Map 3 Bronze Age Greece.

Cycladic Civilization

Cycladic civilization arose around 3200 BC; that is, at about the time of the transition from the Neolithic
Period (the “New Stone Age”) to the Bronze Age. Its most impressive achievements date to the period
from approximately 2700 to approximately 2400 BC and represent a stunning advance in terms of their
artistic sophistication. The most striking creations that have survived from Cycladic civilization are a
large number of marble sculptures (figure 5). It had been a widespread practice in Neolithic communities,
both in Greece and elsewhere, to create representations of nude females in clay or stone. These figures
are generally crudely executed, and it is not known for what purpose they were made; for this reason they
are often referred to simply as “fertility figures” or “mother goddesses.” Such figures were created by the
Neolithic inhabitants of the Cyclades as well. By the middle of the third millennium BC, however,
Cycladic culture had evolved, apparently by a process of internal development and not from outside
influences, to the point of creating unusually refined and elegant marble sculptures. The majority of them,
like the one illustrated here, represent nude females. The materials used to create these objects were all
available in (and presumably all came from) the Cyclades: fine marble for the figures themselves, emery
and obsidian for carving and incising, pumice for smoothing by abrasion.