The pottery of the Late Mycenean (or third Late Minoan) period (Figs. 14-17) 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 [Illustration: 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. But, on the other hand, figured representations are not unusual on late Mycenean vases. Two classes can be distinguished off-hand:--(_a_) animal representations, in traditional ornamental style and very ‘geometrical’ in treatment, particularly birds with cross-hatched bodies, certainly continuations of the old lustreless painting (cp. Fig. 4 with Fig. 15); and (_b_) larger compositions taken over from wall-painting, often provided with ornaments to fill the field, like the chariot-race on the krater from Rhodes (Fig. 17). The best-known example is the Warrior vase from Mycenae representing the departure for the battle-field. Apart from these figured representations, one may say that Cretan vase-painting, after its brilliant achievements in the Kamares, shaft grave, and Palace styles, sinks down to that primitive level from which it started: it becomes once more a geometrical style. The area over which we find this pottery is enormous, being practically the whole Mediterranean basin, Crete, Egypt, the Cyclades, the coast of Asia Minor (sixth city of Troy) and its adjacent islands (_e.g._ Rhodes), Cyprus (where the Mycenean supersedes an old and plentiful pottery akin to that of Troy), Phoenicia, Italy, Sicily, and especially all important sites of the Greek mainland. In many places, where the ‘varnish’ painting did not enter earlier, it now comes into contact with the old indigenous technique, with the monochrome, incised and lustreless vases: many backward settlements, like Olympia, seem to have had practically no acquaintance with the Mycenean style. Here again the Egyptian finds give us a date: they last from about the end of the 15th down into the 12th century. But since it is not conceivable that we should date the Geometrical period, which followed the Mycenean, back into the second millennium, the late Mycenean style must have lasted at least four centuries; the rate of development, which in the time of great achievements had been very rapid, must have become considerably slower.