Cycladic amphora

cultural b io g raphy of a g eome tr ic amphora 149

The CulturalBiography of aCycladic GeometricAmphoraIsl anders in Athens and thePrehistory of Me tics

ABSTRACT

This article presents the life history of a large, repaired Early Iron Age am-phora imported to Athens, fragments of which were discovered in 1939 inand around the Hephaisteion. The context of the vessel suggests that it wasused in a tomb. Decorated in an “archaizing” style reminiscent of Protogeo-metric, the amphora can be dated to the Late Geometric period. It finds itsclosest parallels on Syros, an island hitherto little known for its post–EarlyCycladic antiquities. How the amphora made its way to Athens is addressed,and different types of evidence point to the existence of resident aliens (metics)in a period before the reforms of Solon and Kleisthenes.

Among the surprises that lay beneath the building that has come to beknown as the Hephaisteion (Fig. 1), few were more curious than a hugeamphora, Agora P 14819 (Fig. 2), assembled during the 1939 excavationseason.1 Vincent Desborough saw the fragments at the time, and some

1. The circumstances leading to theappearance of this article, published adecade after the death of Evelyn Smith-son, require a word of explanation. Thisstudy grew out of a conversation be-tween Evelyn and myself in the springof 1988, at which time the amphora,Agora P 14819, became the focus ofdiscussion. Over the next few years,Evelyn spent quite a bit of time thinkingabout P 14819. In her typical fashion,she dissected the original trench note-books of the Agora and scoured everypossible context lot in order to recon-struct the context of the vessel. More-over, she acquainted herself with theEarly Iron Age Cyclades and, despiteher modest assertion that she was onlyan “Attic man” (see Papadopoulos 1994a,p. 564), she delved into the quagmire ofscientific analysis and particularly the

problems of distinguishing the fabricsof various Cycladic islands. After heruntimely death in 1992, I came acrossan unfinished manuscript hidden inone of the many boxes of her notes.Entitled “O AMFOREUS TOU ANA-

JILA”—Anaxilas’s amphora—thepaper was in two sections, amountingto some eleven pages of double-spacedtext. In the same folder were manyhandwritten notes, primarily on thephenomenon of an archaizing style inlater Geometric, and several photo-copies of photographs of pots fromAthens as illustrations. There were, inaddition, many handwritten notes onNaxos and on Cycladic pottery ingeneral, as well as the transcription ofthe funerary inscription of Anaxilas ofNaxos—Athenian Kerameikos, inv. I.388 (see below). The manuscript itself

comprised a brief introduction, a de-scription of the pot, and a section on“Excavation and Context.” The manu-script, little more than an introductorydraft, was among the last projects Evelynworked on before her death. Enoughsurvived in the manuscript and notes toindicate the basic structure of a paper.

In the present article, much of theintroduction and section on excavationand context, as well as the basic descrip-tion of the vase, is Evelyn’s, with myaddenda and corrigenda, often in thosesections marked by Evelyn as requiringfurther work or elaboration. The Cy-cladic complexities of the vase followsome of Evelyn’s notes; so too thediscussion of the pot as a burial urnfor an infant, and some musings onhow it may have made its way to Athens.This said, the manuscript was very much

he sper ia 7 1 ( 2002 )Pages 149-199

john k . papad op o ul o s and e v ely n l . smithson150

years later suggested, by implication at least, that the pot was an import ofEast Greek or island origin, and Subprotogeometric in date.2 As an “iso-lated find” of uncertain date and without close parallel, it attracted littlefurther attention, and its ungainly size, delicate equilibrium, and heavyplastering relegated it eventually to the virtual oblivion of the back, southstoreroom of the Stoa of Attalos, wired to the top shelf for safety’s sake. Achance conversation between the authors in the spring of 1988 recalledthe vessel to mind and, following a precarious viewing, it was broughtdown from its lofty position.

Although one of the largest Early Iron Age vessels from the area ofthe later Athenian Agora, P 14819 received little attention. A problematiccontext (see below) meant that it could be dated only on the basis of styleand, because it was not clearly recognized as Late Geometric, it was notincluded in Agora VIII. While the pot and its context do have some bear-ing on the use of the area before there was ever an agora nearby, particu-larly with regard to the history of early burials on Kolonos Agoraios, thevessel is later than any intact grave on the plateau or its western slopes.Moreover, in the framework of accelerated scholarly activity and new dis-coveries in island and East Greek Geometric over the past few decades,Agora P 14819 is a “problem piece” that should be more widely known toscholars. For these reasons, it seemed desirable to present it at this timeand in this form, not least in the hope of finding a more secure prove-nience and date for it.

The piece appears to be Cycladic—rather than East Greek—in ori-gin, perhaps from the island of Syros, and its date 8th century b.c., prob-

unfinished. I, therefore, have to assumeresponsibility for any shortcomings ofthe final result and, indeed, responsibil-ity for the decision to publish this paperin its current form. Evelyn was a per-fectionist, and I hope the result does notfall too far below her high standards.

Figure 1. The Hephaisteion, eastfront, May 1936. Courtesy AgoraExcavations

2. Desborough 1952, p. 34: “Curi-ously enough, fragments of a similaramphora [like those from 8th-centurycontexts on Thera] of coarse red clay,very micaceous, appear among the un-published material of the Agora Exca-vations (P 14819); unfortunately, there

is no context.” He goes on to comparethe vessel to an unpublished amphorafrom Melos that has semicircles on theshoulder and circles on the belly (Des-borough 1952, p. 34, n. 2), with afurther mention on p. 36.


ably no earlier than the third quarter, according to the conventional chro-nology.3 As such, the vessel may serve as a point of departure for any dis-cussion of imported pottery to Early Iron Age Athens.4 It also provides aclearer focus on the phenomenon of an Early Iron Age “archaizing” style,that is, one alluding to the Protogeometric, but produced in the Late Geo-metric period. In turning to the particular history of this large pot—itscultural biography5—alternative scenarios are discussed, including themovement of commodities and people. Beyond this, the vessel provides apotential glimpse of the prehistory of a social phenomenon that was todefine historic Athens. Various threads of evidence converge to suggestthe possibility of resident aliens—metoikoi as they came to be known inhistoric Athens—not only in the period before Kleisthenes, but arguablygenerations before the reforms of Solon, in an era before recorded history.6

Figure 2. a) Late Geometric belly-handled amphora, Athenian AgoraP 14819; b) detail of handle, as pre-served. Courtesy Agora Excavations

a

b

3. At the time of her death Evelyninclined toward the view that theamphora was Naxian on the basis ofcomparanda available at the time; thusthe original title of her paper, “Anax-ilas’s Amphora,” was appropriate for anamphora believed to come from Naxos,the homeland of the later metic Anax-ilas. Now that the Naxian provenienceseems less likely, the old title slightlymisses the mark. Although I havechanged the title, the basic thrust ofthe original title is as immediate anddirect as when Evelyn penned it.

4. It is fairly clear that ceramicimports to Early Iron Age Athens,especially during Protogeometric, butalso during Early and Middle Geomet-ric, were exceedingly rare—comparableto the import of the proverbial “owls toAthens.” This situation contrasts withthat at any number of Aegean sites,such as Lefkandi and Knossos, tomention only two. There, potteryimports, although not abundant incomparison to the local material, werenevertheless common occurrences (seeesp. Lefkandi I, pp. 347–354, for Proto-

geometric and Geometric imports; Cold-stream and Catling 1996, pp. 393–409;also Coldstream 1990).

5. There is a growing literature onthis subject, much of which was eitherunknown to Smithson, or appeared afterher death. Especially important are thevarious papers in Appadurai 1986, esp.Kopytoff 1986, p. 86; cf. Davis 1997;Gosden and Marshall 1999, esp. pp. 169–178.

6. For overviews of metoikoi in Athens,see Clerc 1893; Gauthier 1972, esp. ch. 3;Whitehead 1977; 1984.


EXCAVAT ION AND CONTEXT

After spending two years clearing the rest of Kolonos Agoraios to bed-rock,7 the Agora excavators returned to the so-called Theseion in Febru-ary of 1939, this time to remove the earth filling and Christian burialsfrom within that building (Fig. 3) in order to study its foundations, con-struction filling, and any remains that might have survived of an earliersanctuary on the site. Work began within the cella on 20 February, underthe supervision of Dorothy Burr Thompson, with the collaboration ofHomer A. Thompson.8 On the very first day “Protogeometric” materialwas observed in the disturbed levels immediately beneath the tile flooringof the modern “museum” (Fig. 4).9 Two days later more “Protogeomet-ric!” was recorded, including “considerable pieces of a Protogeometricamphora.”10 All of these “Protogeometric” fragments were from AgoraP 14819, and in the course of the next month exploration to bedrock led tothe recovery of 165 pieces of the pot, roughly a third of it, the profilecomplete. So remarkable was this piece and distinctive its fabric that not asingle preserved sherd escaped the excavators’ diligence; in 1988 reexami-nation of the sherd lots from the temple and immediate surroundingsyielded no additional fragments.

7. Shear 1936, pp. 14–16, 23–24;1937, pp. 342–352. Limited cleaningwas done in both sections KK and PYin 1937, the latter referring to PlateiaTheseion.

8. The results were incorporatedinto William Bell Dinsmoor’s thor-ough (1941) study on the Hephai-steion, with special acknowledgment

Figure 3. Interior of the cella of theHephaisteion from the east, showinglate burials under the floor.Courtesy Agora Excavations

to the Thompsons on pp. 3–4.9. For the so-called Theseion as

the “Central Archaeological Museum,”1834–1874, see Karouzou 1968,pp. ix–xi. The Hephaisteion was de-creed “Central Public Museum forAntiquities” on November 13, 1834.The building was first used as an exhi-bition space, and later, from 1835 until

at least 1934, for antiquities storage;see Papageorgiou-Venetas 1994, p. 314;also p. 115, fig. 145. See further Kav-vadias 1890–1892, pp. 12–15; Kokkou1974, p. 104, n. 2; Karo 1934, col. 146,for the “Sammlung im Theseion.”

10. References in quotation marksare from the excavation notebooks.


Some of the fragments of P 14819, all but one of them joining, werefound in each of the post-antique layers within the cella (Fig. 3), “in gen-eral near the south door,” but at least two lay in the loose upper filling ofChristian grave 45.11 A single sherd clearly derives from the temple con-struction fill (layer IV) that remained over bedrock beneath Christian grave34.12 It is likely that some sherds came, as well, from a pocket of heavilyburned red earth (layer VI) over bedrock in the West Peristyle beneathChristian grave 4.13 No fragment of P 14819 is known to have derivedfrom the thin layer of gray earth (layer VII) preserved in four small patchesover bedrock within the cella.

Figure 4. Interior of the Hephais-teion, showing the sculpture collec-tion of the then National Museumof Athens. Albumen print, PascalSebah, ca. 1870. The Getty ResearchInstitute, acc. no. 92.R.84 (04.13.04).Courtesy Getty Research Institute

11. Dinsmoor 1941, p. 5, fig. 1.12. See below. Dorothy Thompson

had suggested that this might havebeen the provenance of the entire pot.In fact, no cutting preserved withinthe temple is of suitable size or con-figuration for it.

13. This layer has been related topossible Persian destruction in thearea; see Dinsmoor 1941, pp. 126–127.This provenance would seem the mostlikely explanation of certain anomalies:in 1939 section KK, lot 476, waspackaged for permanent storage in alarge sturdy manila envelope, still in-tact and firmly clasped in 1988. Theenvelope was labeled (DBT/HAT[= Dorothy Burr Thompson andHomer A. Thompson]) “West Peri-

style, Under Grave XLI [= grave 4 inDinsmoor 1941]. Protogeometric–VIcent. b.c.,” and so entered by HAT inthe section lot-list; it was the only lotof 46 examined in 1988 that lacked afield ticket. It contained only sevensmall sherds, none conceivably Proto-geometric, two of them black-glaze,one from the handle of a cup, Type C.It seems impossible that piecesdescribed by the Thompsons as “Proto-geometric” would not be readilyidentifiable, for both had had, by 1939,extensive experience with Early IronAge wells and graves. Tiny lots, suchas this, were regularly stored in smallerenvelopes, of two standard sizes. Onecan only surmise that the “Proto-geometric” material they noted had

been removed, and that it was morepieces of P 14819. At least two otherlots listed as containing “Protogeo-metric” now have nothing in themthat could have been so described.One may presume, then, that in afinal effort to recover all sherds ofP 14819 before missing portions werefilled out in plaster to stabilize themended vessel as preserved (1939),a conservator had reviewed all KKlots listed as containing “Proto-geometric,” and that additionalpieces were in fact found in someof them. Such an intervention mightalso account for the accidental loss ofthe field ticket, normally securelyfastened.


The seven strata within the temple were divided by the Thompsonsinto three groups; within each the range of sherds in the larger lots isessentially the same:

Post-antique (layers I–III): these levels contained pottery that was pre-dominantly Byzantine and Turkish, along with a few Hellenistic andRoman pieces, and a scattering of Protogeometric through Classical sherds.The Christian burials were either dug down into these layers or the layershad formed over or were placed to cover the tombs. The burials them-selves were divided by Dinsmoor into Medieval and Protestant graves.14

Of the former, the great majority of tombs belong to the period betweena.d. 1057 and 1453.15 Of the latter, the earliest is probably that of JohnTweddell, who died on July 25, 1799, while the use of the area as a burialground probably came to an end immediately after the outbreak of theWar of Independence.16

Temple construction filling (layers IV–V): these layers contained pre-dominantly 6th- and early-5th-century material, with only a handful ofpieces certainly later than 480 b.c. More than half of the lots contained afew pieces of Protogeometric and Early Geometric; Middle Geometricsherds were rare, Late Geometric more numerous. This filling was dumpedwithin the rectangle of the peristyle as the foundations rose. Foundationtrenches for cella walls, porches, and internal colonnades were cut throughthis filling, mostly to, or deeply into, bedrock; the poros underpinning forthe temple pavement cut through it to rest on bedrock or on the firmburned crust of the few surviving deposits that predate the temple.17

Deposits predating the temple (layers VI–VII): the red earth of layer VI,often preserving a thick burned crust, contained a fair number of burnedsherds, some heavily affected by the fire. The softer gray earth of layer VIIcontained no clearly burned sherds. Apart from these physical differences,which are significant, the material recovered from layers VI and VII wasvery similar. The majority of fragments were of the 6th century b.c., withnothing clearly later than ca. 480 b.c. The early component is substan-tial in nearly all the lots, and about a third of one lot was certainlyProtogeometric. Two lots from layer VI from the west end contained ahandful of Late Helladic IIIC sherds,18 and one along the north peristylepreserved a fine piece of early Mycenaean.19 The LH IIIC material is notsurprising in the context of nearby graves of that date,20 but this sampleis now the earliest pottery recovered from the plateau or the northwestslopes of Kolonos Agoraios. All phases of Geometric are represented, a

14. Dinsmoor 1941, pp. 6–30.15. Dinsmoor 1941, p. 15.16. Dinsmoor 1941, pp. 16–17, 30.

After the War of Independence the“Theseion” would have been a veryunlikely location for a burial groundbecause of the importance it hadassumed at that time in the creation ofthe modern city of Athens. This isperhaps most clearly illustrated in Petervon Hess’s painting entitled Arrival ofKing Otto of Greece in Athens on January12, 1835, now in the Neue Pinakothek

in Munich (see Koch 1955, p. 161,fig. 2; see also p. 163, figs. 7–8; Bastéa2000, pp. 6–7, fig. 1). As a monument,the building itself, along with PlateiaTheseiou, came to occupy a prominentplace both physically and symbolically inthe newly created capital of the nascentGreek state (Athens became the capitalof Greece in 1834, following earlierprovisional seats of government at Aiginaand Nauplia; see Bastéa 2000, pp. 6–14).

