Cycladic Lead and Silver Metallurgy

Interest in the prehistory of the Cyclades may fairly be said to have been awakened in the middle of the nineteenth century when travellers like Walpole or Fiedler were intrigued by what we now regard as one of the characteristic products of ECII times in the Cyclades—the marble folded-arm figurines whose harmony, balance, and economy of artistic expression appeal so much to the admirers of twentieth-century artists such as Mondrian or Modigliani. Reports of other prehistoric material from the Cyclades soon followed from J. T. Bent, U. Köhler, and F. Dümmler, whilst more systematic explorations began with the work of Edgar in Pelos, and Atkinson and others at Phylakopi on Melos.