CLAS241 - Dark Ages - (1100 - 700 BCE)

Facts about the dark ages

• Bronze Age ends in widespread destructions 

  • Fires 

• Lots of migration (sea peoples) 

  • Uncertain who the sea peoples are 

  • Loose band of different individuals (ex. Egyptians, etc) who contributed to the destruction 

• Decrease in number of settlements 

  • Thus, there’s a decrease in material production (ex. Art) 

• Decrease in overall population 

• Cyprus seems to be particularly important because it survives well 

  • Early material comes up here 

  • Alphabet gets adapted by Greece 

• The Dark Ages are broken up into: 

  • Sub-Mycenaean 

  • Protogeometric (1000-900)

  • Geometric (Early, Middle, Late) 

• Bronze age is over 

  • Iron becomes the main material  

Plan of Heroon - Lefkandi. Dark Ages. 1100 - 700 BCE.

• A heroon is a temple for a hero (a subdivine person)

• But basically for ancestral worship

• There’s a room in the front resembling a porch – looks like a megaron – showing evolution from the Bronze Age

• In the middle of the Heroon, there are 3 burials in 2 shallow pits

  • 1) A team of horses

    • Horses pull a chariot

    • Could be for chariot warfare (common in the Bronze Age), but it also could be a ceremonial chariot (since war chariots disappeared during the Iron Age)

  • 2) A cremated male

    • Inside a bronze urn

    • This urn came from Cyprus, showing definitive trade relations

    • A sword was beside the urn

    • Linen covering the urn probably helped preserve the bronze

  • 3) A buried female

    • Buried with a lot of jewelry = high status and wealth

    • She wore metal breast decoration

• Around the Heroon, there’s a series of post holes 

  • Holes are not for architectural purposes 

  • Looks like the beginnings of later Greek architecture

  • Bridge between what we see in the bronze age and what we see in later periods 

• More burials are at the east end of the Heroon

  • Centaur figures were found in the burials

    • They were terracotta figures like the hedgehog

    • Fishnet pattern on the front looks like armour

    • Telling a story of a centaur at battle

    • Sculpture more advanced than other decorative arts like vases?

• Other items found in the Heroon

  • Gold and silver (suggests that the grave occupants were wealthy and important)

  • Jewelry - rings and earrings

  • “Safety pin” in a fibula shape

  • Art piece of a horse and a man ploughing the field

  • The man’s body looks from the late bronze age but more rounded

• Some of the figures and prestigious goods were used as transactional votive offerings

idk which one is gonna be displayed on the midterm HELP, just know that it has spirals (and search it up on google to familiarize yourself with it)

Protogeometric Amphora. Dark Ages. 1100 - 700 BCE.

• Appears in Athens

• Shapes of Protogeometric pottery (the silhouette) are mostly influenced from Mycenaean pottery

• Storage vessel for liquid 

• Popular and often traded

• Potter’s wheel arrives in Greece 

  • Pots were being made on a faster wheel with more precise and crisp contours

  • Concentric circles were easily created (unlike the free-hand error-prone lines of sub-Mycenaean decoration)

• Designs were still simplistic/limited

• Also had cross-hatched triangles, panels, and zigzags symmetrically arranged

• Decoration emphasized form

  • Like the lines idk

Geometric Amphora. Dark Ages. 1100 - 700 BCE.

• The one shown in the picture is called the Dipylon amphora (from kerameikos cemetery)

  • It was really big - the size suggests it belongs to a wealthy person

• Amphoras were found outside graves and held cremated remains

• Shows zig zags, herringbone pattern, interlocking patterns 

  • Greek key/meander 

• The panels between the handles show an important scene:

  • Prothesis: The laying out of the body on the funeral bier

  • Secondary figures are employing gestures of mourning (i.e tearing their hair)

    • Suggested to be family members surrounding the deceased

    • The smaller bodies in front of the bier are probably children

  • Mixed perspectives 

    • Profile view of the body on the bier 

    • Birds eye view of the shroud, to not obscure the body

  • Geometric figures 

    • Influence of old forms

    • But with rounded features like butt, looks more naturalistic 

  • The dead person is a woman (gendered by the skirt)

• Shows evolution and continuation

• Evolution:

  • Depiction of narrative scenes like the funeral

    • Shows social context: family mourning the decreased

  • More detailed/rounded bodies

• Continuation:

  • Geometric forms and patterns

  • Gendered clothing

  • Mixed perspective

  • Dark horizontal bands that organize the designs of the vase

Geometric Oinochoe. Dark Ages. 1100 - 700 BCE.

• Found on a grave

• For drinking and pouring

• Using more space than protogeometric amphora

• Shows interlocking patterns - “Greek key” or “Meander” 

• Painted figures on pottery 

  • Last time we saw that was the warrior vase 

  • Figures have shields and swords 

  • Like the figure-of-eight shield (found in Knossos)– could be connected to earlier period 

• Technique where the shield and the body are united, showing that they’re soldiers

  • Indicates advancement in art 

• Typical Bronze age body form with wide shoulders, thin waist, big butt

  • But an attempt at rounding things  

• Similar to the warrior vase 

  • Ground and head lines 

  • Mixed perspective (profile head and legs but frontal body)

Unravelled version of the geometric oinochoe

If you look closely at the middle, you can see a pair of men right beside each other:

• Could be compositional (2 separate bodies look connected) 

• Could be the conjoined twins (Reference to Homer, Illiad)

  • The twins fight at the side of the Trojans 

  • First time we see the Greeks referencing Homer 

• Relation between text and art is dynamic, don’t know which comes first