CHAPTER VI

_PRIMITIVE FABRICS_

Introductory—Cypriote Bronze-Age pottery—Classification—Mycenaean pottery in Cyprus—Graeco-Phoenician fabrics—Shapes and decoration—Hellenic and later vases—Primitive pottery in Greece—Troy—Thera and Cyclades—Crete—Recent discoveries—Mycenaean pottery—Classification and distribution—Centres of fabric—Ethnography and chronology.

In the preceding chapters we have given a general _résumé_ of the subject of Greek pottery; we have discussed the sites on which Greek vases have been found, the methods employed in their manufacture, the shapes which they assume, and the uses to which they were put both on earth and in the tombs; and we have now reached perhaps the most important part of the subject, at any rate in the eyes of archaeologists, namely, the history of the rise, development and decadence of painting on Greek vases.

It has already been noted (in