Provenance Studies of the LMIB/LHIIA Marine style

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Abstract
The provenance of vessels of the Marine Style of LMIB from Crete and LHIIA from the Mainland remains an important unsolved problem. This article describes an attempt to discriminate between selected Mainland and Cretan specimens by multivariate analysis of the compositions of their fabrics determined by optical emission spectroscopy with the aim of determining whether the Mainland Marine Style pieces were indeed made on the Mainland, perhaps locally at their find spots, or were imported from Crete or the islands. Accordingly Marine Style sherds have been sampled from seven Mainland, two island, and two Cretan sites, together with a large number of definitively local sherds from each site to serve as a control over the characteristics of the local clays. A distribution map, Fig. 1, and a corpus, as complete as possible, defining and describing the motifs and shapes used in the Marine Style from the Mainland, Crete, and the islands as a whole is included below in order to provide an overview of the available information.