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Chapter 4
Aegean Art
42
Art History
12th Grade
10/01/2011

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Term
Akrotiri
Definition
The remains of an ancient Minoan city on the island of Thera in the Aegean Sea, where abundant pottery and frescoes of the second millennium b.c. have been excavated.
Term
Aegean Sea
Definition
An arm of the Mediterranean Sea between Greece and Turkey.
Term
Cycladic Islands
Definition
A Greek island group in the Aegean Sea, south-east of the mainland of Greece; and a former administrative prefecture of Greece. They are one of the island groups which constitute the Aegean archipelago.
Term
Minotaur
Definition
A monster, the offspring of Pasiphaë and the Cretan bull, that had the head of a bull on the body of a man: housed in the Cretan labyrinth, it was fed on human flesh until Theseus, helped by Ariadne, killed it.
Term
Labyrinth/labyrs
Definition
A vast maze built in Crete by Daedalus, at the command of King Minos, to house the Minotaur.
Term
Dressed stone
Definition
Stone that has been worked to desired shape; the faces to be exposed are smooth; usually ready for installation.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/dressed-stone-1#ixzz1ZbdEMf3G
Term
Knossos
Definition
A ruined city on N central Crete; capital of the ancient Minoan civilization.
Term
Sir Arthur Evans
Definition
A British archaeologist most famous for unearthing the palace of Knossos on the Greek island of Crete and for developing the concept of Minoan civilization from the structures and artifacts found there and elsewhere throughout eastern Mediterranean. Evans was the first to define Cretan scripts Linear A and Linear B, as well as an earlier pictographic writing.
Term
Heinrich Schliemann
Definition
German archaeologist: excavated ancient cities of Troy and Mycenae.
Term
Minoan
Definition
Of or pertaining to the ancient civilization of the island of Crete, dating from about 3000 to 1100 b.c.e.
Term
Kamares ware
Definition
Named for finds in the cave sanctuary at Kamares on Mt. Ida in 1890. It is the first of the virtuoso polychrome wares of Minoan civilization, though the first expressions of recognizably proto-Kamares decor predate the introduction of the potter's wheel.
Term
Buon Fresco
Definition
Literally, good fresco
Term
Bull leaping
Definition
A motif of Middle Bronze Age figurative art, notably of Minoan Crete, but also found in Hittite Anatolia, the Levant, Bactria and the Indus Valley. It is often interpreted as a depiction of a ritual performed in connection with bull worship. This ritual consists of an acrobatic leap over a bull; when the leaper grasps the bull's horns, the bull will violently jerk his neck upwards giving the leaper the momentum necessary to perform somersaults and other acrobatic tricks or stunts. Another interpretation could be that bull-leaping is a rite of passage for young men in this Minoan culture.
Term
Lost-wax casting
Definition
The process by which a metal (such as silver, gold, brass or bronze) sculpture is cast from an artist's sculpture.
Term
Inlay
Definition
To insert or apply (layers of fine materials) in the surface of an object
Term
Filigree
Definition
Delicate ornamental work of fine silver, gold, or other metal wires, especially lacy jewelers' work of scrolls and arabesques.
Term
Repousse
Definition
(Of a design) Raised in relief by hammering on the reverse side.
Term
Niello
Definition
A black metallic substance, consisting of silver, copper, lead, and sulfur, with which an incised design or ground is filled to produce an ornamental effect on metal.
Term
Gilding
Definition
The gold leaf or other material with which something is gilded.
Term
Gold leaf
Definition
Gold in the form of very thin foil, as for gilding.
Term
Gold foil
Definition
Sheets of gold slightly thicker than gold leaf.
Term
Rhyton
Definition
An ancient Greek drinking horn, made of pottery or metal, having a base in the form of the head of a woman or animal.
Term
Steatite
Definition
Soapstone
Term
Sistrum
Definition
An ancient Egyptian percussion instrument consisting of a looped metal frame set in a handle and fitted with loose crossbars that rattle when shaken.
Term
Marine Style
Definition
An innovation in the embellishment of Cretan pottery, developed around 1500 bc and characterized by the depiction of octopuses and other sea creatures. Possibly originating at Knossos, marine style pottery began to rival older plant and flower designs and was exported from Crete all over the Cyclades and the Greek mainland, where its freshness eventually gave place to a somewhat debased formalism.
Term
Mycenae
Definition
An ancient city in S Greece, in Argolis: important ruins.
Term
Sparta
Definition
An ancient city in S Greece: the capital of Laconia and the chief city of the Peloponnesus, at one time the dominant city of Greece: famous for strict discipline and training of soldiers.
Term
Helladic/Hellas
Definition
Of or pertaining to the Bronze Age culture on the mainland of ancient Greece c2900–1100 b.c.
Term
Megaron
Definition
A building or semi-independent unit of a building, generally used as a living apartment and typically having a square or broadly rectangular principal chamber with a porch, often of columns in antis, and sometimes an antichamber or other small compartments.
Term
Citadel
Definition
A fortress that commands a city and is used in the control of the inhabitants and in defense during attack or siege.
Term
Pylos
Definition
Any of three sites in Greece. The most important of them is identified with the modern Pilos (or Navarino, locally called Neokastro), the capital of the eparkhia ("eparchy") of Pylia in the nomos (department of Messenia), Greece, on the wouthern headland of the Ormos (bay), a deepwater shipping channel on the southwest coast of the Peloponnese.
Term
Iliad
Definition
A Greek epic poem describing the siege of Troy, ascribed to Homer.
Term
Odyssey
Definition
An epic poem attributed to Homer, describing Odysseus's adventures in his ten-year attempt to return home to Ithaca after the Trojan War.
Term
Treasury of Atreus
Definition
An impressive "tholos" tomb on the Panagitsa Hill at Mycenae, Greece, constructed during the Bronze Age around 1250 BCE. The lintel stone above the doorway weighs 120 tons, the largest in the world. The tomb perhaps held the remains of the sovereign who completed the reconstruction of the fortress or one of his successors. The grave is in the style of the other tholoi of the Mycenaean World, of which there are nine in total around the citadel of Mycenae and five more in the Argolid. However, in its monumental shape and grandeur it is one of the most impressive monuments surviving from Mycenaean Greece.
Term
Shaft grave
Definition
A grave consisting of a deep, rectangular pit with vertical sides, roofed over with a stone slab.
Term
Tholos Tomb
Definition
A Mycenaean tholos tomb is: "a circular, subterranean burial chamber ... roofed by a corbelled vault and approached by an ... entrance passage that narrows abruptly at the doorway actually opening into the tomb chamber."
Term
Chevron
Definition
A badge consisting of stripes meeting at an angle, worn on the sleeve by noncommissioned officers, police officers, etc., as an indication of rank, service, or the like.
Term
Running spirals
Definition
An ancient symbol of eternity, infinity, endlessness, appears often enough in the wall paintings of Thera,

on friezes, on ships, on altars but also on pottery found in Akrotiri... They are suggested to represent the “chain of life”, birth-death-regeneration without beginning or ending.
Term
Corbel vault
Definition
A structure having the form of a vault but constructed on the principle of a corbel arch.
Term
Ashlar
Definition
A squared building stone cut more or less true on all faces adjacent to those of other stones so as to permit very thin mortar joints
Term
Agamemnon
Definition
A king of Mycenae, a son of Atreus and brother of Menelaus. He led the Greeks in the Trojan War and was murdered by Clytemnestra, his wife, upon his return from Troy.
Term
Krater
Definition
A mixing bowl characterized by a wide mouth and body with two handles projecting vertically from the juncture of the neck and body, used to mix wine and water.
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