Glossary Metals, materials and technology
Picrolite
A soft blue-green stone, a variety of serpentinite from the Troodos, carved into pendants, beads and figurines in prehistoric Cyprus.
Picrolite is the signature ornamental stone of prehistoric Cyprus. Its practical source was the pebbles washed down from the mountains by the Kouris and Karyotis rivers, and blue picrolite occurs only in the Kouris. Older publications often mislabel it as steatite. Beads from Akrotiri-Aetokremnos suggest it was used by the island's first visitors, and Aceramic Neolithic carvers made pendants, pins, beads, rings and small vessels from it.
The stone is best known from the Chalcolithic cruciform figurines, the cross-shaped figures with outstretched arms. As a figurine material it is almost unused before then. See Neolithic and picrolite figurines.
Full entry: Neolithic and Picrolite Figurines
Related terms
- Prestige goods
Rare or costly objects whose value lay in the status they conferred, used by leaders to display rank and build alliances.
- Gypsum
A soft white or translucent mineral (calcium sulphate), found in thick beds in southern Cyprus and occasionally carved into objects.
- Chalk
A soft, fine-grained white limestone, widespread in the Lefkara Formation of Cyprus and easy to carve into moulds, figures and statues.
Where it appears
- Cruciform Figurines
- Neolithic and Chalcolithic Burial in Cyprus
- How Cypriot Figurines Are Classified
- Chalcolithic Cyprus
- The Jewelry of Ancient Cyprus
- Looting in Occupied Northern Cyprus after 1974
- Clothing and Dress in Ancient Cyprus
- Society, Ritual, and Identity in Ancient Cypriot Mortuary Practice
- Village Life in Early Bronze Age Cyprus
- Combed Ware
- Copper Metallurgy in Ancient Cyprus
- Cyprus Before Humans: Dwarf Hippos, Dwarf Elephants and the First Visitors
and 5 more compendium pages