engleski

Chapter 31 D: The bone tubes ; with appendix: Report on the examination of a blue-green pigment from Dhaskalio

The long bones of sheep, goats, pigs or other animals were used in different cultures, places and periods to make small, portable objects. Both handy and durable, bone could easily be hollowed and adapted, as well as provided a good surface for the addition of incised ornamentation. Popular in the Cyclades and Aegean, pigment storage bone tubes have been found from the Eastern Mediterranean and as far as Sardinia and the Atlantic coast in the West. The tubes occur in two variations that do not seem to indicate a difference in use or contents. The simpler, lesser common of the two was cut straight at the ends. More numerous are tubes with one end pointed in a simple leaf shape, apparently designed to allow for greater control in transferring the powdery contents to a larger receptacle, such as marble bowl. The article presents 5 bone tubes discovered during the 2008 excavations of Dhaskalio settlement, all from the phase C. Daskaleio is an Early Bronze age settlement, discovered during the 2006-2008 Cambridge Keros project, that investigating the south Cycladic island of Keros, an important ritual centre in the Aegean, active during the Early Bronze Age- in the mid third millenium BC. The tubes discovered on Dhaskaleio, an offshore islet 90m from Keros, exemplify incised decoration, and have in two cases still preserved pigments. One sample was analysed with optical examination, SEM and dispersive X-ray anaylisis and identified as copper ore chrysocolla containing also malachite.

Aegean Early Bronze Age settlement, Cyclades, Keros and Dhaskalio, material culture, bone tubes, pigments, Chrysocolla

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