The Female Form in Cycladic Sculpture The Cyclades are a group of about thirty small islands located in the southwestern part of the Aegean sea. To the west and north of the island lies mainland Greece and to the east is Turkey. The Cycladic culture which flourished in the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age is best known for its precise and schematic figurines carved from the islands’ marble. The ancient Greeks noticed that they formed a circle around the sacred island of Delos, which contains one of the holiest sites to Apollo and also believed to be his birthplace. Many of the Cycladic Islands are incredibly rich in mineral resources, arguably the most important being marble. Most of the marble is from Paros and Naxos, which contained to be quarried long after the Cycladic people vanished.
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Early Cycladic culture can be divided into two main eras, the Grotta-Pelos or Early Cycladic I which survived from about 3200–2700 B.C., and the Keros-Syros or Early Cycladic II which survived from about 2700–2400 B.C. The names, Grotta-Pllos and Keros-Syros, relate to significant burial sites. Although few settlements from the Early Cycladic period have been found and excavated, evidence for the culture comes from collections of objects that the people buried with their dead. The majority of Cycladic marble pieces were produced during the Grotta-Pelos and Keros-Syros periods. Analysis has also shown that the surface of the marble was painted with mineral-based pigments; this leads historians to believed that the painted surface was just as important as the precise measurements. Early Cycladic sculpture is predominantly comprised of female figures; they range from simple modification of the stone to developed representations of the human form, some with natural proportions and some more idealized. Many of these figures, especially ones of the Spedos type, display a precise consistency in their proportions which suggests they were
Early Cycladic culture can be divided into two main eras, the Grotta-Pelos or Early Cycladic I which survived from about 3200–2700 B.C., and the Keros-Syros or Early Cycladic II which survived from about 2700–2400 B.C. The names, Grotta-Pllos and Keros-Syros, relate to significant burial sites. Although few settlements from the Early Cycladic period have been found and excavated, evidence for the culture comes from collections of objects that the people buried with their dead. The majority of Cycladic marble pieces were produced during the Grotta-Pelos and Keros-Syros periods. Analysis has also shown that the surface of the marble was painted with mineral-based pigments; this leads historians to believed that the painted surface was just as important as the precise measurements. Early Cycladic sculpture is predominantly comprised of female figures; they range from simple modification of the stone to developed representations of the human form, some with natural proportions and some more idealized. Many of these figures, especially ones of the Spedos type, display a precise consistency in their proportions which suggests they were