Apart from the four small skiffs or canoes (W622—25) from the Flotilla Fresco, there are few other Bronze Age images that can be interpreted unambiguously as realistic representations of small boats. There is a large corpus of seals and a few sealings and gold signet rings (W701—981; Wedde 2000: 331—49), almost exclusively from Crete and ranging in date from EM III to LM III with a peak in MM III—LM I, which depict boats or ships of various kinds in “cultic" or “ritual" scenes. Within this corpus several subcorpora can be distilled. One such group (W901—912; Wedde 2000: fig. 18) features anthropomorphic figures of deities or worshippers in boats along with other standard elements of Minoan cult scenes, including trees (W904) and tall structures surmounted by horns of consecration (W908). Another group comprises the so-called talismanic seals, characterized by the use of a tubular drill and broad cutting stone to create heavy geometric elements, resulting in highly abstracted motifs (Onassoglu 1985; Wedde 2000: 134—41, figs. 12—14). When ships or boats appear on talismanic seals, typically only the bow and a portion of the length of the hull are shown, along with a bird device on the bow and a highly stylized ikrion, outlined by net and lunette patterns, rising from the hull (Wedde 2000: figs. 12—14). The trouble with identifying these images of watercraft as small boats is that their dimensions often cannot be estimated on human scale if no figures are depicted, and for many we cannot rule out that the artist sought to illustrate fantastical or magical craft rather than boats faithful to real-life examples. Thus, the cultic group
3.15 Incised image of a boat with human and animal, Korphi t'Aroniou, Naxos, Early Cycladic. After Wedde 2000: Catalogue 413.
(W901—912) depicts craft carrying an individual or a small group of figures suggesting a small boat, but with the figures themselves often appearing at distinctly different scales, it is difficult to infer how large a vessel the artist imagined, if that was even an important detail at all. Consider another example, an Early Cycladic graffito cut into white marble from Korphi t'Aroniou on Naxos (W413; Fig. 3.15). This pictograph presents a narrative scene ofa flat-hulled boat with a prominent rising bow, onto which a quadruped (goat?), more than half as long as the boat itself, has been loaded while a human holding implements in each hand steps onto a spur at the stern. Perhaps the intended narrative is the short-distance transport of an animal or two to grazing lands or for trading with another coastal community, but I find it equally compelling to understand this graffito as a kind of shorthand depiction of a much bigger event, such as the departure scene of an early colonizing expedition in which these figures stand in for many animals and people setting out in larger ships — for example, from the Cyclades to Ayia Photia on Crete in the EBA. In rare instances, we can be more certain that the artist intended to illustrate a small boat. A green steatite seal, found in a MM I context at the palace at Malia (W808), depicts two men occupying most of the space in a flat-hulled boat lacking a mast or other rigging, with five parallel, subvertical appendages to the hull that probably represent oars (Fig. 3.16). Below the boat, six fish swim randomly about. The iconographic elements and the minimal rendering of this scene suggest a simple fisherman's rowboat at work. Other cases are more ambiguous. For example, the lip of a Mycenaean LH IIIC pictorial krater recently excavated at Kynos preserves portions of the mast, forestay, backstay, and the extremity of either the stern or the bow of a sailing vessel (Dakoronia 2002: 286—87; Fig. 3.17). No sail is visible, but a single standing figure operates an oar, indicating the possibility of a harbor scene. Fanouria Dakoronia (2002: 287) reads the vessel as a fishing boat, pointing to similarities with the ship depicted on the LH IIIC stirrup jar from Skyros (W655), to which she ascribes a similar function (Fig. 3.18). Others have
3.16 Green steatite seal showing two men in a boat with fish swimming underneath, Malia MM I. Wedde 2000: Catalogue 808, after Van Effen-tere 1980: 72, fig. 98. Courtesy of Michael Wedde.
3.17 Fragmentary boat from an LH IIIC pictorial krater, Kynos. After Dakoronia 2002: 290,
Fig. 11.
3.18 Motif of a sailing ship from an LH IIIC stirrup jar, Skyros. Skyros Archaeological Museum A77.
Not generally taken the Skyros vessel as a fishing craft, however, and this once again underscores problems of confidence in the recognition of small boats.
World History
