Narrator: Welcome to the Leonard N. Stern Collection of Cycladic Art, which The Met has here on loan from the Hellenic Republic.

I’m Nina Diamond, an Executive Producer in the Digital Department. For this Audio Guide, we recorded conversations with experts - about this fascinating and enigmatic culture.

For instance, they were a seafaring people, but so far we have no surviving remains of boats. We know they were a complex and creative society, but they left no writing. They created thousands of marble figures, but today, we’re still not entirely sure of their purpose.

Some of the people who can tell us the most are the archaeologists, those who have actually been able to excavate the sites where the Cycladic people lived…and died. In this guide,you’ll learn about 10 objects from: Sandy MacGillivray, former curator of Knossos on Crete:

MacGillivray: Basically, I've been digging all my life, pulling stuff out of the ground and helping to piece the past together to tell stories that are relevant to the modern world.

Narrator: …and Giorgos Gavalas, Research Scholar here at The Met and archaeologist in the Ephorate for Antiquities of the Cyclades, Hellenic Ministry of Culture:

Gavalas: I hope that through all this experience and collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, that we are developing a step forward on the understanding of Cycladic marble objects.

Narrator: Together, we’ll try to puzzle out the purpose and meaning behind some of the objects in this gallery and hear about the work of those in the field and at The Met to discover what lies beneath the surface.

This Audio Guide is sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies.