<P> Minoan pottery is more than a useful tool for dating the mute Minoan civilization . Its restless sequence of quickly maturing artistic styles reveals something of Minoan patrons' pleasure in novelty while they assist archaeologists in assigning relative dates to the strata of their sites . Pots that contained oils and ointments, exported from 18th century BC Crete, have been found at sites through the Aegean islands and mainland Greece, on Cyprus, along coastal Syria and in Egypt, showing the wide trading contacts of the Minoans . The fine palace pottery called Kamares ware, and the Late Minoan all - over patterned "Marine style" are the high points of the Minoan pottery tradition . </P> <P> The traditional chronology for dating Minoan civilization was developed by Sir Arthur Evans in the early years of the 20th century AD . His terminology and the one proposed by Nikolaos Platon are still generally in use and appear in this article . For more details, see the Minoan chronology . </P>

When did pottery become widespread in the middle east