This volume reports on Athenian pottery found in the Athenian Agora up to 1960 that can be dated from about the middle of the 8th century B.C., when the appearance of a painter of sufficient personal distinction to enliven the whole craft marks a real break from the earlier Geometric style, through the third quarter of the 7th century B.C. when Protoattic gives way to black-figure and black wares. A sampling of contemporary imported ware is included. The material is treated first by shape and then, more extensively, by painting styles. Some 650 characteristic pieces are selected for cataloguing. The introduction discusses the development of the various shapes and styles, characterizing the special techniques and innovations of the period. The topographical features of the Agora that are indicated by the places of discovery of deposits of late Geometric and Protoattic pottery are summarized under wells, houses, workshops, sanctuaries, cemeteries, and roads.
E-Book Content
THE
AGORA ATHENIAN RESULTS OF EXCAVATIONS CONDUCTED BY
THE AMERICAN SCHOOL OF CLASSICAL STUDIES AT ATHENS
VIII
VOLUME
LATE AND
GEOMETRIC
POTTERY PROTOATTIC MID 8TH TO LATE 7TH CENTURY B.C. BY EVA T. H. BRANN
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THE AMERICAN SCHOOL OF CLASSICAL STUDIES AT ATHENS PRINCETON,
NEW JERSEY
1962
PUBLISHED
WITH
THE
AID OF A GRANT
ALL RIGHTS
PRINTED
IN GERMANY
FROM
MR. JOHN
D. ROCKEFELLER,
RESERVED
at J.J. AUGUSTIN
GLUCKSTADT
JR.
PREFACE volume contains a selection of the Thisall the found in the
Late Geometric and Protoattic pottery, including of the Athenian Agora before 1960, as Excavations figured pottery, well as a sampling of contemporary imported pottery. The Submycenaean, Protogeometric, Early and Middle Geometric pottery which precedes it will be published separately by Evelyn L. Smithson. Conventionally, all the Geometric material should have been treated together, but the pottery itself seemed to speak in favor of taking the Late Geometric phase with the Protoattic. The argument is as follows. The mass of the pottery of the 11th through the 7th centuries was made within a fundamentally conservative craft tradition against which all innovations, revivals and survivals must be viewed to be appreciated. The more these products of mere craftsmanshipare studied in all their detail, the more they appear to evolve slowly and imperceptibly, like generations of natural creatures; that is to say, the period styles and techniques cannot be sharply marked off one from another. One event alone provides a clear-cut inception of a period: the appearance of a painter of sufficient personal distinction to enliven the whole craft. Such a painter did appear in the middle of the 8th century. This was the Dipylon Painter who brought to the fore that full figure style which was developed in Protoattic to become the distinguishing feature of classical vase painting. Once he had come on the scene, a lively crowd of easily distinguishable Late Geometric painters immediately followed. Hence his floruit, the earlier phase of Late Geometric, seemed the proper prelude to the Protoattic period, while the careful, conservatively anonymous Middle Geometricpottery that immediately precededthe productsof his activity appearedas the last of a purely geometric tradition. The Agora deposits mirror this division in their relative volumes; the amount of Middle Geometric is small and groups illustrating the transition to Late Geometric are rare, while there is a sudden plethora of Late Geometric groups. The lower terminus for this volume, the third quarter