17. Dinsmoor 1941, pp. 30–31, 65,126–127.

18. KK lot 466, South Peristyleunder grave 16, by the southwest anta;KK lot 479, northwest corner Peri-style.

19. KK lot 474, North Peristyle,under grave 29. The fragment is of avertical strap handle (W. 0.034 m),well burnished, fired light reddishbrown to light red 2.5YR 6/4–6; thepiece is LH III A:1 at latest.

20. Especially graves D 6:3 andD 7:1, both of which can be assignedto Final Mycenaean/Submycenaean.


fair quantity of Late Geometric and Protoattic, as well as all stages ofblack-figure. Many pieces are ambitious and some are of high quality.

None of the early material deriving from these deposits is, then, in itsoriginal context, and the layers antedating the temple represent filling thathad been spread to serve a construction or landscaping project of the 5thcentury b.c. The source, or sources, of this material is arguable, but someof it came from disturbed graves or cemetery refuse around them. Whileearth fill elsewhere has been shown to have sometimes been hauled infrom a distance,21 rarely is the distance substantial, and in this case a readysource may have lain just to the west and northwest where bedrock fallsaway, in places abruptly, from the temple area. Moreover, a number ofgraves were preserved along the west and northwest shoulder of the hill,and dozens of cuttings for what were certainly others.22 Surviving burialsrange in date from the closing stages of LH IIIC into Middle GeometricI,23 but scattered cemetery debris over bedrock around them leaves littledoubt that burial in the area continued at least into the late 8th and prob-ably through the 7th century b.c. The latter is suggested by a fragment ofa terracotta plastic snake that had surely peeled from a Late Geometric orEarly Protoattic funerary vase.24

Sherds in the temple filling are mostly small, joins few, and even re-constituted fragments small; the same is generally true of the presumedcemetery debris, reinforcing the impression that this is indeed the sourceof most of the sherds beneath the Hephaisteion. The sherds assembled asP 14819 are an exception. So much of the vessel is preserved, all but onesmall sherd joining, that it cannot have been moved far, and its survival onKolonos Agoraios is virtually unimaginable outside an original context ofa grave deeply sunk into bedrock.25 A likely sequence of events, therefore,is as follows:

1. The pot was probably uprooted by builders of the Hephais-teion.26 If pieces of it actually derive from layer VI, as seemsprobable (see above), the grave must have been destroyed atthe beginning of the 5th century b.c. The vessel may have

21. A good but rather rare exampleof fill having been carried somedistance is that of the dumped road fillof the mid-7th century b.c. beside theTholos Cemetery. The depositcontained sherds that joined fragmentsin the Protoattic Votive deposit on theAreiopagos, about 100 m to thesoutheast: deposit H 17:4, Young 1939,p. 10. Another case is that of sherdsjoining pyre debris in grave H 16:6,which were found in 4th-century b.c.dumped filling above that deposit, 15 mto the south; see Smithson 1968, pp.78–79. In both cases the distance is notsubstantial.

22. The preserved graves andnumerous grave cuttings will be fully

presented in a forthcoming volume in theAthenian Agora series.

23. The latest tomb, C 8:7 (MiddleGeometric I), is located about 20 msouthwest of the temple.

24. The fragment derives from lotKK 461 (layer IV), under Christiangraves in the cella. The incidence of suchplastic snakes appears to originate in theLate Geometric IIb workshop of thePhiladelphia Painter (see Coldstream1968, p. 57) and continues through thecareer of the Analatos Painter, that is, achronological span of ca. 725–675 b.c.in the conventional chronology. Thework of the Analatos Painter, includinghydriai with snake-molded handles, isfully discussed by Sheedy 1992.

25. While a well is also a possiblesource, the earliest pre-Archaic well onKolonos Agoraios is D 12:3 (MiddleGeometric II/Late Geometric Ia), nearly100 m to the southeast, at the edge of theeastern scarp; see Brann 1961, pp. 103–114, well I; for the date see Coldstream1968, p. 22. It is also worth adding thatpots found in wells, particularly thosesubstantially preserved (i.e., period-of-use), are normally smaller, and rarelyexceed a height of 0.40 m.

26. An earlier uprooting of the vessel,though possible, seems unlikely, especial-ly since the surface breaks appear sharpand relatively unworn; reinforcing plasternow coating the entire interior of thevessel prevents closer inspection.


been originally in one of the robbed burial pits just outside thefoundations of the west peristyle (see below).27

2. The amphora was deliberately broken up into sherds and tossedinto or onto the early-5th-century b.c. fill.

3. The sherds were dispersed through the Hephaisteion constructionfilling, either entering as a part of the pre-temple fill dumpedwithin the area of the rectangle or churned up from levelsdisturbed by the Hephaisteion builders.

4. Christian burials and repairs to the church, to the extent that theypenetrated and displaced construction filling or pre-templelevels, drew some pieces up into post-antique or modern levels.

If the sequence of events presented here is sound, then the relevant con-texts in and immediately around the building help to pinpoint the precisedate of the construction of the Hephaisteion. They supplement the “newevidence for the dating of the temple” prepared by Lucy Talcott and pre-sented in Dinsmoor’s study,28 primarily based on the material from thedeposit of working chips of Pentelic marble some 33 m to the southwest ofthe temple, and suggest a Kimonian date for the building. Moreover, thelocation of Christian burials within the cella (Fig. 3) throws some doubton the restoration, and even the very existence of the interior colonnades.29

As for the immediate surroundings of the building, it is worth addingthat the bedrock in the area of the Hephaisteion was dug into for numer-ous Early Iron Age graves. A few of these, such as the “Final Mycenaean/Submycenaean” tomb D 7:1 (Fig. 5), were dug deep into the natural rockand, being well sealed in some cases, escaped the attention of later builderson the hill.30 It was very common, however, to find on Kolonos Agoraioslarge areas of bedrock with numerous destroyed, looted, or damaged burialpits with a configuration identical to the better-preserved tombs nearby.31

Figure 6 illustrates only a few of these pits, and it is highly likely thatP 14819 derives from such a damaged tomb. Assuming the pot to havecome from a tomb, as seems most likely, one may well ask of what kindand whose. Before addressing these questions, it is important to describethe vessel more fully and to establish, as far as is possible, its date, sincechronology has a direct bearing on the question of preferred burial customin Athens at any given time in the Early Iron Age.

27. As, for example, one on eitherside of the third peristyle column fromthe north; graves D 7:1, D 7:6, and D7:7 lay within a distance of 4.0 m.Other pits and an intact grave, D 7:8,dotted the slopes further to the westand southwest.

28. Dinsmoor 1941, pp. 128–150.29. The lack of an interior colon-

nade for the Hephaisteion and the factthat the statue base that was restored inthe Hephaisteion was moved to Athens

from Sounion formed part of an unpub-lished paper presented by FrederickCooper (1985) at the American Schoolof Classical Studies on March 27, 1985.I am grateful to Fred Cooper for send-ing me a copy of his manuscript.

30. For the later activity around theHephaisteion, including the establish-ment of a landscaped garden, seeThompson 1937.

31. For full discussion and details,see Papadopoulos, forthcoming.


Figure 5. Final Mycenaean/Sub-mycenaean tomb D 7:1, with coverslab preserved in situ, dug deepinto bedrock. Foundations of theHephaisteion on the north side inbackground. Courtesy Agora Excavations

Figure 6. Empty pits in bedrock insector PY (Plateia Theseiou), in thearea of the Hephaisteion (KolonosAgoraios), representing looted ordestroyed Early Iron Age tombs.Courtesy Agora Excavations


T H E A M P H O RA A N D I T S R EPA I R

Although never fully published, P 14819 has been briefly mentioned inmore than one publication.32 It may be described as follows:

P 14819: Large belly-handled amphora Figs. 2, 7Imported, Cycladic, perhaps from SyrosH. 0.730–0.740 m; Diam. (base) 0.155 m; Diam. (mouth) 0.203 m

Reconstructed from many joining fragments preserving a substantialpart of the amphora, including a portion of the base, much of the body,neck, rim, and parts of both handles. About a third of the vessel preserved,the profile complete; missing parts restored in plaster, with interior heavilycoated in plaster to stabilize vessel. Surface very worn in parts, particularlyon upper body.

Tall ring foot; underside flat. Tall ovoid body, with point of maximumdiameter set high. Vertical neck, offset from body on interior by a substan-tial thickening, indicating that the neck was made separately from the bodyand subsequently attached or that the neck was thrown onto the leather-hard body by attaching a coil to the upper edge of a finished body. Thecylindrical neck terminates in a plain rim, with the top edge smoothed toform a rounded lip. The mouth is not original to the vessel but has beenrepaired (see below). Two horizontal double handles are set on the body atthe point of greatest diameter. Wheelmarks prominent on neck interior.

32. Dinsmoor 1941, p. 126;Desborough 1952, pp. 34 and 36;Oakeshott 1966, p. 121, under “IslandProtogeometric,” wrongly stated as“Agora P 14189”; Smithson 1968, p. 85,under no. 1; Snodgrass 1971, p. 101,n. 43; Papadopoulos 1998, p. 115, n. 37.

Figure 7. Agora P 14819. Scale ca. 1:7.Drawing A. Hooton


33. This is a common occurrence onsets of concentric circles and semicirclespainted with a pivoted multiple brush,for which see Papadopoulos, Vedder,and Schreiber 1998.

Non-Athenian clay, full of inclusions, predominantly white (lime-stone or quartz?), only a few darker ones, with many individual particleserupting onto the surface. Fabric very micaceous, with mica visible allover surface and on clean breaks. Clay body fired close to reddish yellow5YR 6/6 and light red 2.5YR 6/6, best described as “brick red.” Reservedsurface on neck interior and upper part of the vessel on exterior fired asthe clay body, in places closer to light reddish brown 5YR 6/4; reservedsurfaces on lower parts of vessel fired closer to reddish brown 5YR 5/4,in parts slightly lighter, especially on belly zone, closer to light reddishbrown 5YR 6/4, in parts gray. Upper half of vessel largely oxidized, whilelower part is reduced.

Paint mostly well adhering on lower wall, in parts much worn andpeeled, especially on upper body. Variously fired red through black, inaccordance with the fired color of the reserved surface. Lower exterioredge of foot reserved; remainder of foot, to juncture with wall, painted.Lower wall reserved, except for a single horizontal band, quite thick.Three broad bands near and slightly below point of maximum diameter,immediately below the handles, define the lower belly zone. The bellyzone is decorated, on either side of the vessel, with sets of mechanicallydrawn concentric circles, each set comprising nine circles, with a verysmall dot at center. Alternating between the circles are two sets of shortdouble squiggles, one set hanging pendant from the band above, the otherlower down. On the better-preserved side there are five sets of circles; thebelly zone on the opposite side of the vase is largely lost. Each set is drawnwith the same pivoted multiple brush; individual brushes of the imple-ment were very thin and the sets of circles are rather small for the sizeof the vessel. The left set on the better-preserved side is the only onethat shows “flooding.”33 Judging by the fine pivot point, the circleswere executed while the clay was rather dry, probably leather to bonehard.

Shoulder decorated with a broad horizontal band framed by twothinner bands below and two above. From the uppermost of thesespring upright, mechanically drawn, concentric semicircles. The pivotpoint for each, mostly not preserved on account of wear or damage, is setslightly above the lower band, with the result that the semicircles are notperfect half circles of 180° but rather define a slightly greater arc. They areexecuted with the same implement used for the circles on the belly zone,with each set of semicircles comprising nine arcs. Only a few sets, orportions of sets, are preserved on the shoulder, but these would have beencontinuous around the shoulder. Judging by the parts of three sets preservedabove one side, the semicircles were set quite far apart, and there is spacearound the shoulder for at least seven sets.

Thin horizontal band on uppermost shoulder, near juncture withneck. From this band hang pendant sets of double squiggles identical tothose on the belly zone. These squiggles, judging by what is preserved,are for the most part located in the area between the sets of semicircles,and therefore alternate with them, but at a higher level. It is possible thatthere is a second set of double squiggles below, between each set of semi-circles, but in all cases the relevant area of the vase is either not preserved


34. Kerameikos I, p. 115, pl. 41, gravemound T 8, inv. 568.

35. The vessel is fully published inPapadopoulos 1998, along with asimilar vessel, also of Attic manufac-ture, from the Early Iron Age cemeteryat Fortetsa, near Knossos, for whichsee Brock 1957, pp. 43 and 47, pl. 31,no. 454 [13]. A number of other repairsto smaller vases from the Agora are alsolisted in Papadopoulos 1998.

or extremely worn. The reserved area between the semicircles and the thinhorizontal band above is rather large and this may be why the semicirclesare greater than 180°. Preserved neck, though much worn, is clearly paintedsolid; there is no trace of paint on the preserved rim top. Outer faces ofhandles painted, as is the connecting rib between each double handle, asshown. The paint extends from the lower outer handle attachments in abroad sweep, over the three bands below and well down the wall of thevessel; each ends in a ragged termination. Preserved neck reserved oninterior.

