Minoan Pottery - Middle Minoan

Middle Minoan

Of the palace at Knossos and smaller ones like it at Phaestos, Mallia and elsewhere, Willetts says:

"These large palaces were central features of sizable cities... Apparently they were also administrative and religious centres of self-supporting regions of the island."

The rise of the palace culture, of the "old palaces" of Knossos and Phaistos and their new type of urbanized, centralized society with redistribution centers required more storage vessels and ones more specifically suited to a range of functions. In palace workshops, standardization suggests more supervised operations and the rise of elite wares, emphasizing refinements and novelty, so that palace and provincial pottery become differentiated.

The forms of the best wares were designed for table and service. In the palace workshops, the introduction from the Levant of the potter's wheel in MMIB enabled perfectly symmetrical bodies to be thrown from swiftly revolving clay. The well-controlled iron-red slip that was added to the color repertory during MMI could be achieved only in insulated closed kilns that were free of oxygen or smoke.