The Geometric Period

Geometric Period

• 900-700 BC

• Split in 3 Parts

  • Early Geometric: (900-850)

  • Middle Geometric: (850-750)

  • Late Geometric: (750-690)

    • Late Geometric I 750-730

    • Late Geometric II 

Attic neck-handled amphora

• was used for male cremation urn

• minimal geometric design

Early Geometric Pottery

• 900-850

• light on dark

• minimal geometric design

• Introduction of meander 

Meander 

• A repetitive decorative pattern found on pottery 

• represents concepts of infinity 

Middle Geometric Period

• 850-750 BC

• greater elaborative design 

• Meander is the focus 

• Light on dark 

• focus on geometric pattern more intense

pyxis

• a cosmetic box

Late Geometric Period I

• 750-730 BC

Dipyleon Gate and Karameikos Cemetary

• The main gate outside Athens 

• Cemetery around the walls of Athens 

Dipyleon Amphora 

• worked as grave markers 

• Late Geometric

• 5’ 1”

• c. 750 BC

  • When the establishment of the first cities began

• made by the dipyleon master 

• female grave marker 

  • belly handle 

  • marked an inhumation burial 

  • Likely for an aristocratic woman 

    • Marks the existence of the aristocratic class 

      • was a world where there were influential and wealthy women

Decoration on the Dipyleon Amphora

• meander

• zigzags 

• chevrons  → These designs would be everywhere

• lozenges

• concentric bands

• Humans

  • the 8th century is the first time that the human form reappears in art.

• gazelles

• horses

• goats

• ducks

• *Prothesis

8th century 

• the 8th century is the first time that the human form reappears in art.

  • the 8th cent was a Renaissance period

    • colonization, reemergence of writing and art, establishment of literature, philosophical development, the emergence of the state 

  • a desire for order and patterns

  • The State supersedes the powers of families who were the dominant

    forces before.

Prothesis

• laying of the deceased

Prothesis on the Dipyleon Amphora 

• the men are depicted as naked, the women are clothed 

• There is a shroud wrapped around the deceased 

• women kneeling 

• men seated and standing 

  • are all pulling at their heads as if they are pulling out their hair

Burial in the Geometric Period

• In the 8th century, there were both inhumation and cremation burials 

Dipyleon Krater

• Dipylon Krater

• Late Geometric

• 4’

• c. 750 BC

• Symposium vessel

• Male grave marker

• depicts a prothesis as a well an Ekphora 

  • there are soldiers using figure 8 Shields, but people from this time wouldn't know about the Mycenaean

    • So likely a reference to Homer

      • This krater could depict a Homeric scene 

ekphora

• a funeral procession

symposium

• an event for men to eat, drink, and discuss topics concerning military, philosophy, society, and mythology 

• sometimes high-class prostitutes would be present and participate

Development of Athenian cremation burials over time

10th-9th century (cinerary urns)

• Men : Neck-handled

• women : Belly handle

8th century (grave markers)

• Men : Krater

• Women : Belly handle

Krater 

• 760-735 BC, Late Geometric I

  • depicts combat on a ship

  • has a mythological reference

    • Jason and the Argonauts?

    • Trojan War?

Krater, Thebes

• 730 BC

• Paris abducting Helen?

• was a symposium vessel 

  • These painted images would be points of conversation 

Neck-handled Amphora 

• Late Geometric II (730-690 BC)

• Depicts

  • mourners, warriors, and horses 

  • snakes on the shoulder 

• Repetitive patterns are now mixed in with wavy lines 

Ionian “bird bowl”

• 625 BC

• “Subgeometric style” continues into the 7th century

• Human form reappears in art

• Reinvention of writing

  • - earliest authors: Homer, Hesiod

• Polis, c. 800 BC - all burials extramural; communal cemeteries → previously they were family plots

  • It was illegal for them to take place in the city

  • This was how they were able to identify the beginning of the polis

• Rise in population → signals economic prosperity

• Colonization (Korkyra; Syracuse; Magna Graecia)

  • There was land hunger

• Formalization of religious centers (sanctuaries)

  • Panhellenic sanctuaries (Olympia, Delphi)

• Rule largely by elite: aristocracies/ oligarchies

• Trade increases (bronze reappears)

• Hero cults flourish

Syrian-Cretan bronze lyre-player

• Crete

• 8th century BC

• could be a bard singing Homeric epics or Apollo

Bronze armor from a “heroic” burial at Argo

• late 8th century BC

• The helmet resembles those worn by soldiers of the Assyrian Empire

  • demonstrates that the near east is stimulating a lot of these developments

Bronze cremation urn w/ marble lid and stone receptacle

• West Gate Cemetery at Eretria → is located on Euboea

• c. 720 BC

• Grave goods: gold diadem, iron weapons, bronze bowls, and Mycenaean bronze spearhead

• 14 later graves were found around the burial

  • Family plot → aristocratic family

Memory

• the concept of memory was very important for the people of the time

  • the memory of ancestors

    • serve as the foundation of the aristocratic families

      • serves as a source of legitimacy

Phases of the West gate cemetery at Eretria

• showing how private graves evolved into family cemeteries and then monumental shrines to civic "heroes"

  • Communalization of memory (Neer)

    • the family memory becoming part of the memory of the community

Plan of a probable ruler’s dwelling (basileos) at Nichoria

• 975 - 800 BC

• When the king is removed, the kings house becomes the religious part of the community and as cities developed a lot of the houses of the king become the location of temples 

