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Minoan Stone Vases. By Peter Warren. 280 pages, 43 figures, 119 plates. Cambridge University Press, 1970. Price £8.00.

The stone vases of Bronze Age Crete form a large and relatively homogeneous class of material— there are about 3,500 of them—and if this were not sufficient recommendation for study, they are intrinsically works of the greatest value and beauty, the product of a hardly understood mastercraftsmanship. No work has, up until now, dealt with them more than cursorily; little or nothing has been known of their history, manufacture, distribution and provenance, even though the general classes of vase are well-known. Dr Warren's book, therefore, the product of his doctorial dissertation, is a welcome arrival which should fill a large gap in our knowledge. The core of the book is a catalogue of vase types and of materials used. There follow discussions of manufacture, usage and purpose, relation of stone to clay and metal forms, vases with relief scenes, and the history and development of Minoan stone vases. A long concordance lists all stone vases by museum numbers, and the whole is illustrated by 633 photographs and 328 drawings. That this has been a labour of love one can see from Dr Warren's description of the Iraklion Museum in the new Blue Guide to Greece, where the stone vase cases are treated to a variety of laudatory adjectives. That it is also a work of thorough and painstaking scholarship is evident from the careful amassing and treatment of the huge corpus of material. Dr Warren is the only man who has ever studied most of the vases in corpore, so can speak with an unrivalled authority. The main quibble with this book is not with what it says, but with what it does not say. All the discussion is perfectly fair, but perhaps does not go far enough. This is particularly evident in the section dealing with manufacture. The visitor to the British Museum is informed in the Upper Egyptian Gallery that the manufacture of Egyptian stone bowls remains largely a mystery, particularly with regard to the undercutting of the shoulder. It is thought that after the early 'solid drill', the method used was either the tubular drill, assisted by an abrasive powder, probably ground quartz (as depicted on Old Kingdom tombs) or else a cold chisel, pressed against the block of stone rotating on a wheel. Certain copper tools are exhibited as used for this purpose. The same problems apply to Minoan stone vase-making, but in increased degree, for there are few metal tools known that were likely to have been used in vase-manufacture, and because some of the hardest materials available, like rock-crystal, were used. Warren posits the use of the tubular reed-drill, fed by ground emery (traces on the Knossos bore-cores) or quartz. Beyond this, nothing is certain, and the undercut shoulder is assumed to have been picked out bit by bit. Some experimentation is necessary here. The drills in the Egyptian paintings look rather shaky, and much more sophisticated apparatus must have been available for the finest Minoan vases. The lapidary must have constructed a rigid frame (presumably of wood) to hold either the drill or the cutting edge that pressed on the rotating vase. The wheel must have been fast and technically sound. The evidence of the bore cores recently found at Knossos indicates the second method, since they would not be produced by the tubular drill; in the first place they are conoid, not cylindrical, and in the second, that shown in Warren's figure 6C could not possibly be produced by a tubular drill since it is 'stepped'. He himself, in an article in B.S.A., 62, 1967, 195-201, mentioned other evidence for 'lathe' working—a series of unfinished gypsum vases from Knossos and an unfinished bridge-spouted bowl from Mallia with a large circular core in the process of being cut out (incidentally, omitted here). Warren says (e.g., on p. 161) that the marks of the drill are often visible on vases. But quite what is the difference between the mark of a drill and the mark of a cold chisel is not stated, and may be impossible to detect anyway.