Minoan pottery

The Minoan civilization produced a wide variety of richly decorated Minoan pottery. Its restless sequence of quirky maturing artistic styles reveals something of Minoan patrons' pleasure in novelty while they assist archaeologists in assigning relative dates to the strata of their sites. Pots that contained oils and ointments, exported from 18th century BC Crete, have been found at sites through the Aegean islands and mainland Greece, in Cyprus, along coastal Syria and in Egypt, showing the wide trading contacts of the Minoans.
The pottery includes vases, figurines, models of buildings, and burial urns called larnakes. Several pottery shapes, especially the rhyton cup, were also produced in soft stones such as steatite, but there was almost no overlap with metal vessels. The finest achievements came in the Middle Minoan period, with the palace pottery called Kamares ware, and the Late Minoan all-over patterned "Marine Style" and "Floral Style". These were widely exported around the Aegean civilizations and sometimes beyond, and are the high points of the Minoan pottery tradition.
The most comprehensive collection is in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum on Crete.

Traditional chronology

3500–2900 BC	EMI	Prepalatial
2900–2300 BC	EMII	Prepalatial
2300–2100 BC	EMIII	Prepalatial
2100–1900 BC	MMIA	Prepalatial
1900–1800 BC	MMIB	Protopalatial
1800–1750 BC	MMIIA	Protopalatial
1750-1700 BC	MMIIB	Neopalatial
1700–1650 BC	MMIIIA	Neopalatial
1650–1600 BC	MMIIIB	Neopalatial
1600–1500 BC	LMIA	Neopalatial
1500–1450 BC	LMIB	Postpalatial
1450–1400 BC	LMII	Postpalatial
1400–1350 BC	LMIIIA	Postpalatial
1350–1100 BC	LMIIIB	Postpalatial

The traditional chronology for dating Minoan civilization was developed by Sir Arthur Evans in the early years of the 20th century AD. His terminology and the one proposed by Nikolaos Platon are still generally in use and appear in this article.
For more details, see the Minoan chronology.
Evans classified fine pottery by the changes in its forms and styles of decoration. Platon concentrated on the episodic history of the Palace of Knossos. A new method, fabric analysis, involves geologic analysis of coarse and mainly non-decorated sherds as though they were rocks. The resulting classifications are based on composition of the sherds.

Production and techniques

Little is known about the way the pottery was produced, but it was probably in small artisanal workshops, often clustered in settlements near good sources of clay for potting. For many, potting may well have been a seasonal activity, combined with farming, although the volume and sophistication of later wares suggests full-time specialists, and two classes of workshop, one catering to the palaces. There is some evidence that women were also potters. Archaeologists seeking to understand the conditions of production have drawn tentative comparisons with aspects of both modern Cretan rural artisans and the better-documented Egyptian and Mesopotamian Bronze Age industries. In Linear B the word for potter is "ke-ra-me-u".
Technically, slips were widely used, with a variety of effects well understood. The potter's wheel appears to have been available from the MM IB, but other "handmade" methods of forming the body remained in use, and were needed for objects with sculptural shapes. Ceramic glazes were not used, and none of the wares were fired to very high temperatures, remaining earthenware or terracotta. All of these characteristics remain true of later Greek pottery throughout its great period. The finest wares often have very thin-walled bodies. The excavation of an abandoned LM kiln at Kommos, complete with its "wasters", is developing understanding of the details of production. The styles of pottery show considerable regional variation within Crete in many periods.

Early Minoan

Early Minoan pottery is broadly characterized by a large number of local wares with frequent Cycladic parallels or imports, suggesting a population of checkerboard ethnicity deriving from various locations in the eastern Aegean and beyond.

