THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE VOL.I by W.Ridgeway 1901

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This
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54 PREHISTORIC REMAINS
PREHISTORIC REMAINS AND
AND THEIR DISTRIBUTION.
THEIR DISTRIBUTION. 53
ment
The First Settlement^. "The earliest deposits at Phylakopi
is only a survival of the primitive incised ware of the
aiford evidence of human habitation earliest
(fragments of earthenware
deposit.
The
cooking utensils) without as yet any corresponding traces of
Aegean linear signs
make their appearance in the
second
walls. The inhabitants had probably no permanent stone
settlement, and they especially coincide with the
structure, and may have used very rude occurrence
dwellings like the
of painted geometric ware. Obsidian was very
abundant.
hut dwellings of Apulia, and the cave and hut dwellings of
Tlie Tlnrd Settlement. Instead of an open town we have
Sicily."
now a walled
The incised pottery of this earliest stratum bears the closest
(dty.
Mud plaster is here as in the second
resemblance to that found at Stentinello in Sicily (p. G9). In
settlement employed to finish off walls. Painting on stucco
now
this stratum was found a marble fragment of what might have
appears. One room was adorned with white tlowers on a
been a basin or large bowl along with a rich crimson
fragment of some
ground. Other walls showed groups of flying-fish
implement in black in blue,
stone, and there were also obsidian knives.
yellow and black paints with indications of rocks,
Among the Greek islands Melos has a seaweeds and
monopoly of obsidian.
sponges. There were even the fragments of a
The Second Settlement atfords ample evidence of house human figure
in the same colours
;
it
apparently held a net or
walls,
having no connection with the later strong wall which a garment.
goes
A
right over few bronze
them, but the town had as yet no furtitication
pins were found, and the fragment of a lead
vessel with incised
wall.
lines marking the rim. Stone utensils
rubbers,
The houses have stone thresholds, and there is evidence
mortars, pestles, saddle-querns were in considerable
that the walls were quantity.
plastered.
" In the
The primitive incised ware of the earliest deposit with its
pottery the transition from and the continuity with
the
crude herring-bone pattern dispersed over the whole surface
previous ])eriod are e([ually
well marked n\ this stratum."
never occurs in any part of the The more advanced
wall-region
of the second
painted geometric ware of the third town,
with
settlement, while on the other hand the finely incised and
its ever-growing tendenc}' towards curvilinear schemes, is
hand-polish('(I ware of the second settlement with its only
grouping
the finished outcome of the simpler painted geometric
and distribution of the geometric ornament never occurs in the
technifiue which goes along with the fine incised geometric
ware of the second settlement.
earliest (le})osit.
It is an e(iual sign of progress when the ware
This favourite fine
with geometric ornament in lustrous black paint on a white
incised geometric ware of the second
slip, which is e({uall\- ty])ical in the sec(nd S('ttlemi;nt tends to be exceeded in
settlement, shows a
(juantity even in the same
similar sense of grou])ing and distribution of the ornament,
deposit by a geometric ware decorated with a lustreless black
which has nothing parallel to it
among the in