As noted above, the neck of the vessel now ends in a plain lip that isnot original. The fact that the mouth is only partially preserved and ratherworn does not assist in establishing whether the repair was executed be-fore or after firing. Nevertheless, a number of factors combine to suggestthat the repair was done after firing, and possibly some time well after thevessel reached Athens. The top surface of the rim is uneven and dips downon one side about 0.005 m, with the result that the line of the rim crossesthose of the wheelmarks. The trough of a gouge, approximately 0.005 mwide, runs diagonally for a distance of 0.040–0.045 m across an area ofintact paint on the neck; it terminates about 0.01 m below the top in arounded “nose,” as if made by a fine chisel that slipped. About 0.015 m tothe right a chipped notch interrupts the surface, the bottom of which ap-pears to be what remains of a possible mending-hole that shattered theinner surface of the wall and flaked the edges outside. If the chipped notchis indeed part of a mending-hole, as seems likely, then it is clear that theadjustments to the vessel occurred after firing. An attempt to clamp or tiethe severed neck and rim seems to have splintered the neck beyond con-ventional repair; the line of the fracture was evened up as much as possible,as the irregularities at and near the mouth show, and the resulting edgewas sanded smooth to form a lip.

Salvage repairs, beyond the usual rivet- or tie-holes, are known, espe-cially on large vessels, though they are also known on smaller pots. Thering foot of a very large neck-handled amphora from the Kerameikos, forexample, was chipped off and the bottom hollowed, evidently after paint-ing, so that the vessel would stand firmly.34 It is not clear from the pub-lished description of the vase whether this was done before or after firing,though it seems likely that the repair was executed when the clay wasrather hard, perhaps after firing. A classic case of a salvage repair madeprior to firing can be seen on a Middle Geometric I vessel from well L 6:2in the area of the later Athenian Agora, which was originally designed as alarge hydria, but subsequently trimmed down to the base of the shoulderto form a krater.35

Whatever the life history of the amphora P 14819—a history to whichwe shall return in the final section of this paper—it is clear that the vesselwas prized enough to warrant a repair, which, having failed, necessitatedthe more drastic step of cutting off the upper part of the neck and all of therim, and sanding down what remained to form a plain round mouth. Thecurrent state of the amphora, with its upper neck and rim gone, gives theappearance of a proportionately dysfunctional vessel, one that does notlook quite right in any period, a feature that does not assist the dating ofthe vessel.


T H E D AT E O F T H E A M P H O RA A N D T H EP H EN O M EN O N O F A RC H A I Z I N G

In her publication of the burial urn of the celebrated Tomb of the RichAthenian Lady (tomb H 16:6-1 [P 27629]), Smithson had occasion tomention Agora P 14819. In discussing the solidly glazed handles onP 27629, she noted that they were unique in Athens, adding: “They areexactly like those on Agora P 14819, an imported belly-handler from some-where in the Cyclades; it might be this late, though it is still Protogeometricin style.”36 Although in later notes Smithson came to consider P 14819 asLate Geometric, she had always essentially viewed the vessel as “Subpro-togeometric” in date, despite its “Protogeometric-looking” style.

Stylistically, a number of features combine to suggest that P 14819,although firmly rooted in Protogeometric tradition, is not of Protogeometricdate. Perhaps foremost, the mechanically drawn circles and semicircles areexceptionally fine and their paint thin. As a result, the circular ornamentappears flimsy and is overshadowed by the rather sturdy squiggles andcomparatively massive bands. While the inspiration of the piece is clear,both in composition and execution, it lacks the balance and solid textureof genuine Protogeometric decoration. For Smithson, this suggested anadaptation, whether by means of survival, revival, or both, detached froman earlier living tradition and not fully understood. An analogy can bemade with well-trained and skilled modern classicists: however deft theircontrol over the syntax and grammar of Greek or Latin, their pronuncia-tion of the languages remains a contentious issue, still practiced but never-theless severed from a once thriving tradition. A few points underscore therelationship and differences between P 14819 and pieces of Protogeometricdate, especially in Athens.

Agora P 14819 is larger than any surviving Protogeometric belly-handledamphora, although a few, both Early and Late Protogeometric, approachit in size.37 Such large pots, with a height above 0.50 m, particularly whenused as epitymbia, are especially vulnerable to breakage. Fragments, rela-tively common in cemetery debris from Final Mycenaean into Late Geo-metric, show that they were part of the standard ceramic repertoire, eventhough the normal size belly-handled amphoras (H. ca. 0.40 m) becomecomparatively rare after the close of Protogeometric. The large ver-sions were not chance curiosities but were produced routinely to meet theritual needs and status requirements of wealthier families. The decorativeformulas for very large Protogeometric belly-handled amphoras differ fromthose of standard size and are fairly rigid: circles across the belly and semi-circles on the shoulder.38

36. Smithson 1968, p. 85, underno. 1; cf. the solidly painted handles onP 27629, pl. 20 (bottom).

37. An Early Protogeometric exam-ple is Erechtheion Street H-15, Brou-skare 1980, pl. 4:a (H. 0.64 m); for aLate Protogeometric example see Kera-meikos IV, pl. 9, grave 38, inv. 1089(H. 0.69 m).

38. There are, as always, a few excep-

tions to the rule. At least one very largebelly-handled amphora lacks the circleson the belly zone: Athens, NationalMuseum inv. 18113, from Nea Ionia(H. 0.572 m), Smithson 1961, pl. 24,no. 3. The belly zone of the vase is leftclear and the shoulder height is dimin-ished by extending the paint from theneck and with the addition of threehorizontal bands. Somewhat earlier,

two belly-handled amphoras of standardsize have circles on the belly zone liketheir larger counterparts; both are EarlyProtogeometric, decorated at a time be-fore conventions were firmly fixed: Ke-rameikos inv. 8808/09 (= Schlörb-Vier-neisel 1966, Beil. 11, 4–5, Gr. hS 101;H. 0.446 m); and Agora P 24240 fromwell J 14:2, with an estimated height alittle over 0.40 m (unpublished).


Since the same pivoted multiple brush was regularly used for both fullcircles and semicircles,39 the height of the shoulder zone on genuineProtogeometric vases was reduced to proportions commensurate with theheight of the semicircles. Two schemes are usual: several bands betweenthe neck and the patterned zone,40 or two, rarely three, superimposed pat-terned zones; the latter, popular in Final Mycenaean and Early Pro-togeometric, is abandoned before Late Protogeometric. On P 14819, thesingle narrow band, closely set beneath the neck, does nothing to reducethe zone height. The semicircles fill less than half of the height and thesquiggles dangle high above them.

The semicircles and circles are very small for the size of the pot, smaller,in fact, than is usual on Protogeometric belly-handled amphoras of stan-dard size anywhere in Greece.41 The heavy shoulder-banding, comprisinga wide band framed by two thin bands below and two above, is usual onamphoras found in graves, literally Protogeometric in form, placement,and execution; the lower bands are not. A deep belly zone with an em-phatic row of full mechanically drawn concentric circles is one of the hall-marks of Protogeometric grave-amphoras. On true Protogeometric am-phoras this belly zone is defined, below the handle attachments, by arepeated scheme of a wide band framed by two thinner bands above andbelow, or by three narrow bands. In either case, the narrow bands are equalin width and are usually drawn with the same brush as those on the shoul-der above, resulting in a balanced effect. On P 14819 the lower bands areplaced comparatively too high, and although they run a little below thebase of the outer handle attachments, the attachments themselves are shortand quite unlike the tapered attachments carefully smoothed against thewall of genuine Protogeometric pieces.

Furthermore, the handles on P 14819 are too small for this pot. Thecentral rib of the double handle rests squarely on the top band below, acramped and inelegant juxtaposition that negates the decorative effect ofthe double handle.42 The firm, even mighty, bands below the handle, threetimes the width of the narrow ones on the shoulder, overpower the daintycircles of the belly zone. The circles, placed more or less at the middle ofthe belly zone, are approximately 0.06 m above the point of greatest diam-eter of the vessel; although it may seem a minor point, such a position isvirtually unthinkable on genuine Athenian Protogeometric. If the semi-circles on the shoulder have too much room, the circles on the belly havetoo little. Added to this is the fact that the entire patterned decoration hasbeen squeezed up to the top half of the pot. The solitary band on the lower

39. Contrary to the arguments ofEiteljorg (1980), it is clear that thedecoration of Attic Protogeometricand Geometric vessels in the form ofconcentric circles and semicircles wasdone with a pivoted multiple brushimplement; see Papadopoulos, Vedder,and Schreiber 1998.

40. See Kerameikos I, pl. 55, inv. 561,with a wide band enclosed by a narrow

band above and below, and a pendantzigzag canopy above the semicircles;see also Erechtheion Street, H-15(Brouskare 1980, p. 23, pl. 4:a), wherethe paint on the neck extends in a broadband on the shoulder, below which aretwo narrow bands and a zigzag canopy.Both vessels are Early Protogeometric.Cf. further Kerameikos inv. 1089, whichis later Protogeometric.

41. In addition to Athenianamphoras already mentioned, cf. asimilar decorative idiom on Proto-geometric amphoras, and other closedvessels, from Boiotia, the Corinthia,the Cyclades, Thessaly, East Greece,Crete, and even Macedonia; see,generally, Desborough 1952; 1972.

42. For such handles generally seeOakeshott 1966.


body does little to counterbalance the top-heaviness of the decoration,and although a subsidiary band (or bands) on the lower bodies of verylarge Protogeometric closed vessels is not uncommon, the one on P 14819teams up with the heavy triple bands below the handles to detract fromthe patterned decoration. The manner in which the outer face of the pre-served handle is painted contrasts with the normal thinner “arches andbows” of Protogeometric vessels, especially belly-handled amphoras, butits prolongation in tails extending onto the body, below the level of thebands, is an echo of Protogeometric practice.43

A comparison of the size, shape, and decoration of P 14819 with anynumber of genuine Protogeometric belly-handled amphoras indicates thatthe vessel cannot be Protogeometric in date.44 The distinctive features seenin P 14819, particularly the tall ring foot, the ovoid body with point ofmaximum diameter set quite high, the comparatively broad neck, alongwith the great size of the vessel, are all consistent with a Late Geometricdate. Such a combination of features can be seen in a number of regionalworkshops. In Athenian Geometric these features are standard in a varietyof vessels, including very large amphoras, such as the neck-handled am-phora measuring 1.350 m, now in Leiden.45 In the Cyclades large belly-handled amphoras shaped like P 14819, with the characteristic doublehandles, referred to by Noël Oakeshott as “horned-head,”46 are found asearly as Middle Geometric. A good example is the amphora said to befrom Melos, now in Munich, which is almost certainly Naxian (Fig. 8).47

Standing to a height of 0.730 m, the Munich amphora is of similar pro-portions to Agora P 14819 (0.730–0.740 m, though originally larger), butis decorated in the standard patterned style of the time, with much of thelower body covered in black.48 A virtually identical amphora, also said tobe from Melos and now in Vienna, was published by Elena Walter-Karydi(Fig. 9),49 who went on to list and discuss a number of related vessels andfragments, especially from Naxos.50 The stylistic similarity between theseand other closely related vessels and contemporary pottery from Athenshas been most recently discussed by Photeini Zapheiropoulou, Kenneth

43. Cf. Desborough 1952, pls. 4–5;Papadopoulos 1994b, pls. 109:a–b,119:c.

44. For Attic Protogeometric belly-handled amphoras see, among others,Kerameikos I, pls. 32 (inv. 529), 43–45,46 (inv. 857), 54–56, 58; Kerameikos IV,pls. 9–11; Desborough 1952, pp. 20–37,pls. 4–5; Desborough 1972, pp. 35–36,figs. 2–3, pp. 148–149, pl. 27. Foramphoras from other parts of theGreek world, see Desborough 1952;1972. Comparing Cycladic Proto-geometric amphoras is more difficult,given the rarity of true Protogeo-metric—especially earlier and devel-oped Protogeometric—pottery in theCyclades. The existing evidence is

admirably assembled and discussedby Desborough (1952, pp. 153–163;1972, pp. 221–224); see also Cold-stream 1968, pp. 148–157. In its latestphase, Athenian Protogeometric waswidely imitated in various parts of theAegean, particularly in the Cyclades.

45. Leiden I.1909/1.1, convenientlyillustrated and discussed in Coldstream1968, p. 55, pl. 11:a.

46. Oakeshott 1966.47. Munich inv. 6166, Coldstream

1968, p. 167, pl. 34:m; Zapheiropoulou1983, p. 131, fig. 27; Boardman 1998,pp. 47, 59, fig. 88.

48. Cf. the related fragmentaryamphora with a restored height esti-mated at 0.810 m, Délos XV, pp. 90–91,

pl. XLII:1, referred to as “Attiques,” butlisted under Cycladic Middle Geomet-ric in Coldstream 1968, p. 166.

49. Walter-Karydi 1972, p. 390,fig. 4; Zapheiropoulou 1983, p. 131,fig. 28; Vienna, KunsthistorischesMuseum inv. 1879.

50. Walter-Karydi 1972, esp.pp. 386–390. Foremost of these is thefragmentary amphora said to be fromThera, now in the Louvre (inv. A 266),Walter-Karydi 1972, pp. 388, 390,n. 12, fig. 5, and a similar fragmentarybut smaller amphora from Philoti onNaxos (p. 388, fig. 2), first publishedby Kontoleon (1949, pp. 1–3, figs. 1–3),now fully discussed in Kourou 1999a,pp. 183–198, pls. 56–59.


Sheedy, and Nota Kourou.51 The number of recognized Athenian Pro-togeometric and Geometric imports to the Cyclades has been steadily grow-ing, thanks to the work of Richard Catling and Sheedy.52 Large Cycladicamphoras have also been found outside the Cyclades and especially in thevarious cemeteries at Knossos.53

The Munich and Vienna amphoras shown here (Figs. 8–9) are bothassigned to the Middle Geometric period. Similarly large amphoras arecommon in the Cyclades in Late Geometric, as illustrated by the frag-mentary example from Delos (Fig. 10), which stands to a preserved heightof 0.740 m.54 Its decoration follows the more standard patterning of LateGeometric. It is worth adding that earlier Cycladic amphoras of theProtogeometric period are never this large. By the Early Archaic period,large belly-handled amphoras in the Cyclades became proportionately tallerand more slender, as numerous examples from Delos attest.55 On the basisof shape alone, Agora P 14819 can be reasonably assigned to the Middleand Late Geometric period.

51. Zapheiropoulou 1983, esp.pp. 130–133; Sheedy 1990; Kourou1999a, esp. pp. 90–97, 185–187.

52. Catling 1998a, esp. pp. 370–378;Sheedy 1990.

53. Coldstream 1990, pp. 26–27, pl.6, nos. 1 and 3. Of the two amphoras,Coldstream assigns Tekke Q 63 to

Figure 8 (left). Naxian MiddleGeometric belly-handled amphora,Glyptothek und Museen antikerKleinkunst, Munich, inv. 6166.H. 0.730 m. Courtesy Museum; photoC. Koppermann

Figure 9 (right). Cycladic (Naxian)Middle Geometric belly-handledamphora, Antikensammlung, Kunst-historisches Museum, Vienna,inv. 1879. H. 0.695 m. CourtesyMuseum (neg. 11179)

Early Geometric I and KMF 283.91 toMiddle Geometric I. In addition to theimports from the North Cemetery atKnossos, Coldstream discusses com-parative material from the Fortetsa andTekke cemeteries.

