Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/195

 174 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. himself records a misadventure of this kind.^ After the event, was it always easy, think you, to differentiate between the objects they found in situ, from those which had rolled there with the fallen rubbish ? — for be it remembered it was not a piece of wall or a perfect vase upon which judgment had to be passed, but a slender, characterless punch of bronze or a light piece of jewellery ; and is there any one who can tell us how long these insignificant articles were handled to and fro in the shovel ere attention was drawn to them ? On the other hand, there are no valid reasons why we should not admit that at Hissarlik, as in the prehistoric villages of Thera, the primitive inhabitants, whilst demanding of stone and terra-cotta the material for all their implements, were not wholly unacquainted with the use of metal. But if metal was exceedingly rare at the bottom of the trench, this was more than made good by the profuse abundance of stone found at the depth of from twelve to sixteen metres from the surface. Here were collected most of the axes, hammers, knives, and saws of Figs. 4, 6, 9, 10, 19, 20. It is quite conceivable that the finest-grained and most compact stones may refuse to lend themselves to certain uses demanded of them. Accordingly, as a rule, wood, stag-horn, and bone supplied the material for instruments which a patient and cunning hand fashioned into the required shape. Wood, being less resisting, has disappeared, but numbers of awls, needles, and pins of varied forms, amongst which is one with a stem in the form of a spiral, have sur- vived. As regards the two or three ivory fragments picked up on this same level, is their remote antiquity well established } Utensils for every-day life were, as a rule, made of baked clay. Great jars, sometimes over two metres high, served as cellars for the preservation of food, or as reservoirs for water, oil, and wine. Instead of washing-tubs they used large terra-cotta bowls ; of baked clay too were all their vessels for eating, drink- ing, cooking, and the like, the shape of which varied according to their destination, whether intended to go on the fire or on the table. Again, of terra-cotta were their hooks for hanging up clothes, the handles of their brushes, their ex-votos, and the weights of their looms and fishing-nets. We cannot wonder therefore at finding in the potsherds of their towns such enormous 1 liios.