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Cycladic Lead and Silver Metallurgy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

N. H. Gale  and
Z. A. Stos-Gale
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Extract

Interest in the prehistory of the Cyclades may fairly be said to have been awakened in the middle of the nineteenth century when travellers like Walpole or Fiedler were intrigued by what we now regard as one of the characteristic products of ECII times in the Cyclades—the marble folded-arm figurines whose harmony, balance, and economy of artistic expression appeal so much to the admirers of twentieth-century artists such as Mondrian or Modigliani. Reports of other prehistoric material from the Cyclades soon followed from J. T. Bent, U. Köhler, and F. Dümmler, whilst more systematic explorations began with the work of Edgar in Pelos, and Atkinson and others at Phylakopi on Melos.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 76 , November 1981 , pp. 169 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1981

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References

Acknowledgements. We are very grateful to Professor C. Renfrew for suggesting that we extend our studies from Archaic times into the Bronze Age and for his subsequent enthusiastic encouragement of our work and for the continual encouragement and assistance which we have received also from Professor C. Doumas. We gratefully acknowledge the help which we have received from Drs. K. Tsakos and H. Zervoudaki, Ephors of the Cyclades. Our thanks are due for continuing assistance in many ways to Drs. H. Catling, R. Jones, J. Carrington-Smith, C. Mee, Mr. A. Spawforth, and Mrs. H. Efthymiades of the British School at Athens, to Drs. O. Tsakos-Alexandri, M. Vlasopoulou, and K. Assimenos of the National Museum, Athens, to Drs. M. Vickers, R. Moorey, H. Brock, C. Kraay, and D. M. Metcalf of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, to M. Warhurst of the Merseyside County Museums, Liverpool, to Drs. B. Cook and P. T. Craddock of the British Museum, to Professor H. Mussche and Dr. P. Spitaels of the Seminarie voor Griekse Archeologie, Ghent, to Drs. J. Bornovas, N. G. Melidonis and S. Papamarinopoulos of IGME, Athens, and to our former colleagues Professor W. Gentner, Drs. O. Müller, G. A. Wagner, and H. Gropengiesser of Heidelberg. For the analytical measurements in Oxford we are grateful to Professor E. T. Hall, Professor K. Allen, and Drs. A. Jones and J. Rose for making available facilities in their Departments. Finally we gratefully acknowledge financial support for this work from the Science Research Council, the British Academy, and the Volkswagen Foundation.

Abbreviations

Aegean World I Doumas, C. (ed.), Thera and the Aegean World Vol. 1 (1978).Google Scholar

Aegean World II Doumas, C. (ed.), Thera and the Aegean World Vol. 2 (1980).Google Scholar

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BSRGB Bulletin Societé Royale Belge de Géographie, Bruxelles.

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1 The choice and definition of a ‘cultural’ or chronological system for the description of the Early Cycladic period is at present a matter of dispute amongst Aegean prehistorians; a dispute into which we do not propose to enter. As a matter of convenience only (and with no implication of preference) we attempt to classify the artefacts which we discuss according to the system EC I, EC II, EC III, MC, whilst admitting that in many cases certainty is impossible since the appropriate stratigraphy or proper description of associated pottery is either wholly missing or inadequately reported. With this in mind it seems adequate for our purposes roughly to equate the Grotta-Pelos phase with EC I, the Keros-Syros phase with EC II, and the Phylakopi I phase with EC III. For recent discussions of terminology see Barber, R. N. L. and MacGillivray, J. A., AJA lxxxiv (1980) 141–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Caskey, J. L., Historia xxvii (1978) 488–91Google Scholar; Coleman, J. E., Prehistory (1979) 48–50 and 64–5Google Scholar; Renfrew, C., Prehistory (1979) 51–63Google Scholar; Doumas, C., Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology xlviii (1977)Google Scholar; Renfrew, C., Civilisation 53–5 and 135–221.Google Scholar

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9 Renfrew, C., AJA lxxi (1967) 1–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Plates 1–10.

10 Civilisation 308–38.

11 Metalwork; Art and Culture 117–22.

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45 Gale, Gentner, and Wagner, op. cit. (n. 35), have given analyses of 110 archaic Greek silver coins, the great majority of which will have been produced from silver derived from argentiferous galena.

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105 Op. cit. (n. 22).

106 e.g. Metalwork, Catalogue 3288–91.

107 For which we thank Dr. P. T. Craddock.

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