Elements of Greek Sanctuaries

• Altar

  • Where offerings of food would be given

  • during special events animal would be sacrificed

    • The animals would be eaten

  • The altar was the most central and important part of the sanctuary

• Temple

  • storage of the wealthiest and most important items, a treasury

    • would make artworks out of gold and offer it to the gods

    • on days of worship, the doors would be open in order for the cult statue to be seen

    • there were no windows

  • People did not worship in the temple

    • was considered the house of the god

  • It would have a cult statue of the gods and any offerings made to the gods

  • was the monumentialization of the altar

• Temenos

  • "The sacred space" or “the boundary"

  • demarcated the mundane from the sacred

Greek Religion

• in Greek religion there is an understanding of reciprocity

  • at this point of time, it wasn't a personal relationship

  • it was about having the right relationship with the gods

Greek Sanctuaries

• Patron deity of polis often had sanctuary on acropolis

  • Temple of Athena at Athens

  • Temple of Hera at Argos

  • Temple of Apollo at Eretria

• Sanctuaries were built on the borderlands of cities

  • would have one on the east and the west

    • Corinthian sanctuary of Poseidon at Isthmia

      • Corinth’s Sanctuary at Isthmia allowed them to control the entire Isthmus

        • eventually become a pan-hellenic sanctuary

    • Corinthian sanctuary of Hera at Perachora

      • Corinth’s Sanctuary at Perachora allowed them to control the Corinthian Gulf

acropolis

the highest point of the city

Apsidal House or Temple

• early 8th c. BC

• Perachora near Corinth

Rectilinear clay temple model from the sanctuary of Hera near Argos

• late 8th century BC

• Meaning of painted patterns

  • decorative?

  • architectural features?

  • religious symbols?

Interstate Sanctuaries

• what happened there

  • athletic competitions

    • chariot racing, foot races

  • oracles ("binding arbitration") were found here

    • Also worked as arbiters for private matters but also polis matters

    • These pronouncements would be made by a woman

      • the breeks believed that women were closer to nature and more easily able to channel the gods

• were places where the elite would show off their wealth and status

  • before the elite would focus their wealth into their family burials

  • with the invention of the polis, their wealth is invested into votives and offerings at sanctuaries

Bronze animal figurines from the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia

• Votives

• mostly 8th century BC

• The Greeks called these offerings agalma -"delight", because they were a delight to the gods

Tripod

• Another type of votive offering that emerges is the tripod cauldron

• was a victory prize in the funeral games in Homer

• served as gift exchange and votives in sanctuaries 

"Smiting" bronze figure from the handle of a tripod from Olympia

• 8th cent .BC

• don't know if it represented a god or a mortal

• appear to be related to other "smiting" got statues from the near east

Bronze Semetic "smiting" god 

• 9-8th cent. BC

• Wearing an Egyptian crown

• The Semitic stautes have clothes but the Greek are nude 

• more natural looking 

Part of a leg of a tripod from Olympia

• 8th cent. BC

• upper panel: two males dueling over a tripod

  • In later Greek art, this scene would represent a fight between Apollo and Herakles for the sacred tripod at Delphi

    • Does this early scene illustrate that myth," Or was the myth invented to make sense of enigmatic scenes like this one

• Ekphrasis

Ekphrasis

• vividly pictorial literary description of an image in verse or prose

  • ex. The shield of Achilles in the Illiad

Mantiklos Apollo from Thebes

• c. 700 BC

• Daedalic Style

  • named after Daedalus, the first style found on Crete

  • The body is triangular and cylindrical 

  • eyes are open, wide, and large 

  • rigid 

  • the hair is ordered and patterned

• A hole in the left hand to hold objects 

  • maybe a silver bow

• Inscription: “Mantiklos dedicated me to the far-shooter with the silver-bow who shoots from afar; grant Apollo, something good in return

  • demonstrated the reciprocal nature of Greek religion  

Sphyrelaton technique

• taking a bronze sheet and hammering it around a wood core

• Cult statues of Dreros 

  • 700BC

Phoenician Alphabet

• Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet in 8th cent. BC 

  • The alphabet only had consonants 

    • The vowels were assumed 

• When the Greeks adopted the alphabet, they added vowels 

  • the greeks adopted a writing system in order to write down the Homeric epics

• The Greeks were very passionate about poetry

  • vowels are crucial for hexameter which is used in Homer and other verse 

The Nestor Cup

• 720 BC

• Rhodian cop -> made in Rhodes, Late Geometric

• Found on the Island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples -> Pithekoussai

• Inscription: I am the cup of Nestor, good to drink from Whoever drinks from me will at

once be seized by the desire of fair-crowned Aphrodite

Pithekoussai on Ischia (Italy),

• 775-750 BC

• Earliest known Greek colony beyond the Aegean

Greek Colonization

• Spain, North Africa, Italy, Southern France, Black Sea 

• The colonization that happened was the result of military power → use of the phalanx

• There was no open land → the land was inhabited or controlled by communities

• The colonies were not on the interior but rather on the coastal, strategic areas 

• The Greeks had to impose themselves 

  • They fought over the land or when they arrived the locals had to decide whether they were going to contest them 

• Created a new kind of circumstance 

  • The Greeks are faced with the contrast of the local people

    • They were influenced by these cultures, and a new form of Greek culture emerged

• Acculturation and fusion

• New ideas of what it means to be Greek