Note on the Fragment of a Painted Pinax from Praesos

Abstract

On p. 240 sqq. of the B.S.A. Annual, vol. viii., Mr. R. C. Bosanquet has described a tomb opened by him at Praesos during the excavations of 1901. The tomb had originally been of the ‘beehive’ type though the upper portion had been broken before the excavators opened it. The layer of earth constituting the original floor of the tomb was covered to a depth of nearly two feet with a tightly packed deposit of broken pottery, whilst in a small vestibule leading into the tomb from the dromos a few better preserved vases were found. Owing to the confusion caused by the later use of the tomb and by the fall of the roofing stones it is difficult to make out any stratification in the deposit, but on the analogy of the Menidi tomb Mr. Bosanquet would explain the large quantity of pottery found here as the result of a long period of hero-worship. The bulk of the pottery is of the Geometric period and comprises a sequence of at least several generations. Nothing of indisputably Mycenaean date was found in the tomb, and the latest objects that came to light were two small fragments of red-figure ware.