The Cyclades is a group of islands in the
southwestern Aegean Sea which comprises
roughly thirty small islands and numerous islets.
The ancient Greeks named them Kyklades,
imagining that these islands were forming a circle
(kyklos) around the sacred island of Delos,
birthplace of the twin gods Apollo and Artemis
and site of the holiest sanctuary dedicated to
Apollo.
The ancient Cycladic culture flourished in these
islands of the Aegean Sea from c. 3300 to 1100
BCE. Along with the Minoan civilization and
Mycenaean Greece, the Cycladic culture is
considered among the three major Aegean
cultures and Cycladic art therefore comprises one
of the three main branches of Aegean art.
Many of the Cycladic Islands are particularly rich
in mineral resources—iron ores, copper, lead ores,
gold, silver, emery, obsidian and marble, with the
marble of Paros and Naxos being among the finest
and most renowned in the world. Archaeological
evidence points to sporadic Neolithic settlements
on Antiparos, Melos, Mykonos, Naxos, and other
Cycladic Islands at least as early as the 6th
millennium B.C. These earliest settlers probably
cultivated barley and wheat, and most likely fished
the Aegean for tunny and other fish. They were
also accomplished sculptors in stone, as attested
by a significant number of marble figurines
recovered on Saliagos, an 110 to 70 meters in size
islet situated between the islands of Paros and
Antiparos.
In the 3rd millennium B.C., a distinctive civilization
emerged, commonly known as the Early Cycladic
culture (ca. 3200–2300 B.C.), with important
settlement sites on Keros, a now uninhabited
island about 10 km (6 mi) southeast of Naxos, and
at Halandriani on the island of Syros. At this time
in the Early Bronze Age, metallurgy developed at a
fast pace in the Mediterranean. It was especially
fortuitous for the Early Cycladic culture that the
Cycladic islands were rich in iron ores and copper,
and that they offered a favorable route across the
Aegean sea. Inhabitants turned to fishing,
shipbuilding and exporting of their mineral
resources, as trade flourished between the
Cyclades, Minoan Crete, Helladic Greece and the
coasts of Asia Minor.
Early Cycladic culture can be divided into two
main phases, the Grotta-Pelos (Early Cycladic I)
culture (ca. 3200?–2700 B.C.), and the Keros-
Syros (Early Cycladic II) culture (ca. 2700–
2400/2300 B.C.), with the chosen conventional
names corresponding to significant burial sites.
Unfortunately, few settlements from the Early
Cycladic period have been discovered, and much
of the evidence comes from burial sites and
assemblages of objects, mostly marble vessels
and figurines, that the islanders buried with their
dead. Varying qualities and quantities of grave
goods point to disparities in wealth, suggesting
that some form of social ranking was emerging in
the Cycladic area during this period.
The majority of Cycladic marble vessels and
sculptures were produced during the Grotta-Pelos
and Keros-Syros periods. Early Cycladic sculpture
comprises predominantly female figures that
range from simple modification of the stone to
developed representations of the human form,
some with natural proportions and some more
idealized. Many of these figures, especially those
of the Spedos type, display a remarkable
consistency in form and proportion that suggests
they were planned with a compass. Scientific
analysis has shown that the surface of the marble
was painted with mineral-based pigment, azurite
being used for blue and cinnabar for red. The
vessels from this period display bold, simple forms
that reinforce the Early Cycladic predilection for a
harmony of parts and a conscious preservation of
proportions.
The marble figures usually called "idols" or
"figurines", though neither name is exactly
accurate: the former term suggests a religious
function which is by no means agreed on
scientists, and the latter could not properly apply
to the largest of figures, with a number of them
being almost life size.
The majority of these figures are highly stylized
representations of the female human form,
typically having a flat, geometric quality which
gives them a striking resemblance to
contemporary art, as we nowadays know it.
However the schematic and ascetic simplicity of
these figures is a modern aesthetic
misconception, as there is evidence that the idols
were originally brightly painted. A majority of the
figurines are female, depicted nude, and with
arms folded across the stomach, typically with the
right arm held below the left. Most scholars who
have considered these artifacts from an
anthropological point of view have assumed that
they represent the Great Goddess of nature. This
interpretation is not generally agreed though upon
by a significant number of archeologists, with the
marble figures having been variously interpreted
as idols of the gods, images of death and
children's dolls.
Suggestions that these images were idols in the
strict sense—cult objects which were the focus of
ritual worship—are unsupported by any
archeological evidence. What the archeological
evidence does though suggest is that these
images were regularly used in funerary practice,
as they have all been unearthed in burials. On
some of them show clear signs of having been
repaired, implying that they were objects valued
by the deceased during life and that they were not
made specifically for funerary purposes.
Furthermore, larger figures were sometimes
broken up so that only a part of them ended up
being buried within a tomb, a phenomenon for
which there is to this day no explanation. The
figures apparently were buried equally with both
men and women but they were not found in every
grave. While the idols are most frequently found
laying on their backs in graves, a number of the
larger examples may have been used as cultual
statuary in sanctuaries.
- (PH.0172)
|
