Here is a vividly written and fully illustrated assessment of the figured decoration on Late Bronze Age vessels from the Greek mainland, Cyprus, and the Aegean islands. It will become a standard source on the Mycenaean imagination.

Emily Vermeuele and Vassos Karageorghis describe the hunting scenes, chariots, sphinxes and griffins, bulls and birds, people dancing or fighting, and cult scenes on Mycenaean pottery. They analyze forms and styles, sources and influences, and the development of conventions. They relate what is known about the painters and their workshops, and the overseas trade. A catalogue of the 700 remaining whole and broken examples, now in museums around the world, is appended. Over 950 illustrations provide a comprehensive view of the art.

This study tells us much about Bronze Age civilization, and it opens the way to an understanding of the relationship of Greek art to figure drawing in pre-Classical times.

This sumptuous publication of the archaeological excavation in northwest Cyprus (1971–1973) is sponsored by Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The authors present the site, its objects, and its chronological and historical significance against the wider background of Cypriote archaeology, casting new light on the problems of Cypriote pottery classification and the links between Cyprus and the Aegean world, especially Crete. Descriptions of the Mound and Tombs and the catalogues of their contents are supplemented by essays on individual classes of objects.

The book is lavishly illustrated with detailed diagrams and nearly 2,000 photographs and drawings to help the reader understand this active industrial area and its changes through successive generations from the Middle Bronze Age to the Iron Age. An appendix of technical analyses, an inventory of the finds, a list of published references to the excavation, and a bibliography complete the documentation.