Ancient Greek Pottery Vase. 

Size: 3 1/4 X 3 in. 

#3953 . 

Pottery, due to its relative durability, comprises a large part of the archaeological record of Ancient Greece. Since there is so much of it (over 100,000 painted vases are recorded in the international records of the Corpus vasorum antiquorum), it has exerted a disproportionately large influence on our understanding of Ancient Greek society, making the shards of pots discarded or buried in the 1st Millennium BC the best guide available to understand the customs, lifestyle, and mindset of the people. There were several vessels produced locally for everyday and kitchen use, yet finer pottery from regions such as Attica was imported by other civilizations throughout the Mediterranean, such as the Etruscans in Italy. There were a multitude of specific regional varieties, such as the South Italian Ancient Greek pottery. Throughout these places, various types and shapes of vases were used. Not all were purely utilitarian; large Geometric Amphorae were used as grave markers, kraters in Apulia served as tomb offerings, and Panathenaic Amphorae seem to have been looked on partly as objets d’art, as were later terracotta figurines. Some were highly decorative and meant for elite consumption and domestic beautification as much as serving a storage or other function, such as the krater with its primary use in diluting wine. Extremely early Greek styles of pottery, sometimes called “Aegean” rather than “Ancient Greek,” include Minoan pottery (very sophisticated by its final stages), Cycladic pottery, Minyan ware, and then Mycenaean pottery in the Bronze Age, followed by the cultural disruption of the Greek Dark Age. As the culture recovered Sub-Mycenaean pottery blended into the Protogeometric style, which is generally considered to be the separation point between Ancient Greek and the earlier period. The rise of vase painting also saw increasing decoration and mass standardized production, as geometric art became a dominant expression. The pottery produced in Archaic and Classical Greece included at first black-figure pottery, yet other styles emerged such as red-figure pottery and the white ground technique. Styles such as West Slope Ware were characteristic of the subsequent Hellenistic period, which saw vase painting’s decline.