54. Délos XV, p. 37, no. 2, pl. XVIII:a–b, group Ac (B 4.213); neck and rim,

as well as base, not preserved. For largebelly-handled amphoras from otherislands, see, among many, Coldstream1968, pl. 39:h (“Melian,” now in Leiden;H. 0.620 m), pl. 58:a (Rhodes; H. 0.560m, discussed in more detail below).

55. See Délos XVII, pls. I–VI(group Ba).


Among the many large amphoras found in the Cyclades, perhaps theclosest parallel to Agora P 14819, especially in terms of the painted deco-ration, is the belly-handled amphora from Thera first published by ErnstPfuhl almost a century ago (Fig. 11).56 Standing to a height of 0.815 m,which would be not too far from the original height of P 14819, the am-phora from Thera (inv. 825) is identical in virtually all respects to P 14819.The most obvious exception is that it has a thick band framed by thinnerbands immediately below its belly zone instead of the three bands of simi-lar thickness found on P 14819. Even the squiggles on P 14819 are echoedin the groups of short vertical strokes found between the full circles on thebelly of the amphora from Thera. If Agora P 14819 is restored with anupper neck and rim like that of Thera 825, the two vessels would be verysimilar to one another, except that the base of P 14819 would be propor-tionately slightly more narrow, resulting in a lower body fractionally morepiriform, and therefore closer to the shape of amphoras like that fromDelos illustrated in Figure 10.

Despite these strong similarities, the fabric of the two vessels is notthe same. The clay of Thera 825, judging by its reserved surfaces, hasprominent dark inclusions and only a light dusting of mica; it is light-colored, in places reddish yellow, elsewhere approaching a light red withan almost maroon-purple tinge.57 In his publication of Thera 825, Pfuhllisted the amphora under his category E “Samisches und Verwandtes,”and more specifically under category E II, that is, related to Samian, butnot considered Samian. Some 50 years later, Desborough listed Thera 825

56. Pfuhl 1903, p. 170, Beil. XXII:2(E 4), from grave 29 (72) 6.

57. I took notes on Thera 825 whilevisiting the island in September of1997. Reconstructed from fragments,with missing parts restored in plaster,Thera 825 has no visible breaks fromwhich one could better judge the claybody of the vessel and I was unable totake a Munsell reading of the surface.The paint is dull, and varies in colorfrom red through different shades ofreddish brown to black.

Figure 10. Fragmentary CycladicLate Geometric belly-handledamphora from Delos, group Ac,no. 2. Pres. H. 0.740 m.Courtesy École française d’Athènes


among a number of amphoras from Thera and assumed it to be of localmanufacture.58 Coldstream, however, like Pfuhl, listed Thera 825 as anEast Greek import to the island, and stated:

The survival of the belly-handled amphora, still decorated in thePG tradition, is attested by an example found in the burnt layer atMiletus, and by two others exported to Thera [including inv. 825],both found in LG contexts.59

As for the date, there is no question that the context of Thera 825—grave 29 (72) 6—and of a related amphora from grave 89 (109) 3 is LateGeometric.60 This, together with the Cycladic Middle and Late Geomet-ric vessels discussed above, helps place Agora P 14819 broadly within theLate Geometric period. Any more precise date would be sheer guesswork,though a date in the third quarter of the 8th century b.c., according to theconventional chronology, seems more likely (on the basis of the overall ap-pearance of the vessel) than one toward the very end of the century.

In considering such a late date for Thera 825, Desborough stated that“it comes, therefore, as rather a shock to find that the context of this am-phora is undoubtedly eighth century…. The only conclusion seems to bethat it is a remarkable case of the survival of an Attic Protogeometric form,

58. Desborough 1952, pp. 31, 34,215.

59. Coldstream 1968, p. 269, withreference to Hommel 1959–1960, p. 39,fig. 1; cf. also the large fragmentarybelly-handled amphora, p. 54, pl. 53,no. 4, referred to as “(proto?)geo-metrischen.”

60. Pfuhl 1903, p. 170; Desborough1952, pp. 34, 215; Coldstream 1968,p. 269.

Figure 11. a) Late Geometric belly-handled amphora from Thera, grave29 (72) 6. H. 0.815 m. b) Detail ofhandle area. a) Courtesy DeutschesArchäologisches Institut, Athens;b) photo authora

b


at least in Thera.”61 In this context Desborough made passing reference toAgora P 14819: “Curiously enough, fragments of a similar amphora ofcoarse red-brick clay, very micaceous, appear among the unpublishedmaterial of the Agora excavations (P 14819).”62

Vessels like Agora P 14819 and Thera 825 raise the issue of archaizing.A number of scholars looking at the problem from an Athenian perspec-tive have discussed the incidence of a Protogeometric style in later Geo-metric contexts in terms of survivals and/or revivals, and even as copies.63

In discussing the phenomenon of specific Protogeometric shapes echoingMycenaean tradition, Smithson noted that this “may be, like a number ofresurgent types, a Mycenaean revival, i.e. a ‘copy,’ slightly modernized, ofpieces salvaged from disturbed tombs.”64 A similar sentiment is expressedby Eva Brann in her discussion of Late Geometric and Early Protoatticshapes and motifs that are strikingly Mycenaean in their appearance. Shestates: “The Athenians certainly often came across Mycenaean antiquities,so there would have been no lack of models.”65 In discussing an early-7th-century b.c. hydria from the Agora (Fig. 12), together with several relatedvessels that echo Protogeometric tradition, Rodney Young wrote:

The hydria gives a false impression that it is Protogeometric; but thepale clay, creamy slip, and general appearance of the fabric areentirely different from true Protogeometric. The body … is seen tobe deeper and more pointed, narrower at the bottom, and with ahigher, less flaring ring foot. The decoration too is not usual forProtogeometric; the multiplication of glaze bands on the shoulder,the solid glaze on the handles instead of the canonical glaze bandsending in “tails,” and the single wavy line in the handle zone insteadof the double or triple wavy bands always used in true Protogeo-metric, are evidence that our hydria belongs to a different fabric.The hydria too is comparatively rare in Protogeometric.66

Figure 12. Subgeometric hydria,Athenian Agora P 4614.Courtesy Agora Excavations

61. Desborough 1952, p. 34.62. Desborough 1952, p. 34.63. See, for example, Smithson

1961, p. 166, under no. 43; Agora VIII,pp. 34–35, under no. 37.

64. Smithson 1961, p. 166, underno. 43.

65. Agora VIII, p. 19; cf. Brann1961, p. 125, under L 66: six Mycen-aean goblet stems found in the fill of aLate Geometric well, and perhaps(re)used as bobbins.

66. Young 1939, p. 27, underno. V 1. Young goes on to cite as closeparallels nos. X 1 (see below, n. 67) andC 148 (p. 186, fig. 137), as well as arelated example from the 7th-centurygrave 10 at Phaleron (Pelekides 1917,p. 31, fig. 20). Among many otherrelated hydriai see Charitonides 1975,pl. 10:st (GM 45, tomb XVI).


Young noted that a related Subgeometric hydria from grave X in theAgora (Fig. 13) was also very Protogeometric in appearance, but that itsfabric is unlike any true Athenian Protogeometric vase.67 In her discussionof the same hydria, together with a number of related examples, Brannnoted that it was not clear whether the banded hydriai were “survivals orrevivals of their Protogeometric prototype.”68 Elsewhere, Brann referredto old-fashioned hydriai, of light-ground ware, considered “a Mycenaeantype revived in the 8th century and found on many Greek sites, especiallyeastern ones.”69 As for Protogeometric “models,” Brann considered it likelythat pottery of this period was still to be found as “heirlooms,” and con-cluded: “At any rate, there is a whole group of Late Geometric pots donein a style which seems like a return to Protogeometric clay-ground tech-nique.”70

The dark-ground technique began to take over from the light-groundduring the latest stages of the Protogeometric period, and is well estab-lished by Early Geometric I, continuing through the end of Middle Geo-metric. Although this is the case for many shapes, it is important to stressthat for other specific vessel forms there is continuity in both style andproduction technique. This is especially true for pottery traditionally con-sidered as “utility ware,” though many such pots are found in exactly thesame contexts as more elaborately decorated (“non-utility”) vessels andwere often used for the same function. A good example is the plain bandedneck-handled amphora from the fill of well K 1:5, found together withseveral vessels decorated in the standard dark-ground technique of theperiod (Fig. 14).71 Indeed, such plain vessels stand out in comparison totheir more elaborately decorated contemporaries from the same context.

Whereas many of the larger and smaller vessels of the Athenian EarlyIron Age repertoire develop rapidly in terms of the fashion of the day,

Figure 13. Subgeometric hydria,Athenian Agora P 4980, two views.Courtesy Agora Excavations

67. Young 1939, pp. 42–43, fig. 27.68. Agora VIII, p. 34; Brann also

notes two related hydriai from theKerameikos dating to the first half ofthe 8th century b.c.; Kerameikos V.1,pl. 50.

69. Brann 1961, p. 100.70. Brann 1961, p. 100.71. The three pots illustrated in

Fig. 14 were all found in the period-of-use fill of this well, recently excavatedin the area north of the Eridanos,which can be assigned to EarlyGeometric II/Middle Geometric I; seeCamp 1999, pp. 266–267.


other shapes remain remarkably conservative and consistent. Some of thesedisplay little noticeable change over a period of several decades or evencenturies, while others develop in terms of nuances of shape, but retain amore traditional decorative idiom. Examples include a number of Geo-metric banded hydriai that date to various stages of the Early Iron Age.72

Similarly, plain banded neck-handled amphoras, ranging in date from Pro-togeometric through Late Geometric, are commonly found discarded inEarly Iron Age wells in the area of the Classical Athenian Agora.73 In thecase of such pots, there was never any real break in tradition: rather thansurvival or revival there was continuity. To illustrate this point, I have as-sembled a representative sample of plain banded neck-handled amphorasin Figure 15, together with a Protogeometric neck-handled amphora deco-rated with the canonical mechanically drawn concentric semicircles onthe shoulder (Fig. 15:a). Such banded vessels, found throughout the EarlyIron Age, not only were very common, but they also kept alive a tradi-tional light-ground technique of decoration throughout the Early and Mid-dle Geometric periods, when a dark-ground technique predominated, andinto the Late Geometric period, characterized by elaborate patterning.

The banded amphoras assembled in Figure 15 range in date fromDeveloped Protogeometric through Late Geometric I. The two Proto-geometric amphoras (Fig. 15:a–b) were found in the fill of well A 20:5,assigned to a developed phase of the Protogeometric period;74 two vessels(Fig. 15:c–d) were assigned by Coldstream respectively to Early Geomet-ric II and Middle Geometric I;75 the two examples from well L 6:2 (Fig.15:e–f ) are Middle Geometric;76 and the two from well I 13:1 (Fig. 15:g–h)can be assigned to a transitional phase between Middle Geometric II andLate Geometric I.77 The same type of simple banded amphora was used

Figure 14. Athenian Agora, selectedEarly Geometric II/Middle Geo-metric I vessels from the period-of-use fill of well K 1:5, in the area northof the Eridanos. Courtesy Agora Exca-vations

72. These are fully discussed inPapadopoulos 1998.

73. These will be published in fullin forthcoming volumes of theAthenian Agora.

74. For well A 20:5 see Young1951b, p. 144; with full details in

Papadopoulos, forthcoming.75. They were found, respectively, in

well C 18:6 (EG II) and well B 18:9(MG I); for the relative chronology ofthese two deposits, see Coldstream1968, pp. 13, 16.

76. See Coldstream 1968, pp. 16,

21; Papadopoulos, forthcoming.77. Well I 13:1 is one of several

Geometric wells in the area under thelater Middle Stoa; for the more recentlydiscovered Geometric deposits withinthis area, see Camp 1999, pp. 260–263(well I 13:4 and grave I 13:5).


Figure 15. Athenian Agora, selectedbanded neck-handled amphoras:a–b) P 17455, P 17456 (well A 20:5,PG); c) P 19012 (well C 18:6, EG II);d) P 19037 (well B 18:9, MG I);e–f ) P 6411, P 6410 (well L 6:2,MG); g–h) P 27938, P 27939 (well I13:1, MG II–LG I).Scale ca. 1:6. Courtesy Agora Excavations

cba

d e f

hg


not only for drawing water from wells, but also could be used in tombs, asthe Late Protogeometric and Early Geometric I amphoras illustratedin Figure 16 attest.78 Related amphoras, often smaller than their predeces-sors, continue into the late 8th century and throughout the 7th centuryb.c. (Fig. 17).79 It is worth adding that in the Archaic period, as in theGeometric, pots decorated with bands were produced almost everywherein the Greek world.80

Precisely the same range of shapes—hydriai, neck- and belly-handledamphoras—with decoration harking back to a Mycenaean and Protogeo-metric aesthetic, is common in the Cyclades during the Late Geometricperiod, as numerous examples from the Purification Trench on Rheneiaand elsewhere attest.81 The pots assembled in Figures 12–17 highlight thecontinuity of a conservative tradition, which was widespread throughoutthe Greek world. Such conservatism was perhaps most acute in theCyclades, not only during Late Geometric, but for later periods as well.Indeed, a series of cups in Geometric and even Protogeometric style, withmetope panels and concentric circles, are common in the Cyclades, espe-cially on Paros, Naxos, and Delos, some as late as ca. 500 b.c.82 Islandisolation, to use a cliché, may be one of the contributing causes. This iswell put by Coldstream, who penned, with specific regard to Thera, a state-ment that may be applied to other islands: “The potters of this remoteisland were slow to learn a Late Geometric style, and slow to forget it.”83

Be that as it may, a similar phenomenon, albeit at different scales, is foundon the mainland, including centers, like Athens, that have long been

78. The Late Protogeometricamphora P 6997 comes from thedisturbed “tomb” B 10:1, and theEarly Geometric I amphora P 24791was found in tomb N 16:4. See alsoother similar plain banded amphorasfrom the tombs in Kerameikos I, pl. 42,T 12–13, inv. 602–603; Kerameikos IV,

Figure 16. Athenian Agora, bandedneck-handled amphoras fromEarly Iron Age tombs: a) P 6997(tomb B 10:1, LPG); b) P 24791(tomb N 16:4, EG I). Scale 1:6.Drawing A. Hooton

pl. 6, grave 28, inv. 910.79. The vessels shown in Fig. 17 are

fully discussed in Agora VIII, p. 34, pl. 3,nos. 29, 31–36.

