The shift to iron as the dominant metal for tools and weapons is generally a feature of the Protogeometric era, and may as Snodgrass claims be a combination of shortage of traded bronze or perhaps of the wealth to import its components, and the influence of precocious ironworking on Cyprus (Snodgrass 1983, 1989, Dickinson 2006). The surprising evidence for elaborate metallurgy at EIA Lefkandi suggests the survival of specialist craftsmen in the entourage ofsome chiefs: alongside prestigious Eastern imports there is local metalworking producing bronze tripods and gold jewelry. Moreover, from Early Geometric times advanced craftwork with oriental parallels on Crete has led to the proposal that Levantine artisans may have settled there. Nonetheless, early imports are often antiques, and not very common, indicating limited supplies and their bringing prestige to new owners more from their exotic origin than their actual market value. Levels of import and export from the Aegean only recover Mycenaean standards by Archaic times (Dickinson 2006). However, much has been lost and recycled: unusually rich finds from a handful of excavated sites prompt caution in making wider generalizations. In the absence of strong regional authorities till the rise of the city-state and federal states of the Late Geometric-Archaic era, traders would have required guarantees of travel security and agreed terms of exchange, and this almost certainly occurred through personal agreements with local leaders sealed by gift exchange, hence the importance of exotic objects in EIA Greece. From the late Protogeometric onwards, Aegean pottery gradually spreads out of the Aegean, at first mainly amphorae and hence probably containing oil, but increasingly fine tableware as well. The latter may well have functioned as Eastern exotica had been doing in Greece, but now as Aegean “exotica” to please Levantine and Central Mediterranean clients (Dickinson 2006). Levels of trade and craft production take off in Late Geometric times, probably the result of internal growth in demand and security, linked to the expansion of town life, but also to greater intervention from oriental trading-partners.
The ceramic sequence
Human or animal representations from the PG to MG period are extremely rare (Lemos 2000), although the Lefkandi terracotta centaur-figurine shows that skill was available. Rather, the demand to create such communicative art was low. Crete is an exception, where the Minoan cultural inheritance remained strong through the EIA, stimulating more regular figural art. However, the intense geometric designs on Aegean ceramics, whose stylistic phases create the subdivisions of the EIA (PG, EG, MG, LG), probably possessed a symbolic charge hitherto beyond our understanding (Figure 8.1; Color Plate 8.1). We are confronted with something totally “Other.” To anyone familiar with the idealized reality of Classical Greek art, the repetitive rectilinear or circular patterns of PG and Geometric pottery seem “impoverished” (Spivey 1997).
One can say at least that, while some elements derive from the more varied repertoire of Mycenaean ceramics, much is reminiscent of textile patterns. Dress may well have been permeated with such striking designs, and judging by house and temple models from LG times, buildings were perhaps monumental “installations” of geometric painting.
Technically, PG-Geometric designs show a pleasing symmetry. Traditionally such pots were seen as benefiting from improved technology, a multiple brush attached to a compass, and a shift from a slow to a fast potter’s wheel. But there seems no change in the potter’s wheel and the compass already appears in final Mycenaean times. It is true that kiln improvements were responsible for the lustrous black gloss which appears from PG onwards, perhaps imitating luxury bronze vessels. Moreover, this predominantly abstract art is not static. The changeover from PG to Geometric around 900 BC is marked by the decline of circles and semicircles in favor of rectilinear images (meanders and running crenellations) (Spivey 1997), whilst other changes in shape and design allow subdivisions of Geometric (EG 900—850, MG 850—800, LG 800-700 BC).
If designs remain enigmatic, something can be done with shapes. In the later part of the era when cremations were common, men were generally buried in neck-handled amphorae, women in the belly-handled form, and this hint of a body association suits the observation that amphorae, and another major shape, the jug (oinochoe), seem to develop humanoid characteristics: shoulders, mouths, bellies, and feet. Seemingly the deceased are tied to their final resting place in “embodied” and gendered pots (Whitley 2001).
Finally we should note that Athens, where a large multifocal settlement existed throughout the EIA, formed a ceramic style-leader in PG and Geometric times for other areas of the Aegean. However, increasing knowledge of regional ceramic developments elsewhere shows that Athens was just one of several networks exporting ceramics or whose style was influential on a wider scale. Euboea and North-Central Greece form a rival sphere, perhaps linked to the metals trade (Crielaard 2006). Crete notably does not follow the classic Athenian ceramic sequence of PG-EG-MG. Its pottery retains more figured decoration in PG-Geometric and throughout Geometric times it shows a precocious Eastern or “Orientalist” influence in its pottery, which seems to reflect its early links in prestige exchange and metalwork with the Levant (Whitley 1998, 2001). On the Mainland, it is LG times when figural art returns regularly to ceramic decoration (cf. Colour Plate 8.1).
World History
