Traditionally, historians have based their knowledge on Greek Iron Age on the analysis of pottery styles from Athens. This chronology, developed in the 1950s and 1960s by Nicolas Coldsteam and Vincent Desborough, assumed that the so-called protogeometric era began in 1025 BC and ended around 900 BC in turn Late Geometric periodlasting from 760 to 700 BC, was a time of dynamic economic and social development, with the introduction of the alphabet, the creation of polis and the colonial expansion of the Greeks. However, new research indicates that this established chronology may be wrong.
A breakthrough in research came with the analysis of ceramics discovered in 2013 Eleoniean ancient city in Boeotia. Excavations there revealed a vessel with characteristic concentric circles – typical of the protogeometric style.
Importantly, this vessel was found in a layer dating to the second half of the 12th century BC, i.e much earlier than the previously recognized date of creation of this styleaccording to which it appeared only at the end of the 11th century BC in Athens.
Finds from the city of Eleon suggest that the style may have originated earlier, around 1150 BC in the north Greece. This changes the perspective on the entire Greek Iron Age and its chronology.
The key to the development of this theory were chemical and petrographic analyzes carried out on ceramics from the city of Eleon. The results confirmed that the vessel came from the Axios (Vardar) river valley located in what is now Greece and North Macedonia, which coincides with the results of other studies from northern Greece that also questioned the traditional chronology of Coldsteam and Desborough.
However, the discovery from Eleon also introduces an additional level of complexity because protogeometric pottery was found in a layer where Mycenaean-style pottery also occurred.
It is usually believed that Mycenaean-style pottery was produced from the 16th to 11th centuries BC and was then replaced by the Protogeometric style. However, the discovery from Eleon shows that the two styles may have coexisted for about 100 years. This means that Greece’s “dark ages” may have been much shorter than previously thought.
As a consequence, the late Geometric period of the so-called the Greek Renaissance, which saw great cultural achievements, could begin already around 870 BCand not, as previously believed, only in 760 BC and thus it probably lasted about 200 years instead of 60 as Coldsteam and Desborough timed this period. If this was indeed the case, then the “Greek Renaissance” was not as impressive and dynamic as we previously thought.
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Source: geekweek.interia.pl