FN, EM I

Early Minoan pottery, to some extent, continued, and possibly evolved from, the local Final Neolithic without a severe break. Many suggest that Minoan civilization evolved in-situ and was not imported from the East. Its other main feature is its variety from site to site, which is suggestive of localism of Early Minoan social traditions.
Studies of the relationship between EM I and FN have been conducted mainly in East Crete. There the Final Neolithic has affinities to the Cyclades, while both FN and EM I settlements are contemporaneous, with EM I gradually replacing FN. Of the three possibilities, no immigration, total replacement of natives by immigrants, immigrants settling among natives, Hutchinson takes a compromise view:

Pyrgos Ware

EM I types include Pyrgos Ware, also called "Burnished Ware". The major form was the "chalice", or Arkalochori Chalice, in which a cup combined with a funnel-shaped stand could be set on a hard surface without spilling. As the Pyrgos site was a rock shelter used as an ossuary, some hypothesize ceremonial usage]. This type of pottery was black, grey or brown, and burnished, with some sort of incised linear pattern. It may have imitated wood.

Tripod Cooking Pots

The EM II era in the Minoan civilization saw the start of tripod cooking pots at places like Knossos, with that came a brief adoption of horned stands in cooking pot production, primarily used during the EM II period. These features have not been identified elsewhere beyond Knossos and surrounding regions. Cups had reduced in size for it to be used by one person. The vast majority of these Minoan tripod cooking pots had deep featured bodies, usually being supported with three legs with either horizontal handles or vertical handles with a small opening on the top. They appear to be the most common way to cook. These cooking tripods were made from red firing clay with rock fragments to create the coarse touch that these pots had. The usage of animal goods can be identified in the tripod cooking pots, and the usage of plant byproducts can also be identified. The mixture of both can be found in the tripod cooking pots, but with plant byproducts being more evident than animal byproducts in some instances. There appears to be also found residue of beeswax in the tripod cooking pots. Most of these discoveries were found at Sissi. What that beeswax was used for is uncertain. This appears to potentially lead to the possibility of subtypes of these cooking pots. There is evidence that these pots started to show up during the EMI in the Hagia Photia; its appearance in the Hagia Photia during the second EMII period is questionable. Most of these discoveries were located in the Northern and Northeastern sections of the island.

Incised Ware

Another EM I type, Incised Ware, also called Scored Ware, were hand-shaped, round-bottomed, dark-burnished jugs and bulbous cups and jars. Favored decor was incised line patterns, vertical, horizontal or herring-bone. These pots are from the north and northeast of Crete and appear to be modeled after the Kampos Phase of the Grotta-Pelos early Cycladic I culture. have suggested imports or immigrations. See also Hagia Photia.

Agyios Onouphrios, Lebena

The painted parallel-line decoration of Ayios Onouphrios I Ware was drawn with an iron-red clay slip that would fire red under oxidizing conditions in a clean kiln but under the reducing conditions of a smoky fire turn darker, without much control over color, which could range from red to brown. A dark-on-light painted pattern was then applied. From this beginning, Minoan potters already concentrated on the linear forms of designs, perfecting coherent designs and voids that would ideally suit the shape of the ware. Shapes were jugs, two-handled cups and bowls. The ware came from north and south central Crete, as did Lebena Ware of the same general types but decorated by painting white patterns over a solid red painted background. The latter came from EM I tombs.

Koumasa and Fine Gray Ware

In EM IIA, the geometric slip-painted designs of Koumasa Ware seem to have developed from the wares of Aghios Onouphrios. The designs are in red or black on a light background. Forms are cups, bowls, jugs and teapots. Also from EM IIA are the cylindrical and spherical pyxides called Fine Gray Ware or just Gray Ware, featuring a polished surface with incised diagonals, dots, rings and semicircles.

Vasiliki Ware

The EM IIA and IIB Vasiliki Ware, named for the Minoan site in eastern Crete, has mottled glaze effects, early experiments with controlling color, but the elongated spouts drawn from the body and ending in semicircular spouts show the beginnings of the tradition of Minoan elegance. The mottling was produced by uneven firing of the slip-covered pot, with the hottest areas turning dark. Considering that the mottling was controlled into a pattern, touching with hot coals was probably used to produce it. The effect was paralleled in cups made of mottled stone.

EM III Pottery

In the latest brief transition, in eastern Crete begin to be covered in dark slip with light slip-painted decor of lines and spirals; the first checkered motifs appear; the first petallike loops and leafy bands appear, at Gournia. Rosettes appear and spiral links sometimes joined into bands. These motifs are . In north central Crete, where Knossos was to emerge, there is little similarity: dark on light linear banding prevails; footed goblets make their appearance.