Sanctuaries

Prior to 750, the major cult centers of the southern and central Greek mainland were open air sites without specifically religious buildings. This is not to imply that rituals were temporally or spatially unstructured. The sacrifice and dining practiced at open-air sanctuaries implied a recognized location and occasion (Morgan 1999a: ch. III.2). The ever-increasing volume of dedications (the mass of tripods at tenth-and ninth-century Olympia, for example) must have made spectacular monuments in their own right, and required some management of display and probably recycling (C. Morgan 2003: 153-4). The range of gender, age and status interests symbolized in votive offerings gradually widened through the tenth and ninth centuries and expanded markedly during the eighth, with ever greater investment differentiating rich from poor. This is particularly evident at shrines such as the Samian Heraion, where waterlogged conditions have preserved materials lost elsewhere, allowing us to see the full spectrum of dedications from the gold and ivory of the wealthy to the simplest gifts of the poor (Kyrieleis 1988; Brize 1997). At most mainland shrines the first major building activities were landscaping operations designed to manage space for assemblies and the display of votives - the mid-tenth-century terrace at Kalapodi is a case in point.25 From Submycenaean onwards, large-scale images of deities are strikingly absent on the mainland.26 They lingered longer on Crete, but even here, there is a gap until the three late eighth - or early seventh-century sphyre-laton figures from the altar of the Dreros temple (Prent 2005: 174-200; Romano 2000). Large-scale anthropomorphic imagery reappears with the spectacular eighth-century amber and ivory figures which “peopled” the temenos at Ephesos, although since the earliest temple here held a base for a cult statue, these probably represent worshipers or cult personnel rather than the deity (Muss 1999; 2007). In general, the rich imagery of Early Iron Age votives tends to reveal more about the interests and social personae of worshipers than deities.

Alongside these open air sanctuaries, a number of settlements have produced evidence for ritual within prominent domestic structures (“rulers’ houses”), Nichoria is a much-cited case,27 but one might also consider Aetos on Ithaka which continued long past the eighth century (Symeonoglou 2002: 51-3). These two models of cult organization were not simple alternatives, but in many regions operated in parallel. Thus it seems likely that the Nichoria elite who reinforced their status by control of the ritual activities in Units IV-1 and IV-5 also made offerings at Olympia, staking their claims to recognition in a wider forum (Morgan 1990: 65-85). In the southern and central mainland, purpose-built temples were a phenomenon of the late eighth and seventh centuries, but they are attested much earlier elsewhere. The Protogeometric Building 1,T at Mende Poseidi in Macedonia is the earliest mainland candidate yet discovered (Moschonissioti 1998: 265-7), but evidence from Crete is much more plentiful (Prent 2005). Cretan settlements more commonly contained cult rooms or complexes, as those at Karphi28 or Kephala Vasilikis (Eliopoulos 1998), and where settlements focused on old palace sites, such as Knossos or Phaistos, cult facilities sometimes exploited these ruined structures to create deliberate links to past authority (Prent 2005: 508-54). Open-air sanctuaries are known (Kato Symi for example: Lebessi 1981), but in general, cult activity seems more settlement-based than in much of the mainland.