Archaic Crete produced only as much fine painted pottery as it could consume locally. Very little Cretan pottery was exported. Finds from the Orientalizing kiln at Knossos suggest local production for local demand (Coldstream and MacDonald 1997: 197-9), and very few Knossian pots found their way to other parts of Crete. Patterns of production and consumption of large coarseware storage jars (pithoi) may have been different - modern parallels suggest more specialized production in fewer centers and a wider pattern of distribution. But such coarsewares have yet to receive the attention they deserve from ceramic petrologists. Moreover the marked difference between shapes found in tomb and domestic (well) assemblages from Knossos suggest that production was geared to particular, specialized demands. The painted polychrome pithoi from Fortetsa and the North Cemetery can have served no purpose other than as ash urns - the bright paint is poorly bonded to the fabric of the pot, and would quickly disappear in domestic use. It is the same with coroplasty. Though there are significant iconographic similarities between the terracotta plaques from Gortyn and the Praisos area,29 it is clear that moulds did not travel. The deposits represent two local schools of terracotta production deposited in local sanctuaries.
Metalwork is a slightly different story. Cretan bronze and iron production had, of course, continued throughout the Early Iron Age. Most simple jewellery (pins, fibulae) and cosmetic equipment (razors, tweezers) were of bronze. By 700 ironworkers had extended their range beyond the usual weapons and small tools, and were making the elaborate firedogs we find in the North Cemetery of Knossos. Such facts could easily be fitted into the general model of “localism,” were it not for a spectacular change that took place at around 850. Suddenly elaborate bronzes (such as quivers) and gold jewellery are being produced and consumed in Knossos. The sophisticated techniques required to produce such bronzes have no local antecedents, and the style and iconography of the objects is reminiscent of North Syria. Boardman long ago suggested that these were made by an immigrant group of North Syrian craftsmen, adapting their skills to local demand.30 The tympana or shields found in the Idaean cave and at Palaikastro seem to be the later products of this workshop (e. g., figure 14.1). But here the line ends. The Cretan bronzes being produced around 600, in particular the cuirasses, helms, and mitrai from Rethymnon, Onythe, Axos, Afrati and Dreros, owe nothing to this workshop (Hoffmann 1972).
The demand for armor is normally created by warfare, and our (very late) sources suggest that inter-city wars in Crete were as endemic as they were in any other part of Greece. This warfare may not have been of the standard hoplite type. Crete had a reputation for archery, and Cretan equipment lacks one crucial element - the shield. To be sure, votive miniature shields have been found at Gortyn and Praisos, and there are representations of hoplites with shields on the terracotta frieze from Palaikastro. But it is odd that no shield turned up in the Afrati deposit, and no bronze shield has been traced to Crete. A more “open” style of warfare than the hoplite phalanx, perhaps requiring a clearer vision than the Corinthian helmet allows, might also explain the absence of a nose-piece on the Cretan helmet.31
Oddities in Cretan pottery production may also be linked to the peculiarities of Cretan demand. In the Early Iron Age, Crete, like any other part of Greece, was producing kraters and drinking vessels. This assemblage has, rightly, been seen as related to drinking practices ancestral to the symposium. In most parts of Greece, this assemblage becomes more elaborate through time - the kraters and even the cups are covered with figure scenes, and a full range of pouring and storing vessels appears. Archaic Crete bucks this trend. Cretan kraters, and particularly Cretan kraters with figured scenes are more common in the years before 800 than they were thereafter. The drinking assemblage becomes plainer and simpler, the monochrome one-handled cup ousting other drinking shapes (in particular the bell skyphos) by about 700 (tables 14.4 and 14.5). This is one of many indications that symposium culture
Did not take root in Crete. This, and the peculiarities of its visual culture, set Crete apart, not only from archaic Greece, but from much of the archaic Mediterranean in the sixth century.
World History
