AP Art History - Aegean Vocabulary

Greek, meaning "high city." In ancient Greece, usually the site of the city's most important temple(s).

A curved structural member that spans an opening and is generally composed of wedge-shaped blocks (voussoirs) that transmit the downward pressure laterally.

The uppermost story of a building.

Assignment of a work to a maker or makers.

The uppermost member of a column, serving as a transition from the shaft to the lintel. In classical architecture, the form of the capital varies with the order (Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian).

A projecting wall member used as a support for some element in the superstructure. Also, courses of stone or brick in which each course projects beyond the one beneath it. Two such walls, meeting at the topmost course, create a corbeled arch or corbeled vault.

A vault formed by the piling of stone blocks in horizontal courses, cantilevered inward until the two walls meet in an arch.

In masonry construction, a horizontal row of stone blocks.

The pre-Greek art of the Cycladic Art, spanning 3000 - 1600 BCE.

A method of stone construction, named after the mythical one-eyed giant Cyclops, using massive, irregular blocks without mortar, characteristic of the Bronze Age fortifications of Tiryns and other Mycenaean sites.

A hemispheric vault; theoretically, an arch rotated on its vertical axis.

The passage leading to a tholos tomb.

Painting on lime plaster, either dry (dry fresco or fresco secco) or wet (true fresco or buon fresco).

The pre-Greek art of the Greek mainland (Hellas).

Greek, the "writing of images." The term refers both to the content, or subject, of an artwork and to the study of content in art. It also includes the study of the symbolic, often religious, meaning of objects, persons, or events depicted in works of art.