The walls are often covered with paintings in a very simple archaic style, in red and black.

Amongst Conifers the archaic genera, Ginkgo and Araucarus still persist.

Milchhdfer (Anfdnge der Kunst) had called attention to certain remarkable examples of archaic Greek bronze-work, and the subsequent discovery of the votive bronzes in the cave of Zeus on Mount Ida, and notably the shields with their fine embossed designs, shows that by the 8th century B.C. Cretan technique in metal not only held its own beside imported Cypro-Phoenician work, but was distinctly ahead of that of the rest of Greece (Halbherr, Bronzi del antro di Zeus Ideo).

It represented the goddess, standing in the stiff archaic style, holding a spear in her right hand, in her left a distaff and spindle or a shield.

The Acropolis Museum (opened 1878) possesses a singularly interesting collection of sculptures belonging to the " archaic " period of Greek art, all found on the Acropolis; here, too, are some fragments of the pedimental statues of the Parthenon and several reliefs from its frieze, as well as the slabs from the balustrade of the temple of Nike.