Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/137

 ii6 Primitive Greixe: Mycenian Art. vases exhibit considerable variety ; whilst effort to give them a pleasing exterior is shown in the designs which adorn their sides. Both tools and vases are discovered in megalithic monu- ments, the funerary character of which cannot be questioned ; or else are picked up on the sites of lacustrine stations, which latter are recognizable from the mass of relics, industrial and otherwise, left by populations long settled in houses overhanging the sides of the lakes, raised on piles.^ These products are also met, mixed with shells, in Kjoecken 7noeddings, or kitchen- middens, sometimes covering no inconsiderable area ; they are understood to be remains of encampments of tribes established on the coasts. Again, on more than one point have been recovered the actual sites of workshops in which these weapons and tools were made ; the latter now rough-hewn, now nearly finished, lie side by side with the fragments of stone instruments which served to cut and polish them. The processes and amount of patient labour involved in their fabrication are clearly brought home to us by these finds, the perfect workmanship of which is truly marvellous. Several of the workshops lay within the circuit-walls made of mud which fenced primitive hamlets. Between these earthworks which the spade and plough- share of the labourer have broken through almost everywhere, on these docks where countless obscure inventors spent their intellectual energy, in the ooze and gravel of these lakes, under stone blocks constituting sepultures of rude grandeur, are found objects all of which belong to a unique civilization ; a term hardly applicable to the preceding epoch, but which here comes nigh to being true. There are of course certain local varieties, certain inequalities of manipulation ; but, considered as a whole, apart from these few exceptions, the monuments scattered over this vast region present rare uniformity of technique. Although its beginnings are linked with the paleothic age, it is quite distinct from it by the wealth of its appliances, the variety and elegance of its industrial products. A further peculiarity which distinguishes it from the cultures of the nations of the Mediterranean, is that whilst showing considerable advance, in many respects it still does without metal. These nations, whose heritage has come to us from the Roman Empire, became acquainted with the use 1 The word palafit, or piioiis^ is derived from the Italian palafiiti, fixed, stuck, piles.