80. See Cook and Dupont 1998,p. 132.

81. Délos XV, pls. II–XI, XV, no. 27;cf. Thera II, p. 229, fig. 427; and, more

generally, Coldstream 1968, pp. 164–195. See further Young 1939, pp. 27–28; Sheedy 1985, pp. 153–159, esp.p. 156, n. 18.

82. Morris 1997, pp. 68–69, withfig. 4.

83. Coldstream 1977, p. 216.

ba


considered as “trend-setters.”84 In addition to the Cyclades, Protogeometricsurvivals in the Geometric period are well known in Thessaly, Boiotia,Skyros, Euboia, and elsewhere, as Coldstream has established,85 and thesame is true for much of the Peloponnese and western Greece generally, aswell as Macedonia and other northern regions.86

T H E O RI G I N O F T H E A M P H O RA

Although Agora P 14819 was never previously published in detail, thosewho have examined it have come to accept it as an import to Athens ofCycladic or East Greek origin.87 Indeed, the uncertainty about the preciseorigin of the vessel is to a large measure the result of the close affinity be-tween the two regions (Fig. 18), especially between individual centers suchas Naxos and Rhodes in the Early Iron Age, a relationship effectively ex-plored by Zapheiropoulou.88 In the case of both regions, assigning indi-vidual pieces, or even stylistic groups, to a particular island workshop is farfrom straightforward.89

Although much East Greek pottery (including the finer wares) in theGeometric and Early Archaic period is relatively coarse, I have not comeacross an East Greek vessel with a fabric sufficiently similar to that of

84. For a long-lived Subgeometricstyle of pottery in Athens see, mostrecently, Papadopoulos, forthcoming,and in the Cyclades, Morris 1997, p.68.

85. Coldstream 1968, pp. 148–157,196–211.

86. For the Protogeometric andSubprotogeometric pottery of Troy,especially the neck-handled amphoras,with discussion of comparative materialfrom other north Aegean sites, seeCatling 1998b; also Lenz, Ruppenstein,Baumann, and Catling 1998.

87. See above, n. 32.88. Zapheiropoulou 1994.89. See esp. Jones 1986, pp. 643–

673. Note also the fabric descriptions ofsome of the regional varieties ofchevron skyphoi given in Descoeudresand Kearsley 1983.

Figure 17. Athenian Agora, bandedamphoras of the late 8th through7th centuries b.c.: a) P 21578(second half of the 8th century);b–e) P 12444, P 12445, P 20731,P 26242 (late 8th century);f ) P 23465 (third quarter of the7th century); g) P 3469 (last quarterof the 7th century). Courtesy AgoraExcavations

cba d e

f g


Agora P 14819 to provide a compelling visual match.90 The distinctivefabrics of Chios and Klazomenai can be ruled out,91 as can “Rhodian,”92

along with the distinctive sandy texture and light brown color of “Ionian”cups, many of which are local to Samos.93 The generally coarse and grittyfabric of the “Wild Goat” and “Fikellura” styles, much of which can nowbe assigned to Miletos thanks to the work of Pierre Dupont,94 is a little

90. For a useful overview of EastGreek pottery, see Cook and Dupont1998; for the Geometric period,Coldstream 1968, pp. 262–301, remainsfundamental. For the fabric of variousEast Greek wares, particularly of theArchaic period, see Tocra I, pp. 41–66;Jones 1986, pp. 660–673. I hasten tostress that the following fabric deter-minations are made on the basis ofvisual criteria; the problems inherentwith the scientific determinations ofthe clays of the Cyclades and EastGreece, including Ionia and theDodecanese, are well laid out in Jones1986.

91. For Chian Late Geometric and

Figure 18. Map of the Aegeanshowing the Cyclades in relationto the Greek mainland, theDodecanese, and East Greecegenerally. R. Finnerty

Archaic pottery, Boardman 1967 isfundamental; see also Boardman 1998,pp. 144–146; and further Tocra I,pp. 57–63; Tocra II, pp. 24–28. ForKlazomenian see Cook and Dupont1998, pp. 95–107, 121–128 (with fullreferences); Boardman 1998, pp. 148–149.

92. By “Rhodian” I essentially meanthe “Bird-Kotyle Workshop” as definedby Coldstream 1968, pp. 277–279; seealso Boardman 1998, pp. 51–52; TocraI, pp. 41–57; Tocra II, pp. 16–20. Thisdistinctive fabric is characteristicallybrown—varying from dark orange tocoffee brown according to Coldstream1968, p. 279—and contains predomi-

nantly white impurities, but only arelatively small quantity of silvery mica.

93. Cf. Jones 1986, p. 665;Boardman 1998, pp. 146–147. Forpottery from Samos, see furtherTechnau 1929, esp. pp. 6–37; Eilmann1933.

94. Dupont 1986. See further Cookand Dupont 1998, pp. 32–70, 77–91;Boardman 1998, pp. 147–148. Al-though the home of Fikellura isMiletos, the Wild Goat Style is pro-duced at various centers, includingMiletos. The earlier studies of the WildGoat Style by Kardara (1963) andSchiering (1957) are still important,especially for shape and style.


closer to the general appearance of the fabric of P 14819, particularly inthe fact that the fired color of the clay can vary considerably from a sandybrown through pink and red. Nevertheless, the color of the clay and rangeof impurities, especially the mica content, of the fabric of P 14819 aredifferent from those of any pottery that can be assigned with confidence toIonia. There are a number of fairly large belly-handled amphoras, espe-cially three examples from Kameiros and Ialysos on Rhodes that are as-signed by Coldstream on stylistic grounds to Early Geometric,95 of whichone is illustrated here (Fig. 19). None of these Rhodian amphoras, how-ever, has the same shape and decoration as P 14819; they are all smallerthan P 14819 and their decoration closer to true Protogeometric, despitetheir Subprotogeometric date. By East Greek Middle Geometric, the belly-handled amphora is exceedingly rare, and indeed one of the few examplesis Thera 825 (Fig. 11), which Coldstream assigned to East Greece (seeabove). We have seen, however, that the fabric of Agora P 14819 is verydifferent from that of Thera 825, as is that of the Rhodian amphoras as-sembled by Coldstream.

As for the Cyclades (Fig. 20), a number of islands can also be quick-ly ruled out. The fabric of P 14819 is not the same as that which canbe confidently assigned to Paros, Melos, Thera, or Siphnos.96 The ex-cavations directed by Lila Marangou at Minoa on Amorgos have broughtto light an impressive array of Geometric, Archaic, and later material, butthere is nothing from that island that I have seen that is similar to P 14819.97

The pottery found, to date, on Tenos includes a number of vessels made ofa clay not unlike that of P 14819, but there is nothing that I know fromthat island that provides a satisfactory match.98 The Geometric settlementsite at Zagora on the island of Andros has yielded a wealth of Geometricpottery, which awaits proper publication.99 The material from Zagora high-

95. Coldstream 1968, pp. 265–266, pl. 58:a (Ialysos); Jacopi 1933,pp. 119–120, figs. 133–134; pp. 204–205, figs. 244–245; two of theseamphoras are also illustrated anddiscussed in Zapheiropoulou 1994,p. 248, fig. 17, p. 250, fig. 19.

96. For the fabric of Parian andMelian, see Jones 1986, pp. 643–660;see also Coldstream 1968, esp. pp. 176–185; Zapheiropoulou 1985; Sheedy1985, the latter important in helping toclarify the confusion in the literaturebetween pottery variously assigned as“Melian” or “Parian,” much of whichwas found in the Purification Trenchon Rheneia. Note also the pottery fromParoikia (Rubensohn 1917, esp. pp. 73–88) and the Delion published in Ru-bensohn 1962, pp. 83–129. For thehighly distinctive clay of Thera, whichcontains no mica, see Coldstream 1968,pp. 185–189; 1977, pp. 216–217, and

discussion above; see also Kontoleon1958, esp. pp. 127–137. For SiphnianGeometric and Archaic pottery, in-cluding imported fabrics, see Brockand Mackworth Young 1949, pp. 33–53; Tocra I, pp. 73–78; Tocra II, pp. 34–38; Jones 1986, p. 644. For useful noteson the ceramic fabric from Melos,Kimolos, Paros, Mykonos, Naxos,Siphnos, as well as that from Thasos,see Villard 1993; Gautier 1993. I havenot come across sufficient Geometricand Early Archaic pottery from thenorthwest Cyclades (i.e., Kea, Kythnos,and Seriphos) to comment on theproducts of these islands; for a recentoverview of Kea and Kythnos, see thevarious papers in Mendoni and Maza-rakis Ainian 1998. For a general over-view of Cycladic pottery, the seminalstudy by Dugas (1925), though out ofdate, is still useful in a number ofimportant respects, as is Buschor 1929.

97. Annual preliminary reportsappear in Ergon and Prakt; mostrecently, see Marangou 1996; 1997;1998 (which provides a useful historicalintroduction to the site, with referencesto earlier reports); and Marangou, inprep. For the publication of two Proto-geometric vases from Amorgos, seeCatling and Jones 1989.

98. For Tenian Geometric, see theoverview in Coldstream 1968, p. 166(with references); also Levi 1925–1926;Desborough 1952, pp. 158–161. I amgrateful to Nota Kourou for discussingTenian Geometric pottery with me inthe Tenos Museum, and for showingme her recent finds from Exombourgo.For the excavations at Exombourgo(also J≈mpourgo), see Kourou 1996;1999b.

99. In the meantime, see Zagora 1;Zagora 2; also Cambitoglou, Peirce,Segal, and Papadopoulos 1981.


Figure 19. Early Geometricbelly-handled amphora, Rhodes,inv. 15533, from Ialysos, grave 43(H. 0.560 m). Courtesy KB Ephoreiaof Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities,Rhodes

lights one of the fundamental problems facing the study of CycladicGeometric pottery, namely the incidence and great range of imported fab-rics. While the comparatively numerous Athenian, Euboian, Naxian, andParian products can be distinguished with relative ease, there remains anabundance of fabrics both of local manufacture and imported from otherislands and the mainland. Among this wealth of Geometric material, alocal Andrian fabric can be distinguished, especially for a series of smallervessels such as cups, which share a brown, micaceous fabric.100 This ap-pears to be similar to much of the Late Geometric and Archaic potteryfrom the site of Ypsili (ÑUchl∞, also known as Aprovatou) on the westcoast of Andros, north of Zagora, recently excavated by Christina Tele-vantou.101 The fabric that I refer to as Andrian is, however, not the same asthat of Agora P 14819.

Naxos, the largest of the Cycladic islands, is known to have produceda significant and well-defined Geometric style, and several Middle Geo-metric Naxian amphoras have already been discussed for the similarity oftheir shape to that of P 14819 (Figs. 8–9).102 The attempt to define withclarity the fabric of Naxos has led to some controversy in the past, particu-larly with regard to the Cesnola krater in New York and a number of closely

100. I had occasion to study much ofthe pottery from Zagora during thepreparation of the guidebook for the site(Cambitoglou, Peirce, Segal, and Papa-dopoulos 1981). I am especially gratefulto Dick Green, who is responsible for

the study of the Zagora pottery, as wellas Ken Sheedy for discussing with methe complexities of the local andimported pottery from Zagora.

101. For the excavations at Ypsili,see Televantou 1993; 1996; 1999.

I am grateful to Christina Televantoufor showing me the finds from Ypsiliand for discussing with me a variety ofCycladic problems.

102. See Coldstream 1968, pp. 164–195.


Figure 20. Map of the Cycladesshowing some of the sites mentionedin the text. R. Finnerty


related pieces.103 Following Nikolaos Kontoleon, Coldstream originallyassigned the Cesnola krater to Naxos, but later changed his opinion infavor of Euboia.104 This reassignment did not meet with universal favor,and Walter-Karydi reaffirmed the claim of Naxos.105 Other scholars, pri-marily John Boardman, maintained a Euboian origin, but noted that “onehas to deal almost with a ‘koine’ of decoration—Boiotia, Euboia, theCyclades—which has links which are yet to be properly explored.”106 Theorigin of the Cesnola krater must be Euboia, and this is strongly support-ed by recent scientific analysis.107 Moreover, our understanding of NaxianGeometric pottery is now on a much more secure basis, thanks to therecent contributions of Zapheiropoulou, Lambrinoudakis, and Kourou.108

It was, indeed, the characteristic “brick-red,” micaceous fabric of Naxosthat led Smithson to suspect that Agora P 14819 was a Naxian import toAthens, and underlay, in part, her designation of the pot as “Anaxilas’samphora.” Despite the close affinities, particularly in shape and, to a cer-tain extent, fabric, between Naxian pottery and P 14819, the latter is un-likely to be Naxian. Its fabric is coarser than normal Naxian fabrics, andnone of the pottery published from the island matches the style of P 14819in all respects.

On the nearby small island of Donousa, an important Early Iron Agesettlement has been excavated on the west coast by Zapheiropoulou. Thedefinitive report on the excavations has not yet appeared, but the excavatorhas provided a number of important summaries.109 Located east of Naxos,Donousa lies about halfway between Euboia and the Dodecanese. TheGeometric settlement, dating to the third quarter of the 9th century b.c.,was built on a secure anchorage and has yielded material displaying influ-ences from other Cycladic islands, especially Naxos, but also Kos andRhodes.110 Among the pottery recovered from the excavations on Donousa,a number of large Geometric amphoras have been illustrated in prelimi-nary publications and several are on display in the Naxos (Chora) Mu-seum. Two belly-handled amphoras in particular are close to the Rhodianexample illustrated above (Fig. 19), and both have double handles similarto those of P 14819. They are decorated with two registers: the respectiveshoulder registers have mechanically drawn concentric semicircles, whiletheir belly zones have full concentric circles. One of these, inv. 4804 (Fig.21),111 has crosshatched panels in the center of the belly zone, with much

103. Kontoleon 1949, p. 12, fig. 4;Coldstream 1968, pp. 172–174, wherea number of other pieces, includingDélos XV, pl. 44, Bc 8, are groupedaround the same “painter.” See alsodiscussion in Lefkandi I, pp. 74–76.

