Mycenaean sites / destruction (Egyptian place-names in parentheses), ca. 1150 BCE

1. Mycenaean sites / destruction (Egyptian place-names in parentheses), ca. 1150 BCE No literary orarchaeological evidence for destruction level

2. 1200-1000 BCE: Transition from Bronze Age to Iron Age Greece • 1200 BCE • disintegration vs. invasion (no foreign goods in destruction layers) • settlements abandoned, palatial & administrative centers disappear, suggesting breakdown • syllabic writing (Linear B) disappears forever, replaced ca. 800 BCE with alphabetic writing • figurative art (small-scale sculpture, wall-painting, depictions on pottery) disappears • tholos tombs w. multiple burials disappear; individual tombs with cremation dominate • Mycenaeans migrate from west (Peloponnese) to east (Attica, Euboea, Chios, Rhodes, Cyprus)

3. LHIIIB LHIIIC SubMycenaean ProtoGeometric Geometric

4. LATE BRONZE AGE INVASIONS & MIGRATIONS (?)Some archaeological evidence for Ionian migration, none for DorianDialect distributions suggest transmigration, but literary accounts are mostly fictional; Mycenaean palace culture disappeared forever SONS OF HERAKLES DORIAN INVASION? ATHENS  IONIA CYPRUS RHODES Cultural collapse of Egyptian, Phoenician, Assyrian, Babylonian and Hittite Empires, 1200-1000 BCE

5. Hesiod Works and Days lines 145ff. • “Zeus created the third generation of mortals, the age of bronze. They were not like the generation of silver. They came from ash spears. They were terrible and strong, and the ghastly action of Ares was theirs, and violence …. None could come near them; their strength was big, and from their shoulders the arms grew irresistible on their ponderous bodies. The weapons of these men were bronze, of bronze their houses, and they worked as bronzesmiths. There was not yet any black iron. Yet even these, destroyed beneath the hands of each other, went down into the moldering domain of cold Hades….”

6. Hesiod Works and Days lines 145ff. • “Then there’s the age of Heroes … some fought for the sake of lovely haired Helen … while others were given a life and country at the end of the world ….” • “And then, Zeus made yet one more generation, the fifth, to be on the fertile earth. And I wish that I were not any part of the fifth generation of men, but had died before it came, or been born afterward. For here now is the age of iron. Never by daytime will there be an end to hard work and pain, nor in the night to weariness, when the gods will send anxieties to trouble us.”

7. The Collapse of Bronze Age Greece into a Dark Age • Loss of writing • Depopulation, diminished cultivation • Absence of much local or “international” trade • Artistic stagnation, loss of iconographic traditions

8. Signs of Renewal: Major Developments • Renewed trade and other contacts • Key new technology: iron working • Repopulated urban centers and renewal of social hierarchy • Literature and the new alphabet • Organized religious life and architecture • Minor arts: pottery and figurines

9. Dark & Iron Age Chronology, 1100-700 BCE • Submycenaean • Protogeometric • Geometric: 900-700 BCE • Early: 900-850 BCE • Middle: 850-760 BCE • Late: 760-700 BCE • Archaic Greece:700-480 BCE } 1100-900 BCE

10. Protogeometric pottery: activity in AthensShoulder decoration (concentric circles) Lekythos (-oi) Neck handled amphora

11. Al Mina Athens Phoenicia Lefkandi,Euboea

12. Lefkandi (Euboea), 10th c. apsidal building(hero cult – heroon?)

13. Lefkandi, 10th c. BCE: Plan of heroon(?), 45x10m

14. Lefkandi, 10th c. BCE heroon(?) reconstruction with stone socle, mudbrick walls and exterior colonnade of posts

15. Lefkandi, 10th c. BCE heroon(?) shaft graves

16. Lefkandi, 10th c. heroon(?) horse burials with iron bits in mouths

17. Lefkandiheroonburials, 10c. BCE Female burialwith gold jewelry Bronzecremation urn(male),weapons )

18. Lefkandi bronze bowl, imported from the Near East, ca. 900 BCE

19. Centaur from LefkandiEarly Geometric, ca. 900 BCE (Cypriote influence?)

20. What are the social implications of the Lefkandiheroon(?) and the later burials? • What does the heroon suggest in terms of social stratification, wealth and organization? • What do the Near Eastern-influenced objects suggest? • While Athens begins to flourish in the Dark Age, why is there no contact with Lefkandi nearby? • When Athenian objects appear in mid-9th century tombs, what does that suggest?

21. Map of Early Athens: Early Geometric, a new pottery style

22. Athens & Attica: Submycenaean, 11th century BCE

23. Protogeometric Vase, 10thcentury BCE High conical foot

24. Early Geometric (900-850 BCE) Athenian pottery undergoes dramatic changes • High conical foot disappears • Large circular and semi-circular motifs transition to rectilinear shapes within panels between handles and on the pottery’s body • zigzags, swastikas, triangles, small concentric circles, meanders, bands • Increase in wealth of grave goods: gold, imports • Children’s graves disappear • Burials in family(?) groups of ~10 adults in separate plots

25. Early Geometric (male) burial, Athens and pottery-firing technique (900-850 BCE) Clay slip of finely sifted clay mixed with water painted on vessel Three-step firing process 1. oxidation: air enters kiln: clay of vessel and painted-on clay slip turn red 2. reduction: air forced from kiln: clay & slip turn black 3. reoxidation: air enters kiln: clay of vessel turns red, but clay slip remains black

26. Early Geometric (female) grave, Athens (34 vessels in total)

27. Early Geometric (female) grave, Athens“Granaries”; granulation and filigree (< Phoenicia)

28. Early Geometric (female) grave, Athens: Model granaries

29. What are the social implications of the new trends in Athenian pottery in the 9th c. BCE? • What can we discern about rank and status within and between families? • What can we surmise about regional wealth, about contacts with the Near East, about trade and communication?

30. Evidence from other areas of the Mediterranean in the 10th and 9th cs. BCE • Cult activity (dedications, altars, shrines at Kalapodi in central Greece) • Spread of Phoenician artisanship to Cyprus, Rhodes, the Cyclades, Athens and Lefkandi • Spread of Cypriote artisanship to Crete including Phoenician inscriptions • Early Geometric pottery from Athens and other Greek communities appear in Cretan burials, but Cretan objects do not appear on the Greek mainland or the NE

31. Middle Geometric skyphos from Eleusis, Attica

32. Early Phoenician and Greek alphabets

33. “Cup of Nestor,” Ischia (Pithekusae), Italy, 750 BCE ΝΕΣΤΟΡΟΣ : Ε[ΙΜΙ] : ΕΥΠΟΤ[ΟΝ] : ΠΟΤΕΡΙΟΝ ΗΟΣ ΔΑ ΤΟΔΕ ΠΙΕΣΙ : ΠΟΤΕΡΙ[Ο] : ΑΥΤΙΚΑ ΚΕΝΟΝ ΗΙΜΕΡΟΣ ΗΑΙΡΕΣΕΙ : ΚΑΛΛΙΣΤΕ[ΦΑΝ]Ο : ΑΦΡΟΔΙΤΕΣ Νέστορος ε[ἰμὶ] εὔποτ[ον] ποτέριον ὃς δ’ ἂ(ν) το(ῦ)δε πίεσι ποτερί[ου] αὐτίκα κῆνον ἵμερος αἱρέσει καλλιστε[φάν]ο Ἀφροδίτες Of Nestor I am the pleasant-to-drink-from cup Whoever drinks from this cup, immediately him A desire will seize for fair-crowned Aphrodite