Thanks to its hary nature, pottery bulks large in the archaeological record of Ancient Greece, and because we have so much of it (some 100,000 vases are recorded in the Corpus vasorum antiquorum) it has exerted a disproportionately large influence on our understanding of Greek society. Little survives, for example, of ancient Greek painting except for what is found on the earthenware in everyday use, so we must trace the development of Greek art through its vestiges on a derivative art form. Nevertheless the shards of pots discarded or buried in the first millennium BC are still the best guide we have to the customary life and mind of the ancient Greeks.