The Middle Minoan Pottery of Knossos

In the sketch of the pottery of Knossos that appeared in the Journal of Hellenic Studies for 1903, pp. 157–205, it was sought to give a general account of Knossian ceramic development on the basis of such finds as were to hand up to date.Since then, however, further evidence has been accumulating such as serves to bring into clearer outline particular phases in development. This happens to be specially true of the Middle Period. The object, accordingly, of the present paper, which I undertake by kind permission of Dr. Arthur Evans, is to examine the new ceramic materials in so far as they are illustrative of the successive phases of Middle Minoan ceramic development.The results of a special examination of the pottery found in Early Minoan deposit up to date are to the effect that the two kinds of ground, respectively light and dark, coexist from the very beginning of the use of paint in Cretan ceramics. Thus it can no longer be a question of the one kind of ground supervening upon the other at any later stage but only the problem of the relation to each other, throughout the course of their collateral development, of two kinds of background which co-exist from the beginning and so co-exist in virtue of a technical principle which is as old as any decorative art.