ABSTRACT
The largest number of votive offerings at this period are in the form of pottery. But the pottery was used as a container or carrier. The gift was what lay in or on it. Jugs and vases will have contained libations, trays will perhaps have carried fruit; a beautiful tray with an eightspoked flower wheel and swastikas painted on it was found in the sanctuary of Hera at Samos. Figurines in bronze and terracotta were similarly made specially as votives. Often they represent the god or goddess, and sometimes it is possible to trace on a single site the development of representation from crude slips of clay jammed together in a vaguely anthropomorphic shape to figures moulded in the natural contours of the body. In Cyprus large numbers of terracottas have been found which were made as votive offerings at sanctuaries. Such dedications were so important that the larger sanctuaries had their own terracotta workshops.
