16. Thirteen objects from the early excavations at Gournia in eastern Crete. Minoan, Early Minoan II – Late Minoan IIIB, 2700 – 1200 B.C. Arsenical copper and bronze. Clockwise from top left: tweezers: l. 3 ½ in. (9 cm), awl for working leather: l. 5 in. (12.7 cm), needle: l. 5 ¼ in. (13.4 cm), two chisels for working wood: l. 4 in. (10.3 cm) and 7 ¾ in. (19.8 cm), four knives: l. 5 – 5 ¾ in. (12.7 – 14.6 cm), cylindrical fitting: l. 3 7∕8 in. (9.9 cm), fragmentary double axe and double axe: l. 7 in. (17.8 cm), hemispheri cal bowl: h. 2 in. (5.1 cm), diam. 5 ½ in. (14.1 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the American Exploration Society, 1907 (07.232.1 – 13)
at the British station was notified and took care of me. I had to stay in bed for a week, during which time Harriet Boyd brought me potsherds, so that I might learn the various periods of Minoan chronology. But the most important result of my illness was that Harriet and I became close friends.7 That same year Boyd encouraged Richter to come with her to the United States and seek a curatorial position at the Metropolitan. The Cretan authorities allowed the American Exploration Society to have a small collection of finds from the excavation at Gournia. These objects were sent to the United States in 1904, and fifty-five of them, including an important group of bronzes, were given to the Metropolitan Museum in 1907. The bronzes from Gournia (fig. 16) illustrate the kinds of utilitarian tools that were used on Crete in the Bronze Age, including tweezers, a needle, an awl for working leather, chisels for working wood, knives, and double axes. In 1914 the Metropolitan acquired by exchange with the University Museum in Philadelphia sixteen more Minoan works in terracotta and stone from early American excavations in eastern Crete, at Gournia, Kavousi, Priniatikos Pyrgos, Pseira, Sphoungaras, Vasilike, and the Early Iron Age cemetery at Vrokastro.8 The work accomplished in eastern Crete by the American archaeologist Richard Seager (fig. 17) illuminated the earliest periods of Minoan culture, the very beginning of Aegean civilization.9 Seager’s investigations at Vasilike revealed an Early Minoan settlement that produced distinctive handmade pottery with a lustrous glossy surface mottled red, brown, and black. His excavations on the nearby islands 12
17. Richard Berry Seager (1882 – 1925)