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The Earliest Minoans in the South-East Aegean: a Reconsideration of the Evidence1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Jack L. Davis
Jack L. Davis
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Chicago
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Extract

In the south-east Aegean, among the earliest finds reported to be Minoan were those of Italian excavators in the Dodecanese. A reference in 1928 to “numerosi avanzi di ceramica del tipo di Camares” in the Vathy cave on Kalymnos is typical (Maiuri, p. 114). Yet little imported Middle Minoan pottery has been published from the south-east Aegean. Many sherds described in preliminary reports as Kamares or MM (as were those at Vathy), when illustrated, have turned out not to be imports but local products. It today seems clear that around the time of the Shaft Graves, many pots with dark ground decoration copying Cretan designs were produced and distributed in this part of the Aegean. Largely on the basis of its decoration (believed in imitation of MM pottery), the discovery of such pottery in the south-east Aegean has been taken as evidence of contact with MBA Crete (Mee 1978: 134). I will argue here, however, that if the contexts in which it has been found are carefully examined, there is little evidence that this local dark ground pottery was produced prior to the beginning of the Late Minoan period; nor is there much unassailable stylistic evidence that it indeed was produced in imitation of MM styles. It becomes necessary to reconsider the evidence for contacts between Crete and the south-east Aegean in the MBA, and MBA settlement patterns in this area.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anatolian Studies , Volume 32 , December 1982 , pp. 33 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 1982

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