The island of Thera may be described as a sort of prehistoric Pompeii buried under volcanic deposits, which have completely transformed the configuration of the island. The results of preliminary excavations by the French in 1866 showed that the cataclysm which overwhelmed the island must (on geological grounds) have taken place about the twentieth century B.C., and that the remains of pottery must be anterior to this event.[[876]] Herodotos[[877]] states that Kadmos founded a settlement in the fourteenth century, and the Minyae again about the twelfth, and the island must have been uninhabitable for a long time previously.
The houses and other remains of civilisation discovered below the volcanic deposits show an advance on Hissarlik (second city) and the earliest Cypriote culture, and the pottery is no exception. The vases are wheel-made, fired at a moderate heat in closed furnaces (sometimes baked in the sun), and plastic forms are almost wanting.[[878]] Many are pierced with holes in the bottom, for what purpose is not known. They were often found in situ, mixed with stone implements, and with evidence of having contained grain. The forms are very regular, a cylindrical shape being specially affected, and they are made of a badly levigated clay, covered with a greyish slip, on which the patterns are laid in matt colours—white, black, or red—without any incised markings.
From Baumeister.
FIG. 81. VASES FROM THERA.
M. Dumont distinguishes four varieties of ornament: simple patterns, such as bands, hatchings, and dots; volutes, wave-patterns, and intersecting circles; vegetable motives, such as long narrow leaves or flowers; and animals, including deer, and ducks or swans. Generally there is a strong predilection for vegetable motives, and in this naturalistic tendency we may see the prelude to the Mycenaean period. Among those now at the French School at Athens, which has the best collection, are several interesting examples illustrated in Fig. [81].[[879]] One is a trefoil-mouthed jug with running quadrupeds in black, and red bands, on a grey ground; another jug is painted with birds in black, the details in red and white. A sort of cream-jug is decorated with water-plant patterns; a cylindrical jar with oblique wreaths; and a dish with seaweed. A funnel-shaped vase and a beak-mouthed jug are obvious prototypes of Mycenaean forms.
The chief differences from the Hissarlik vases are in the forms and methods of decoration, but resemblances may be noted in the long narrow necks, and the rings for suspension, as in the plastic forms when they do occur. That the fabric is a local one hardly admits of doubt, but it is interesting to note the occurrence of a bowl of white-slip ware from Cyprus in Thera,[[880]] and conversely the appearance of a vase of Thera fabric at Mycenae.[[881]] Thus we have evidence of extensive commercial relations. Some tombs of the Hellenic period seem to have been dug right down into the volcanic deposit, for they contained pottery with Geometrical decoration.[[882]]
The discovery of primitive stone idols in Thera shows that it belonged to the Cycladic civilisation, which extended from 2500 to 1600 B.C., filling up the gap between Hissarlik and Mycenae. It has been suggested that these Cycladic peoples were Carians,[[883]] subsequently driven to the Asiatic mainland by Minos, who typifies the rising power of Crete and the Mycenaean world.[[884]] This Cycladic civilisation is also exemplified in the earliest finds from other islands, such as Amorgos, Syra, Paros, and Antiparos, and in other instances noted early in the century by the observant traveller Ross.[[885]] The pottery from these sites is, however, less advanced than that of Thera, but varies in character. Painted patterns were found on vases from Amorgos and Syra, the latter in the form of brown foliage on yellow ground.
It would not be right to conclude this section without some notice of the remarkably interesting pottery excavated at Phylakopi in Melos by the British School in 1896–99, which is important as forming a connecting link between the Cycladic wares and the fully-developed Mycenaean style. Space forbids more than a brief abstract of the results obtained, which have just been given to the world in an admirable publication.[[886]] Mr. C. C. Edgar, to whom the task of studying the pottery was allotted, distinguishes four main groups:
1. (a) Primitive pottery of the cist-tomb type, corresponding to that of Hissarlik; (b) more advanced ware of the same kind.
2. Painted Geometrical wares.