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About the end of the second Late Minoan period the Cretan palaces of Phaistos, Knossos, and Hagia Triada are destroyed, and with the destruction of these and other sites the Palace style decays.

The pottery of the Late Mycenean (or third Late Minoan) period (Fig. ssss1) is very inferior to that of the Palace style. The technique is at first neat but afterwards falls off: the smooth yellowish clay takes a green tinge, the brilliant glaze colour, often burnt red, becomes a lustreless black. The ornamentation consists of the last remains of the naturalistic decoration, now become quite lifeless and poor, with which are associated purely geometrical patterns of the simplest kind, wavy lines, spirals, concentric circles. Rectilinear patterns (groups of strokes, hatched triangles) become ever more prominent. The decoration is generally

PLATE VIII.

Fig. 14. LATE MYCENEAN CUP FROM RHODES.

Fig. 15. LATE MYCENEAN STIRRUP-VASE FROM RHODES.

very loose, emphasizes the shoulder band, and usually puts on the lower half of the vase only a few stripes: vertical division of the field into ‘metopes’ is common.