Cycladic "Frying Pans" as Mirrors

After the famous figurines,

the best known artifacts from the Bronze Age culture of the Cyclades are the enigmatic ceramic objects known as "frying pans." These were first discovered in 1898. The majority of known specimens come from the Cyclades, but others have been found elsewhere around the Aegean, including Crete, Euboea, and the mainland.

Quite a few of these have been found. They range in size from 12 to 30 cm across. Most are earthenware but a few are bronze.

These images show both sides, giving a better idea of the form.

But what are they? There have been many suggestions. They are certainly not frying pans, since they are elaborately decorated on what would be the bottom and show no burning or other signs that they were used for cooking. The suggestion that they were astrolabes seems very far-fetched, since they are not made with the necessary precision. The proposal that they were used for forming salt cakes in a standardized size fails because no two are exactly the same size. One early theory was that they are lids for larger vessels, but no such large vessels have been found. Someone tried to stretch a skin across one and use it as a drum, but it sounded lousy and anyway none of them show any evidence of ever having had skin stretched across them. So the reigning theory has been that they were trays, perhaps for formally serving some special food, or offering something to the gods, or for cosmetics.

Thanks to my old friend, the deranged blogger at Old European Culture, I just discovered a new theory about these that intrigues me: they are mirrors. This comes from an article published in 2008 by two Greek archaeologists, Dimitri Papathanassoglou and Ch. A. Georgouli. 

They tested the theory by filling the pans with various liquids and measuring how much light they reflected. They found that water did not work very well (upper images), but olive oil did (lower images). If the olive oil was blackened by adding charcoal (lower right), they got an excellent reflection in the right light. Fascinating.