Into the early Bronze Age fall the finds from the earliest layers at Troy. In the unalterable faith that he was discovering the world of Homer, with the strong and weak points of a dilettante, Heinrich Schliemann began to dig at Hissarlik, and in the excavations of 1871, 1878, 1890 and 1893 Dörpfeld and he investigated the rubbish hill, which has become so famous, the nine superimposed settlements of which represent as many successive civilizations down to Roman times. The numerous ceramic finds of the five lowest layers show the transition from rude hand-made and ill-baked ware with impressed linear patterns to ever more developed stages. The potter’s wheel and oven finally succeed in producing brilliant red, black, grey, brown vases of the finest technique. The variety of shapes is very great, some are already quite developed; the imitation of metal forms is to be traced here and there. A notable speciality is found in the so-called Face-urns (Fig. 2), rude imitations of the human form, produced by adding eyes, nose, mouth, ears, nipples and navel; and there are also other vase-types, which are not repeated in Western Greece. Painting is rare, the vases are either monochrome or adorned with incised linear ornaments, which are often applied in the manner of necklaces, or divide the vase vertically. The Bronze Age civilization of the second city up to the fifth, which, judging by the rich finds of metal utensils and [Illustration: PLATE III. Fig. 3. JUG FROM SYROS.] [Illustration: Fig. 4. JUG FROM MYCENÆ.] gold ornaments, was by no means primitive, recurs in the whole of N.W. Asia Minor and in Cyprus. Its last phase cannot be separated in time from the western civilization of the shaft graves (p. 7). Parallel with Troy II-V and the mainland civilization of Marina (below), on the islands of the Aegean is the so-called Cycladic civilization. Its pottery, however, presents a much more variegated picture: beside the primitive vases there are vases incised and painted with rich, not exclusively rectilinear, ornamentation: glazed (‘varnished’) vases also occur. The forms are very varied: bronze and stone vessels often serve as models; the structure of the vases and the distribution of the ornamentation show unmistakeably definite artistic intention. There is great difference between various islands and a comprehensive view of the development is not yet possible. Specimens like the beaked jug from Syros (Fig. 3) are probably contemporary with the early Minoan style of Crete (p. 7), but the pans with engraved spirals, circles, ships and fish are later. On Melos, which has quite a separate position of its own, the influence of the Cretan ‘Kamares’ civilization (p. 8) in technique and decoration is obvious.