Marine style
As a marine style one will vase painting style in the Minoan art called, typical of the Neupalastzeit (more precisely Spätminoikum IB 1500 . BC. To 1450 BC..) Of the Bronze Age civilization of Crete is.
A characteristic of the marine style is a dense painting with relatively realistically depicted invertebrate marine animals , especially with paper boats ('nautilus') and octopuses as well as triton snails , starfish , corals and sponges . The motifs are applied with a single dark color on a light background.
Ceramic objects with marine-style paintings are often very high-quality vessels (water and wine jugs, etc.). These can be found particularly in places that have been identified as palaces or places of worship, often associated with other cult objects such as double axes and cult horns . They are less often found in graves. Vessels with a sea style decoration could therefore have had a certain cultic function. A real sea cult, however, has not been proven. At most, this style reflects the special importance of the sea and marine fauna, not least as a source of food, for the Minoans. However, it is unclear why it arose precisely during the New Palace period. A connection with the Thera catastrophe is at least conceivable. Finds of pottery in typical marine style are not limited to Crete, but were also made in localities on various Cycladic islands and on mainland Greece, where they were probably imported at the time.
Jug with u. a. Paper boats, around 1500 BC Chr.
“Krug von Poros”, a particularly elaborately crafted piece
Bottle with handle with octopus as the main motif
Jug with u. a. Paper boats, Minoan export goods from Phylakopi
Larnax with octopus
literature
- Walter Müller: Cretan clay pots with sea decor: Development and position within the fine ceramics of Late Minoan I B on Crete. Gebrüder Mann Verlag, Berlin 1997, ISBN 978-3-7861-1793-3 .
