Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/477

 450 Primitive Greece : Mycenian Art. The researches of MM. Dummler and Theodore Bent, in Amorgos and Antiparos respectively, tend to prove that the population of these islands has greatly diminished since antiquity.' The tombs which they have opened are simplicity itself; ihey are dotted about on spots once inhabited but now desert. In them were found vases and personal ornaments, instruments and weapons. The tombs in question, apparently the common sepulture of all these islands, are no more than holes dug in the ground. Their sides have a marble or limestone facing ; the Fig 173 — The tumulus a Lymx, ' F. DtJMMLEK, /?es/e vorgriedtiicher Betvolkeriitig auf den CyclaJeii ; BtJJT, Researches among the Cydades {Journal of Hellenic Studies). Very similar tombs to that of Amorgos have been discovered in the neighbouring island of Keros (U. KuHLER, Prehisiorisches von den griechischen Inseln, in Athenische Mittheilungen). IJiimmler has shown that we should place in this same category a necropoliii examined in 1861 at Syra by G. Papiiadojmulo, which contains over a thousand graves. It lies close by the Panaghia C,"halandrini {Rei'iie ctrchiologiqiie'). Although the explorer describes very accurately the objects which he collected in the course of the excavations, he fails to grasp their real significance, for he ascribes them to exiles sent to Gyaros and the adjacent islands in Roman times. Ross, as far back as 1845, called attention to the i>rehistoric necroiwles of the Cyclades, and sug- gested at the same time that they might be due to the Carians, who are described by Thucydides as settled at Dclos. He based his assumiJtion on the fact that shapeless, flat marble idols, marble cups, and knives of obsidian are found in them. Accord- ing to Ross, the islands in which these objects were collected are Rhcenea, Paros, Naxos, the Eremonisian group southward of Naxos, los, Amorgos, Thera, and Therasia {ArehaologiscAe Au/satze),