104. Coldstream 1971.105. Walter-Karydi 1972, esp.

pp. 402–409.106. Boardman 1969, p. 112; a num-

ber of scholars still subscribe to this view

(Kourou, personal communication).107. Jones 1986, p. 659. For

Euboian Early Iron Age pottery seeBoardman 1957; 1969; and, generally,Lefkandi I, pp. 27–79 (for EuboianPG–LG pottery from the settlement)and pp. 281–354 (for the pottery fromthe cemetery); Coldstream 1977,pp. 192–195. It suffices to state thatAgora P 14819 cannot be Euboian.

108. Zapheiropoulou 1983; 1994;

Lambrinoudakis 1983a; 1983b; cf. Lam-brinoudakis 1988; Kourou 1984; 1992;1994; 1997; 1999a.

109. See Zapheiropoulou 1970;1971; 1973a; 1973b; 1975.

110. Zapheiropoulou 1994, p. 231.See further the preliminary reports inArchDelt, beginning in 1967, and n. 109above.

111. Zapheiropoulou 1975, pl. 473:g;1994, p. 249, fig. 18.


of the lower body painted, whereas the other, inv. 4538 (Fig. 22), has shortzigzags, or squiggles, alternating with the circles on the belly zone.112 Thesquiggles are similar but not identical to those on P 14819. The morerounded form of Donousa 4804 and 4538, together with their more elabo-rate decoration, indicates that the vessels are earlier than Agora P 14819,probably closer to the date of Rhodes 15533. Although the evidence forthe date of these vessels has not yet been fully presented, the informationprovided in preliminary reports indicates a 9th-century b.c. date for theseamphoras, and more specifically the third quarter of that century.113 Thefabric of Donousa 4804, as far as I could judge in the light of the NaxosMuseum, is paler than that of Agora P 14819, and contains less mica,whereas the clay color of Donousa 4538 varies from a pale brown throughred. Parts of the latter more closely resemble the fabric of Agora P 14819,but the match is not perfect; the same is true of other pots from the is-land.114

Figure 21 (left). Early Geometricbelly-handled amphora, Donousa,inv. 4804. Courtesy Ph. Zapheiropoulou

Figure 22 (right). Early Geometricbelly-handled amphora, Donousa,inv. 4538. Courtesy Ph. Zapheiropoulou

112. Zapheiropoulou 1970, pl.401:a; 1994, p. 247, fig. 1b.

113. See Zapheiropoulou 1994,p. 231.

114. A number of related largervessels from Donousa are on display inthe Naxos Museum. These include twolarge neck-handled amphoras (inv.7905 and 4796) decorated with bandsnot unlike some of the Athenianamphoras depicted in Fig. 15; one of

these (inv. 7905) is of a red fabric, theother with a more pale fired clay. Ofsimilar fabric to the latter is a hydria(inv. 4788, see Zapheiropoulou 1973a,pl. 367:a–b) and a shoulder-handledamphora (inv. 4543, see Zapheiro-poulou 1970, pl. 402:g), the latteressentially dark-ground, except forthe concentric semicircles on theshoulder.


Among the vessels that I have examined, perhaps the closest in fa-bric to that of Agora P 14819 is a solitary amphora, now in the NationalMuseum in Athens (inv. 53), which is said to be “probably from Syros”(Fig. 23). Originally published by Sam Wide,115 the vessel was fully de-scribed by Desborough, whose description of the vase is worth citing infull:

The clay is light brown and the paint chocolate-brown to red-brown. The body is slender-ovoid in shape, with the point ofgreatest diameter set high; the foot is low conical, coming awaysharply from the body; the neck is high and slim, rises abruptlyand almost vertically from the neck, and widens out at the topinto an everted lip of the usual Class I type with a flat rim. Overthis rim there are stripes; the neck is painted over; the shoulderhas sets of full circles (eight circles to each set), and dividing them,except in one case, groups of three vertical wiggly lines. Below theshoulder, one thin band, one very thick, and one thin; the samesystem below the belly; on the belly, three sets of full circles betweenthe single-loop handles; these are connected by similar groups ofwiggly lines, now set horizontally; the usual paint splashes go overthe handles and down the lower body, which is left free of paint.The height is 0.572 m. The context of the vase is unknown; it isobviously a later development of a vase such as [Kerameikos] 1089from Tomb 38, but it is not so very far from it in shape; the wholescheme of decoration is Protogeometric in spirit.116

115. Wide 1897, p. 245, fig. 16;Collignon and Couve 1902, p. 26,section VIII, no. 137, inv. 2201 (53),stated as being from “Syra?” This wasone of several vases, said to be perhapsfrom Syros, including some Mycenaean(see pp. 26–27, nos. 136–138, 142–143).

116. Desborough 1952, pp. 32–33;see also p. 212, where Desboroughreiterates that it “is certainly later thanany Attic Protogeometric.” It was theonly vessel from Syros known toDesborough. Although the fabric of theamphora is described by Desborough as“light brown,” its fired color is notconsistent (see below).

Figure 23. Geometric belly-handledamphora, probably from Syros;Athens, National Museum, inv. 53.Scale ca. 1:6. Courtesy Museum


Although Athens NM 53 is clearly Subprotogeometric, assigning afirm date is far from straightforward. It is similar in both shape and styleto the two belly-handled amphoras from Donousa, especially inv. 4538,and its resemblance to these, as well as Rhodes 15533 and a number ofother amphoras from Naxos, suggests a 9th-century b.c. date, more likelyin the second half of the century. Whatever its precise date, its fabric isvirtually identical to that of P 14819, particularly in the range and quan-tity of visible impurities and mica content. Its reserved surfaces have firedcolors ranging from red through a dull gray-brown, and the color and rangeof the dull paint is also similar. Smaller than P 14819, Athens NM 53 willbe fully published by Kourou in a forthcoming fascicle of the Corpus VasorumAntiquorum.117 A solitary amphora supposedly from Syros would by itselfbe inadequate to establish the island as the provenience of Agora P 14819;recently, however, additional material has been discovered at Galessas (seebelow), which strengthens the attribution.

Of all the larger Cycladic islands, Syros (Fig. 24) is perhaps the leastknown in terms of its Geometric, Archaic, and Classical history, despitethe fact that the early prehistory of the island is well known, thanks to thepioneering work of Christos Tsountas.118 The island appears in Homerbriefly. In Odyssey 15.403–414, for example, Homer has Eumaios, the swine-herd of Ithake, describe his home as lying above Ortygia (Delos); an islandgood for cattle and sheep, full of vineyards and wheat raising. Eumaios

117. I am grateful to Nota Kouroufor discussing this amphora with me.

118. Tsountas 1898; 1899. See alsoBosanquet 1895–1896; Bossert 1967;Hekman 1994; and esp. Marthari 1998(with further references). The mostrecent overview of the early Cyclades isby Broodbank (2000).

Figure 24. Map of Syros showingsome of the principal archaeologicalsites. R. Finnerty


mentions two cities, but these are not named, and this has led to somespeculation as to their location.119

Whatever the names and locations of the two cities ruled by Eumaios’sfather, Ktesios, the site that has to date yielded the most copious evidencefor habitation during the Geometric period is Galessas (Galhssçw) on thewest coast of the island.120 Antiquities, primarily surface pottery rangingin date from the Geometric through Roman periods, were reported byAntonis Manthos from the hill overlooking the Bay of Galessas, near thesmall chapel of Aghia Pakou.121 Among the most notable of the surfacesherds was one inscribed —)on Yerãpo(n)-to(w—, in what is clearly earlyepichoric.122 Systematic excavations at Galessas, especially in the ofikÒpedo

Kik¤lia, since 1995 have been directed by the current Ephor of Prehistoricand Classical Antiquities of the Cyclades, Mariza Marthari.123 These ex-cavations have uncovered a thriving settlement dating at least from theGeometric period through the Classical era and later. A large quantity ofpottery has been recovered from the site, much of which is stratified. Alocal fabric used for the wheelmade and painted Geometric pottery is vir-tually identical to the fabric of Agora P 14819 and Athens NM 53.124

There are even a number of fragments of large horizontal handles, un-doubtedly from belly-handled amphoras or hydriai, of a size, shape, anddecoration very similar to those of P 14819.125

In addition to the wheelmade and painted pottery, the site yieldedlarge quantities of locally made Geometric coarseware pottery, includingpithoi, some of which were decorated. The quantity and quality of theimported pottery is not unlike that of Zagora on Andros. Among the

119. See discussion in RE IV, A, 2,1932, cols. 1789–1794, s.v. Syros(W. Zschietzschmann). The two citiesare most often equated with themodern Syros (Hermoupolis) on theeast coast and Poseidonia—also knownby its popular name Dellagrazia(immortalized by Markos Vamvakaris’ssong Frankosyriani)—on the southwestcoast. There is also the modern town ofPhoinikas (Fo¤nikaw) about a mile (lessthan 2 km) from Poseidonia, andsharing the same harbor; Phoinikas andPoseidonia have yielded traces ofancient settlement. For the coinage ofSyros, dating from the 3rd to the 1stcenturies b.c. and later, with the ethnic(SU, SUR, SURI, or SURIVN, as well asYEVN KABEIRVN SURIVN), seeHead 1911, pp. 491–492; for discussionof the location of the “Kabeirion,”see Manthos 1979, pp. 42–45. For theinscriptions from the island, see IG XII,5, nos. 652–713, with addenda onp. 335, testimonia and notes on pp. xi–xxii, and map on p. xxxi; IG XII,Supplementum, pp. 117–118. See

further, ATL 1, 1939, p. 553, s.v.SÊrioi.

120. The name Galessas as anethnic is known epigraphically; seeRE IV, A, 2, s.v. Syros (W. Zschietz-schmann) and RE VII, 1, 1910, col.601, s.v. Galessioi (ofl GalÆssioi)(L. Bürchner). In IG II2, 814a, lines 18–19, there is named a certain PrianeÁw

SÊriow GalÆssiow; note also PrihneÁw

SÊriow in IG II2, 815. See furtherFraser and Matthews 1987, p. 387,s.v. PrihneÊw (377–359 b.c.).

121. Manthos 1979. The smallchapel of ÑAg¤a PakoË—from Panagiå

p’ ékoÊei—is illustrated in Manthos1979, p. 40, fig. 1.

122. The inscribed sherd isillustrated in Manthos 1979, p. 46,fig. 11. A photograph of the inscriptionwas shown to Henry Immerwahr, thenDirector of the American School ofClassical Studies at Athens, who readit as: —)on, son of Therapontos.According to my notes taken in theSyros Museum, the letters wereinscribed on a fragment of what

appears to be the neck and rim of aGeometric oinochoe.

123. I am grateful to MarizaMarthari, who was kind enough toallow me to view the material from theexcavations by the Ephoreia ofAntiquities at Galessas in the Syros(Hermoupolis) Museum.

124. It is characterized by a firedcolor of the clay that varies from redthrough a pale light brown. It containsnumerous inclusions of various colors,with white predominating, and a greatdeal of mica. The paint can firedifferent shades from red throughblack, with a reddish brown beingstandard. On some of the smallervessels, especially cups, the visibleimpurities are fewer, but the micacontent remains the same.

125. One of these comes from theKikilia plot, trench VI, pass 10, level 4.Another fragment from the body of anamphora, also from the Geometric levelin trench VI, must have been from alarge closed vessel very similar toP 14819.


easily identified imports were Athenian, Corinthian, Euboian, and EastGreek (including Rhodian) vessels; a variety of island fabrics, includingseveral pieces not easily assigned to any particular workshop, were alsofound. The site also yielded smaller quantities of bronze, iron, and boneartifacts, as well as obsidian tools.126 Of the Early Iron Age material that Iinspected, the majority is Late Geometric, though a number of pieces shouldbe earlier, including Middle Geometric. Further details will be providedby the excavator, but what is crucial to stress here is that Galessas is animportant, hitherto unknown, Geometric settlement. Moreover, it is aGeometric settlement on an island little known for its post-Early Cycladicantiquities. Located more or less in the geographical center of the Cyclades,and well situated with regard to communication with the Greek mainland,especially Attika, as well as the islands of the archipelago, Syros must haveplayed a more important role in the early history of the Cyclades than iscurrently conceded. According to Homer (Od. 15.415–416), the island onceruled by Eumaios’s father was also frequented by Phoenicians: “famousseafarers, gnawers at other men’s goods.”127 The importance of this passagelies in the fact that it suggests the possibility that commodities—includingpeople—from the Cyclades, and Syros in particular, may have been car-ried by middlemen, such as the Phoenicians.

It should therefore come as no surprise that a large amphora foundslightly to the northwest of the historic center of Early Iron Age Athensderives from the island of Syros. This said, it is important to stress, asa word of warning, that the identification of Agora P 14819 as being of“Syrian” manufacture must remain tentative. Future finds in one or otherof the less well known islands of the Aegean, or reanalysis of materiallong known, may well add new evidence to the story of this remarkableamphora.128

I S LA N D ER S I N E A R LY A T H EN S : T OWARD AP REH I S TO RY O F M E T I C S

In the foregoing discussion I suggested that Agora P 14819 came from theCyclades, probably Syros, that its date is Late Geometric, and that it servedat one time as a funerary vase. Against this backdrop, it is tempting to ask,first of all, about the nature of the tomb. The context of the vase, or ratherof its fragments as found, suggests that it was disturbed by the builders ofthe Hephaisteion from its not-so-ultimate resting place in a tomb. Thisimpression is supported by the very shape of the vessel, since the belly-handled amphora in Athens appears to be exclusively funerary or, at least,this is the case with those examples that are complete.129 The very largeversion of the belly-handled amphora, with a height of ca. 0.50 m, whileoccasionally used as a cinerary urn, especially in Early Protogeometric andagain in Early Geometric II and Middle Geometric I, seems more com-monly to have stood over the grave as a marker, or else was used in otheraspects of funerary ritual. By Late Geometric the shape had disappearedfrom the Attic repertory, apart from the giant “Dipylon amphoras,” whichwould themselves be gone by Late Geometric II.130 The possibility that

126. For the incidence and use ofobsidian tools in Early Iron Agecontexts at Zagora, see Runnels 1988;for the more general use of flaked-stoneartifacts in Greece in historicalcontexts, see Runnels 1982.

127. For a critical look at Homer’sPhoenicians, see Winter 1995.

128. Had I not come across theamphora from Syros now in theNational Museum, or had I finishedthis article several years ago, I probablywould have been content to assignAgora P 14819 to either Naxos—following Smithson—or, more likely,Donousa.

129. Domestic and industrialdeposits prior to the 8th century b.c. inAthens are known largely from well orpit deposits. The few fragments ofbelly-handled amphoras from suchcontexts come from dumped filling thatincluded, in addition to industrialdebris such as potters’ waste, cemeteryrefuse, which is plentiful in most partsof the area of the later Athenian Agora;see Papadopoulos 1996; Papadopoulos,forthcoming.

