or wavy line with a row of dots alternately on either side, either incised or in relief. The forms are much the same as in the red ware, but often seem to suggest metal or leather prototypes.
An interesting class is formed by the black punctured ware, in which the clay is black throughout, without a slip, but partly polished. Most of these vases are small jugs with a narrow neck, swelling body, and small foot, and they are ornamented with punctured dots, usually in triangular patches, but sometimes irregularly distributed. In Cyprus they are mostly found in the early necropolis at Kalopsida, but they also occur in the late Mycenaean tombs at Enkomi. The special interest of this ware is that it is found in Egypt, under such circumstances that it can fairly be dated; notably at Khata'anah in conjunction with scarabs and flint chips of the twelfth and thirteenth dynasties (2500–2000 B.C.). It is also found in the Fayûm, where Prof. Petrie obtained some good specimens.[[829]]
Allied to this is the Cypriote bucchero ware, of plain black clay without slip, ornamented with ribs or flutings. It is only found in the later tombs, and can be traced through the subsequent transitional period.[[830]]
Of the remaining fabrics the most conspicuous is that termed by Mr. Myres the base-ring ware, which is marked off from other Bronze-Age types by its flat-ringed base in all cases. The clay is dark and of fine texture, with thinly-glazed surface. The ornament is either in relief or painted in matt-white, the patterns being exclusively of a basket or network type (Plate [XI]., figs. 1, 2). The reliefs, when they occur, consist of scrolls or raised seams curving over the body, obviously in imitation of the seams of a leather bottle; they sometimes end in a leaf-ornament,[[831]] and at other times take the form of a snake. This fabric is very commonly found in the later tombs with Mycenaean vases, and hardly earlier. It has been found in Egypt and at Lachish.[[832]]
PLATE XI