The Cycladic Frying pan (

Archaeological Museum of Paros The Archaeological Museum of Paros is a museum located in Parikia on Paros, Greece. The museum was founded in 1960 and consists of two rooms and an atrium. Museum plan Room A contains Archaic and Classical sculptures. Room B contains pottery, ...

, Inventory number 2136;

National Archaeological Museum of Athens The National Archaeological Museum () in Athens houses some of the most important artifacts from a variety of archaeological locations around Greece from prehistory to late antiquity. It is considered one of the greatest museums in the world and ...

number 6291) is a ceramic object from the

Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

Cycladic culture Cycladic culture (also known as Cycladic civilisation) was a Bronze Age culture (c. 3100–c. 1000 BC) found throughout the islands of the Cyclades in the Aegean Sea. In chronological terms, it is a relative dating system for artifacts which is ...

of the Kampos type. The frying pan of the Early Cycladic period derives from grave 3 of the small cemetery of Kampos on the

Cycladic The CYCLADES computer network () was a French research network created in the early 1970s. It was one of the pioneering networks experimenting with the concept of packet switching and, unlike the ARPANET, was explicitly designed to facilitate in ...

island of

Paros Paros (; ; ) is a Greek island in the central Aegean Sea. Part of the Cyclades island group, it lies to the west of Naxos (island), Naxos, from which it is separated by a channel about wide. It lies approximately south-east of Piraeus. The Co ...

. It was discovered alone in autumn 1924 in the excavations led by Irini Varoucha and was first published in 1926. It is displayed in the Archaeological Museum of Paros with the inventory number 2136. The purpose of Cycladic

frying pans A frying pan is a type of Early Cycladic II artifact made in the Aegean Islands between and . They are flat circular disks with a "handle", and usually made from earthenware, but sometimes stone ( Frying pan (Karlsruhe 75/11) is an example) ...

is not known.

Description

The frying pan is composed of several sherds; gaps in the handle, side and back have been filled in with plaster. The dark grey-brown / red-brown clay frying pan is 6.15 cm high and 23.8 cm long. At 20.45 cm, the diameter of the rim is slightly smaller than the diameter of the base (21.2 cm). The outer surface and the inner wall of the basin are coated in a dark grey-brown to olive-brown overcoat. The surface of the basin is unevenly smoothed, with low traces of sinter. The surface plate is decorated with several irregular circles, stamped triangle borders and two elongated spiral bands. The edge is looped by a double line, elongated spiral band with a row of triangles above and below. Traces of white paint remain in the indentations.

Significance

Frying pans first appear in the early Cycladic Kampos group. They already include various characteristics. As a rule, there is a central motif surrounded by a group of incised concentric circles, bands of stamped triangles, and spirals linked with double lines. Star patterns are also common. The decoration does not take up the whole surface. Often the decorative elements of the back surface are repeated on the sides. The Π-shaped stirrup handle is set into the wall of the pan with thick arms. There are two frying pans very similar to the example from Paros in form and decorations; one of unknown provenance in the

Benaki Museum The Benaki Museum, established and endowed in 1930 by Antonis Benakis in memory of his father Emmanuel Benakis, is housed in the Benakis family mansion in Athens, Greece. The museum houses Greek works of art from the prehistorical to the modern ...

, Athens and a fragmentary example in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, excavated by

Christos Tsountas {{infobox academic , name = Christos Tsountas , native_name = Χρήστος Τσούντας , native_name_lang = el , image=Christos Tsountas.jpg , alt=Photograph of a young man with a moustache. , caption = Photographed in 1879 , birth_ ...

at Kato Akrotiri on

Amorgos Amorgos (, ; ) is the easternmost island of the Cyclades island group and the nearest island to the neighboring Dodecanese island group in Greece. Along with 16 neighbouring islets, the largest of which (by land area) is Nikouria Island, it compr ...

in 1898.Coleman 1985, p. 210.

Bibliography

* Irini Varoucha. "Kykladikoi taphoi tēs Parou (Κυκλαδικοί τάφοι της Πάρου)" ''Ephēmeris archaiologikē'' 1925–1926, pp. 98–114 (Digitised
p. 99, 107 Ill. 9
. * John E. Coleman. "“Frying Pans” of the Early Bronze Age Aegean." ''American Journal of Archaeology'' 89, 1985, pp. 191–219. * Jörg Rambach. ''Kykladen I. Die frühe Bronzezeit – Grab- und Siedlungsbefunde.'' Habelt, Bonn 2000, {{ISBN, 3-7749-2831-2, p. 144 Tbl. 80.

References

Archaeological discoveries in the Aegean Islands Cycladic art 1924 archaeological discoveries

Description

Significance

See also

Bibliography

References