130. See Coldstream 1968, pp. 29–90.


P 14819 once served as a funerary marker cannot be dismissed. The fact,however, that so much of the amphora was found indicates that its use asa marker is less likely.131 The use of P 14819 as a cinerary urn also seemsproblematic, since the rite of cremation dropped from favor after the closeof Middle Geometric I and was relatively rare in Late Geometric, whenmetal urns seem to have been preferred by those who could afford them.132

It is unlikely, therefore, that P 14819, though of a once-popular urn type,would have been so used by any Athenian still practicing cremation.

After reviewing Cycladic island burial ritual, Smithson concluded adecade ago that P 14819 was similarly unlikely to have been used as acremation urn by an Aegean islander residing in Athens.133 She noted thatalthough the practice of cremation still continued, the normal custom inmany of the Cycladic islands, and specifically Naxos, was not to parcel uphuman remains and personal valuables in an urn in quite the same way asin Athens. She therefore leaned toward the belief that it would seem equallyimprobable that a Cycladic visitor or immigrant to Athens would haveturned to a rite unfamiliar in his or her homeland, and to one no longerpracticed in Athens.

It has to be stressed, however, that Cycladic island funerary ritual isextremely diverse.134 This is often the case even on individual islands, suchas Naxos, where the standard inhumation tombs of coastal Naxia (Chora)135

cannot easily be reconciled with the idiosyncratic burial customs at Tsika-lario in the interior of the island, which accord with Macedonian traditionmore than central or southern Greek traditions.136 Elsewhere in theCyclades, where cremation was practiced, the rite was rarely performed inthe same way as in Athens. For example, Theran cremations were usuallyin family tombs, where several urns would be placed in a chamber tomb; asimilar practice was followed in other Dorian islands, including Crete andKimolos.137 In the Ionian Cyclades, particularly in the northern Cycladicislands such as Tenos, Andros, Rheneia, and parts of Naxos, inhumationappears to have been generally preferred.138 On the islet of Donousa thereare two large pyre deposits, one over 7.0 m long, presumably with multi-ple cremations, if human bodies were indeed cremated there.139 At Paroi-kia on Paros Zapheiropoulou has recently excavated two remarkable largemass tombs, referred to as polyandreia, in which numerous amphoras—primarily, if not exclusively, neck-handled amphoras—each contained the

131. The possibility that theamphora stood as a grave marker moreor less undisturbed on the KolonosAgoraios until the time of the construc-tion of the Hephaisteion—a period ofover 250 years—seems remote.

132. For a useful overview ofAthenian Early Iron Age burialcustoms, see Wiesner 1938; Snodgrass1971, pp. 140–212; Kurtz andBoardman 1971, pp. 21–67;Desborough 1972, pp. 268–277;Coldstream 1977, passim; Krause 1975;Morris 1987.

133. Unpublished notes.134. See, for example, Kurtz and

Boardman 1971, pp. 177–179.135. See, most recently, Kourou’s

meticulous review of burial customs inthe South Cemetery of Naxos: Kourou1999a, pp. 141–182.

136. For the cemetery at Tsikalario,see Doumas 1965; Papadopoulou-Zapheiropoulou 1968. See also theoverviews in Kurtz and Boardman1971, p. 179; Snodgrass 1971, pp. 156–157, 195; Coldstream 1977, pp. 92,375.

137. Coldstream 1968, p. 186; Kurtzand Boardman 1971, pp. 177–178. ForKimolos see Mustakas 1954–1955;Courbin 1954, p. 146, figs. 41–44 forthe cemetery at Limni (Hellenika); seealso Coldstream 1977, p. 91.

138. See Kurtz and Boardman 1971,p. 179; Snodgrass 1971, p. 159. Forgood illustrations of inhumation cisttombs on Tenos, see Levi 1925–1926.

139. See especially Coldstream1977, pp. 91–92; see furtherZapheiropoulou 1970; 1973a; 1975.


cremated remains of an individual.140 Elsewhere at Paroikia both inhuma-tion and cremation tombs are found,141 and at Melos the plundered cem-etery at Trypiti appears to have contained cremation tombs.142 The recentexcavations at the site of Minoa on Amorgos by Marangou have uncov-ered cremation pyres, in addition to a solitary pot inhumation, ironicallyin a large banded neck-handled amphora.143 In the light of the more re-cent evidence for Cycladic Early Iron Age graves, and in view of our lackof knowledge of burial customs in many individual islands, including Syros,it would be hazardous to venture generalizations or to speculate on thebasis of negative evidence. Be that as it may, P 14819 does seem an unusu-al vessel for a cremation urn in the context of Late Geometric Athens andalternative possibilities are worth exploring, especially the common occur-rence of Late Geometric pot-inhumation.

ÉEgxutrismÒw, pot-burial of unburned bodies, first appears in post-Bronze Age times in Attika in Late Protogeometric. It is limited to in-fants, as opposed to children, and appears to be the primary archaeologicallyvisible rite attested for them at the time.144 The common cooking am-phora, with an average height of about 0.40 m, often fire-stained frompresumably domestic use, is the standard container. The few skeletal re-mains that have been analyzed from such burials are from premature ornewborn babies. Although no infant burials have been reported from theearlier phases of Geometric,145 Late Geometric examples are numerous.146

A total of 39 pot burials from the Agora, the Kerameikos, and thecemetery on the Acropolis South Slope near the Odeion inspire a numberof interesting observations.147 There is diversity in the shape and size ofthe container, and while newborns or premature babies predominate, thereare a few older infants and perhaps even a young child or two.148 Thedistinction between “infant” and “young child” is, of course, a gray area,

140. These await publication. I amgrateful to Yannos Kourayos for bring-ing these remarkable tombs to myattention.

141. See Snodgrass 1971, p. 157.142. Smith 1895–1896, esp. pp. 70–

71; Coldstream 1977, pp. 91, 210.143. Marangou 1993, esp. p. 207,

fig. 7:a–b, pl. 125:b, for the bandedamphora; the burial customs of Minoaare discussed in detail in Marangou,in prep. I am grateful to ProfessorMarangou for giving me a copy of hermanuscript prior to publication.

144. For the distinction betweeninfants and children, which is animportant one, see Papadopoulos 2000,p. 111. For an ongoing study of childgraves, especially in Early Iron AgeAthens, see Haentjens 1999, thoughsome of the assumptions concerningthe sexing of child graves on the basisof kterismata are questionable.

145. See the discussion in Smithson

1974, p. 373. Child graves through theEarly Iron Age are discussed more fullyin Haentjens’ dissertation (in prep.).

146. See Haentjens 1999. Variousinterpretations have been suggested forthis increase. For drought, famine,disease, and infant mortality, see Camp1979, pp. 399–401; for alternativeinterpretations, see Morris 1987; alsoPapadopoulos 1993.

147. This figure is based on aminimum number of fairly certainchild graves. The Agora graves will bediscussed more fully in a forthcomingvolume in the Athenian Agora series;see also Camp 1979, p. 400, n. 10; theKerameikos tombs include KerameikosV.1, graves 46, 51–53, 64–68, 85, 97,100. For the cemetery on the AcropolisSouth Slope near the Odeion, hence-forth the “Odeion Cemetery,” seeCharitonides 1975.

148. Of the relevant skeletal remainsthat have been analyzed from the

Agora, there is an individual agedsixteen months at death, another agedeighteen months, and a third aged threeyears and nine months. The relevantgraves are Agora B 21:10, AreiopagosValley Cemetery grave 1 (Young 1951a,pp. 82–83: Late Geometric IIb); andG 12:14, Tholos Cemetery grave IX(Young 1939, pp. 36–41: Late Geomet-ric IIb), which contained a newbornand the infant or young child. Theburial container of the latter is a largepithos, with a height of 0.80 m, but stillsmaller than the largest such vessel usedin an Attic tomb, which is probablythat from Odeion Cemetery grave VIII(H. 1.035 m). It should be added thata number of Early Iron Age pithoifrom domestic contexts elsewhere inthe Greek world are considerablylarger: one from Torone was, in itsoriginal state, probably over 2.0 m high;see Cambitoglou and Papadopoulos1994, pl. 21, no. 5.


though in the case of Classical Athens it is a distinction that may bereasonably set at the age of three years.149 Be that as it may, smaller burialcontainers were broken to admit the body, and the same appears to be thecase for many, if not most, of the larger containers.150 A clear preferenceexisted for the latter: 22 of the 39 containers are over 0.50 m tall, and 13 ofthem are over 0.65 m. The most common shape was the neck-handledamphora, accounting for 23 of the 39 containers. Its popularity, in all like-lihood, was due to its being one of the common Athenian shapes (apartfrom the bulky coarse pithos) that tended during the second half of the8th century to be very large, providing ample room for the body of the de-ceased and any accompanying kterismata. Particularly favored in the OdeionCemetery were large transport jars, the antecedents and close relatives ofthe SOS amphoras that became common in Subgeometric times.151

Against such a backdrop, Agora P 14819 fits well in the cluster of verylarge burial containers. Even though its shape is exotic in Athens at thistime, its size recommends it. Whatever the shortcomings of its decora-tion, it was more elaborately decorated than the contemporary pithoi usedas burial pots, and its deformed mouth (see above) would not have greatlymattered.152 Its fragmentary state preserves no clear evidence of inten-tional breakage for the purpose of burial, but even without such breakagethe mouth of the amphora would have been wide enough (0.203 m) toadmit the skull and body of an infant and any of the more common burialgifts.153

The evidence for Agora P 14819 presented above is largely circum-stantial. We have a large fragmentary amphora, best assigned to the LateGeometric period, which seems to have been used in a tomb, perhaps,though not conclusively, for the inhumation of an infant. What remainsbeyond doubt is that the vessel was imported to Athens, with the island ofSyros providing, at present, the strongest case for its origin. Against such abackdrop, it is important to stress that Cycladic imports to Athens in theEarly Iron Age are exceedingly rare. As Brann noted: “Roughly speaking,in the 8th century the Athenians exported pottery, in the 7th century theyimported.”154 But even in the 7th century b.c., Cycladic imports to Athensare most unusual.155 For the Protogeometric and Geometric periods, EmilKunze briefly mentioned a number of exports of Cycladic Geometric pot-tery, including examples exported to Athens, and the quantity of these was

149. Papadopoulos 2000, p. 111.150. In some cases the break was

neatly executed so that the brokensegment could be easily replaced (e.g.,Tholos Cemetery grave X, Young 1939,pp. 42–44), but in other cases suchneatness was either avoided or notachieved. The wider mouth of coarsepithoi made fracture unnecessary (e.g.,Agora graves B 21:10 and G 12:14).Prior damage to a vessel may well havefavored its selection as a burialcontainer; on this aspect, see furtherPapadopoulos 1998, pp. 115–116.

151. For these, see Johnston andJones 1978; Docter 1991; Papadopoulosand Paspalas 1999.

152. Smithson liked to refer tothe decoration of Agora P 14819 as“homely.”

153. In order to test that thediameter of the neck of the amphorawas sufficient to accommodate the skullof an infant, Smithson took a series ofmeasurements of the cranium of CarlMauzy at various stages throughout hisfirst year of life in 1988. All of thesemeasurements were well below the

diameter of the neck of P 14819.154. Agora VIII, p. 27; for the

export of Athenian pottery in the 8thcentury, see also Kerameikos V.1,pp. 283–298.

155. Apart from P 14819, there isonly one fragment of a wheelmade andpainted vessel from the Agora that isperhaps Cycladic (Agora VIII, p. 106,pl. 41, no. 658, dating to the late 7thcentury b.c.; the fragment may be EastGreek) and two possible, but uncertain,decorated pithos fragments (Agora VIII,p. 101, pl. 40, nos. 605–606).


slightly swelled by Humfry Payne on the basis of unpublished fragmentsfrom the Athenian Acropolis.156 Apart from these examples, few importsfrom the Cyclades to Athens are known. It is, therefore, all the more sur-prising to find such a massive amphora as P 14819 in Athens. How didthis amphora make its way to Athens in the Late Geometric period?

Any number of possibilities can be entertained. Of the many, the twothat most often appear in the literature are trade and gift-exchange. Indiscussing the presence of large Athenian amphoras at Knossos, Coldstreamnoted that these were not likely “to have been hawked overseas by casualtraders.”157 Indeed, Agora P 14819 does not appear to be part of any par-ticular consignment. It is, for example, not part of any coordinated set ofdrinking or banquet crockery, such as drinking cups and other vessels, eas-ily stacked and transported.158 The Athenian imported pottery in one ofthe Knossian tombs, Tekke tomb J, consisted of a “dinner set” of 26 vases.159

In a similar vein, it is not a standard commodity container, such as thenorth Aegean neck-handled amphora found in quantity at Troy and ex-ported as far afield as Bassit-Posidaion in North Syria.160 Had it served asa commodity container for Cycladic oil or wine, one would expect to findmore such vessels on the Greek mainland. Moreover, as a “one-off ”—ahapax—in Early Iron Age Athens, P 14819 is difficult to place within theframework of the broader economic processes at work in the Mediterra-nean in the early first millennium b.c., which have been effectively ex-plored by Andrew and Susan Sherratt, as well as Ian Morris.161

Perhaps the explanation of exchange mechanisms in the Early IronAge Mediterranean that has loomed largest in recent studies is gift-ex-change. This topic, particularly gift-relations between elites, has been wellexplored by a number of scholars.162 Alternative scenarios stress ceremo-nial exchange involving sanctuaries, whether commodities were dedicated

156. Kunze 1931, p. 262, n. 58,mentions: “Theräische Scherbe von derAkropolis” (= Graef and Langlotz1925, p. 31, no. 312; Gauss andRuppenstein 1998, p. 34, pl. 7, no. 2).In his review of Kunze 1931, Payne(1933, p. 123) noted: “Export ofCycladic geometric pottery: there areother Theran, and some Siphnian,geometric or probably geometric sherdsfrom the Acropolis (unpublished), andTheran and other Cycladic fromPerachora.” See further Gauss andRuppenstein 1998, p. 34, pl. 7, nos. 1–2, who discuss and illustrate both theTheran fragments from the AthenianAcropolis and the fragment of a Cretan“pithos.” Here it is also worth mention-ing two pendant semicircle platespublished in Kerameikos I, pl. 52, T 29,inv. 590; Kerameikos IV, pl. 34, inv.1265. Although the shape, which isnormally associated with the pendant

semicircle skyphos, is more at homeelsewhere, particularly in Euboia andthe Cyclades, the two examples fromthe Kerameikos do not appear to beimported. Desborough (1952, p. 118,pl. 12) noted nothing unusual aboutthem, and assumed them to be Attic.Of the two, I had occasion to inspectone in the storerooms of theKerameikos Museum, and there isnothing in my notes to indicate aprovenience other than Athens. For thependant semicircle plate, see alsoGjerstad, Calvet, Yon, Karageorghis,and Thalman 1977, p. 25, nos. 18–27,pl. II:2–12; Popham 1994, p. 27, fig.2.12.

