Michael Boyd gave a lecture on Tuesday about his work at Keros and the Cyclades in the 3rd Millennium BCE. Everything I learned just gave me more questions, as seems to be a pattern with prehistory. Why were all of the statuettes broken? What did the looters take? What are these ‘sauce boats’ and ‘frying pans’?
On Thursday we got a fantastic tour of the Museum of Cycladic Art. While I appreciated it, and learned a lot, I couldn’t help but wonder how much of what we were told was true. The Cycladic art we have is so old, and we don’t have any accompanying writing, not to mention the damage done by looters. It’s really impossible to know what the statues meant or what they signify. Of course, we can have theories, but as Routsi mentioned at the end of the tour: “in this kind of work, every theory is correct.” I guess I don’t really see much point making theories that are this hard to back up, at least on an academic basis. Obviously personal theories are acceptable, and I think I would make some of my own if I worked on the Cyclades, but from an outsider’s perspective I find them a little unhelpful in understanding exactly what we know and don’t know.
A few of us finished up the rest of the museum by ourselves, and it had a lot of great pieces. I particularly liked some of the Cretian representative pottery from the upper floors. I’ve always been interested in the intersection between decoration and usefulness of (ancient and modern) objects.
When we got home that night we bought some air-dry clay and tried to make some of our own pottery. I started by trying to copy some of the objects from the museum, but I had to give up on that pretty quickly. Granted we didn’t have much space or the right tools, but I was reminded how hard it is to make even the simplest objects! What may look crude actually takes a lot of refinement in skill, especially when you can’t go to the store and get the materials ready-made (How did they procure clay?). When our pieces dry a little more we will sand, shape, and paint them.