157. Coldstream 1995, p. 401; alsoColdstream 1990.

158. Cf. the existence of suchAthenian pottery sets at Knossos;Coldstream 1995, p. 400.

159. Coldstream 1995, p. 400.

160. For these amphoras, seeCatling 1998b; Lenz, Ruppenstein,Baumann, and Catling 1998; Courbin1993, for fragments of such amphorasat Bassit; for the latter site, see furtherCourbin 1990.

161. Sherratt and Sherratt 1993;also Sherratt and Sherratt 1991; Morris1986. For the Bronze Age, Knapp andCherry 1994 is particularly useful.

162. See, e.g., Coldstream 1983;cf. Coldstream 1986; 1989; 1994;1995; Morris 1986; Rupp 1988; 1989;Colonna 1995. More recently, Crielaard(1993, p. 145) has argued that virtuallyall of the Greek Early Iron Age potteryfound on Cyprus and in the coastalLevant can be explained through gift-relations between Euboian and localelites, an argument that has been takento extremes; see Papadopoulos 1997a,p. 199.


as diplomatic gifts or prizes accumulated by wandering heroes, as well as“gift-exchange” between rulers and deities or even the importation of ritualequipment specifically for cult purposes.163 In all of these explanations in-volving trade or gift-exchange, it is usually the commodity itself that moves.Human agency is relegated to the background, or else seen as indirect. Forexample, in dealing with the large amphoras imported to Knossos fromAthens and the Cyclades, already noted, Coldstream concluded that theymake more sense as gifts between guest friends in Athens, Knossos, andthe Cyclades.164 Once the gifts were exchanged or the votive dedicated,the social actors involved withdrew.

It would be wrong, however, to identify P 14819 too quickly as a giftexchanged between an Athenian and Cycladic family. Its context is suchthat it is difficult to picture the vessel—or, for that matter, any pot—in thecontext of gift-exchanges between elites or guest friends. If the evidenceof Homer can be trusted, gift-exchange in the Late Bronze and Early IronAge Mediterranean involved items of real value: gold, silver and bronzevessels, jewelry, objects of ivory, precious stone and faience, as well as live-stock, such as horses or cattle, and human slaves.165 The “rich Athenianlady” of the Areiopagos was rich not because of the many pots that wereburied with her, but because of her gold and bronze jewelry, her necklacemade of faience and glass beads, as well as the ivory stamp seals and disk,among other exotic kterismata.166 Moreover, if P 14819 was used to con-tain an infant inhumation, it is important to remember that such burialswere, more often than not, made in used cooking pots, in transport orstorage vessels, not in containers of intrinsic value. Furthermore, the con-text of P 14819 would argue against ceremonial exchange involving sanc-tuaries, though such an explanation might contribute toward an under-standing of the Cycladic imports found on the Athenian Acropolis.167

In her attempt to make sense of P 14819, Smithson leaned toward aninterpretation that took into account all aspects of the life history of theamphora, its cultural biography.168 This was, after all, a massive damagedand repaired pot that was finally used in a burial, far from its place oforigin. It appears to have served various functions and to have been, to acertain extent, or at certain times, prized. In the same way that Smithsonpersonalized the wealthy tomb on the Areiopagos as that of a rich Athe-nian lady—the daughter, conceivably, of a pentakosiomedimnos, perhaps evenan archon’s wife, the gunØ ÉArr¤fronow of the Athenian “king list”169—sotoo did she attempt to personalize P 14819. She saw a person—a woman—accompanying the amphora, or, rather the amphora accompanying thewoman. Smithson favored the idea of a marriage, not at the “frontiers” ofthe early Greek world,170 but in the very heart of Greece. The amphorawas seen as part of a dowry of a young Cycladic woman, or part of thedomestic chattels, the objets mobiliers of a Cycladic metic family—a largepot perhaps ultimately used to hold the remains of a deceased offspring. Inso doing, Smithson visualized a reality with fluid boundaries, one whichallowed not only for the movement of goods and ideas, but of people aswell.171 She envisioned people moving with goods, not as part of any pre-determined colonizing enterprise, whether voluntary or involuntary, nor,necessarily, as part of any greater trade or other diaspora.172

163. The bibliography on thissubject is growing; see de Polignac1984; 1992; 1994; Langdon 1987;Zaccagnini 1987; Kyrieleis and Röllig1988; Muscarella 1989; Strøm 1992;Catling 1995, pp. 127–128;Papadopoulos 1997a, esp. p. 199.

164. Coldstream 1990, p. 30; 1993;1995, p. 401.

165. E.g., Od. 17.441–444; seefurther Papadopoulos 1997a, pp. 199–200.

166. See Smithson 1968, esp. pls.30–33; Morris and Papadopoulos,forthcoming.

167. Gauss and Ruppenstein 1998,p. 34.

168. See above, n. 5.169. Smithson 1968, p. 83.170. Cf. Coldstream 1993.171. See further Burkert 1984;

Purcell 1990; Morris 1992a; Morris1992b, pp. xvii–xviii; Sherratt andSherratt 1993; Papadopoulos 1997a,p. 207.

172. For “involuntary colonization”see Fernandez-Armesto 1995, p. 269;for trade diasporas, see Cohen 1969;1971. See further Lyons andPapadopoulos 2002.


Immigrant communities were a reality of the Classical polis, and oneof the factors that contributed to the success of various Greek cities, in-cluding Corinth and Athens.173 Several -oikos words are attested for suchimmigrants, with metoikos the most common. As David Whitehead hasargued, with the reforms of Solon having created only indirect incentivesto immigration, Athenian metic status probably owes its formal origins toKleisthenes.174 The canonical view of metics in Athens on the basis ofliterary sources is most succinctly stated by Helen Pope in her 1935 disser-tation:

. . . the metics were a part of the glory that was Athens. Solon gavethe franchise to to›w panest¤oiw ÉAyÆnaze metoikizom°noiw §p‹ t°xn˙

(Plutarch, Solon 24), Kleisthenes polloÁw §ful°teuse j°nouw ka‹

doÊlouw meto¤kouw (Aristotle, Politics 1275B 36), and rumor has itthat Themistokles granted immunity from taxation to metics(Diodoros XI.43.3). Xenophon advocated methods to attract them(Revenues 2.1), Isokrates hoped that ÙcÒmeya d¢ tØn pÒlin . . .

mestØn d¢ gignom°nhn §mpÒrvn ka‹ j°nvn ka‹ meto¤kvn, œn nËn

§rÆmh kay°sthken (On Peace 21), and the most famous of all metics,Lysias, said of them oÈ katå tÚ pros∞kon •auto›w §boÆyhsan t“

dÆmƒ (Against Philon 20).175

One of the earliest, and certainly most vivid, monuments in Athensrelating to a metoikos—specifically one from the Cyclades—is the inscrip-tion block from the grave monument of Anaxilas of Naxos (Fig. 25).176

Found in the south tower of the Dipylon Gate, and dating to ca. 510 b.c.,the block is roughly contemporary with the reforms of Kleisthenes. ItsCycladic honorand, however, must have resided in Athens for some yearsbefore. The inscription, as originally published, reads:

dakruÒen polupeny¢w ÉAnaxs¤la §d’ Ùlof|udnÒn

lãion ßsteka mnema katafyim°|<me>no:

NaxsiÒon t¤eskon ÉAyena›oi met°oikon

¶x|soxa sofrosÊnew ßneken §d’ éretew:

to› m’ §p‹ Tim|Òmaxow gerarÚn kt°raw oÂa yanÒnti

yeken ÉA|r¤stonow paid‹ xarizÒmenow177

Here I stand, fraught with grief, sorrow, and lamentation, themonument of the deceased Anaxilas, the Naxian immigrant whomAthenians esteemed outstandingly for his prudence and virtue.Timomachos erected this majestic funerary gift (gerarÚn kt°raw) asa kindness to the son of Ariston, who had died.178

In this inscription, the critical word, met°oikon, has been variouslyinterpreted and requires some explanation. Whitehead, following Wil-lemsen’s original reading, was dubious of the historical value of privatetombstones as evidence for metic studies, and he concluded that the termwas descriptive and that it was used in a “non-technical” way.179 Keiji Baba,however, established that the reading meteoikos was wrong, and that the

173. Whitehead 1984, esp. p. 59.For foreigners in Rome, see now Noy2000.

174. Whitehead 1977; 1984; seealso Whitehead’s lucid summary inOCD3, p. 969, s.v. metics. See also Clerc1893; Gauthier 1972.

175. Pope 1935, p. 46.176. Willemsen 1963; SEG XXII,

79; IG I3, 1357; Baba 1984; Bakewell1997, p. 221.

177. Athenian Kerameikos, inv.I. 388: Willemsen 1963, pp. 141–145,Beil. 72, 2 and 73, 3, from the southtower of the Dipylon Gate.

178. The English translation is myown.

179. Whitehead 1977, p. 64, n. 44;Bakewell 1997, p. 221.

Ç

Ç

Ç


stonecutter engraved at first met°oikon, but later corrected it to readmetãoikon.180 Baba went on to state that immigrants were called metaoikoi,but were only de facto inhabitants of Athenian society, and that “an immi-grant enjoyed there no better legal position than xenoi in general.”181 Morerecently, Geoffrey Bakewell, in dealing with the metoikia in the Supplices ofAiskhylos, noted that the use of the term in the case of Anaxilas probablyhad more to do with his burial place than with his status in life. And heconcluded: “In the Ceramicus he will lie among the Athenians forever;only in this sense has he shifted residence.”182 In all of these analyses, thefocus has been, narrowly, on establishing the first incontrovertible evidenceof metoikia to mean, technically, a “resident alien living with the citizenbody” in a formal sense, as opposed to an “immigrant.”183 But this philo-logical and epigraphical search for the ur-metic loses sight of the fact thatboth metaoikos and metoikos derive from metã + ofik°v, and both share thebasic meaning of “an immigrant.” Words such as metaoikoi and later metoi-koi developed in the course of the Late Archaic period and earlier and, assuch, enjoyed their own pre-writing history.184 As Whitehead has cogentlynoted, “it would be naïve, surely, to imagine the metoikia springing fully-formed from Clisthenes’ head.”185

Anaxilas, however, was only one of many metoikoi or metaoikoi—im-migrants—in Archaic Athens. Whatever the complexities of Kleisthenicand Solonian economics, and whatever the realities of Solon’s reforms,there is growing evidence in the thriving Early Iron Age settlements likeLefkandi, Knossos, Corinth, and Athens for metics—resident aliens—inan era before recorded history.186 For example, in reviewing Protogeometric

Figure 25. Funerary inscription fromthe monument of Anaxilas of Naxos,Athenian Kerameikos, inv. I. 388.Courtesy Deutsches ArchäologischesInstitut, Athens

180. Baba 1984, pp. 1–2, fig. 1.181. Baba 1984, p. 4. Baba also

notes that the history of Athenian meticstatus began with the reforms ofKleisthenes, and that the “old term”metaoikos was applied to this newstatus.

182. Bakewell 1997, p. 221.183. Although, morphologically, the

former is evidently a prototype of thelatter, Baba (1984, pp. 4–5) argues that

metoikos, which is used exclusively inlater sources, had acquired the addedsense of formal “metic-status.”

184. Although the funerarymonument of Anaxilas is clearly LateArchaic, there is no archaeologicalevidence to pinpoint its date moreaccurately, beyond the subjective andvague criteria of letterforms. Mostclassicists date the inscription to shortlyafter the reforms of Kleisthenes

(traditionally 508/7 b.c.), and Baba(1984, p. 3) goes to great pains tosuggest a date of ca. 506 b.c. Althoughhe may well be right, it is useful toremember that this is not a date “set instone,” and that Anaxilas the metaoikoscertainly lived, and perhaps died, beforethe reforms of Kleisthenes.

185. Whitehead 1977, p. 145.186. For Corinth see, most recently,

Morris and Papadopoulos 1998.


burial customs at Lefkandi, Coldstream has recently suggested that sev-eral of the graves in the Toumba cemetery “seem to be those of Athenianresidents.”187 Similarly, another burial at Lefkandi, cast by its excavators asthat of a “Euboian warrior-trader,” may very well represent a Phoenician,Cypriot, or North Syrian traveler or resident who met his demise in Euboiaand was buried there.188 The possibility of immigrant eastern craftsmen atKnossos has been more strongly argued in recent literature, including ref-erence to the work of a so-called—if unlikely—“Phoenician jeweler” in anOrientalizing tomb at Tekke near Knossos.189 Elsewhere in Crete, there isgrowing evidence for the presence of Phoenicians at Eleutherna and atKommos.190 The whole question of Near Eastern contact with Crete, in-cluding immigrant presence, is effectively explored in Gail Hoffman’s ex-haustive study.191 The evidence for Levantine resident aliens is even stron-ger in Early Iron Age Corinth, where several Phoenician-style stele shrinesare found in the Potters’ Quarter.192 Indeed, Phoenician presence in theCorinthia was well outlined already by classicists working in the late 19thand early 20th centuries.193 Building on the earlier contributions of schol-ars such as Ernst Maass, Henry Theodore Wade-Gery, Lewis Farnell, andothers, Thomas Dunbabin wrote:

An older generation, accustomed to seeing Phoenicians everywhere,regarded them as the bearers of Oriental culture to Greece. Forthem, Melikertes, the hero whose tomb was shown at the Isthmus,was Melkarth; the cult of Aphrodite, with its sacred prostitutes, wasof Phoenician origin; Medea also and the cult of Hera Akraia, withits human sacrifice implied in the slaughter of Medea’s children,were Phoenician. Athena was worshipped at Corinth with the titlePhoinike [Schol. Lyc. 658; Steph. Byz. s.v. Foin¤kaion], for whatthat is worth; and there was a month Phoinikaios at Corinth and inCorinthian colonies. These Oriental elements, more stronglyconcentrated at Corinth than elsewhere in the Greek world, musthave been introduced now, in the second half of the eighth century,when Corinth’s commerce expands and orientalizing influencesappear in her art. Whether they imply that men from Phoenicia orSyria settled at Corinth may be debated.194

The evidence in our literary sources for resident aliens, including thevery articulation of words such as metoikos, is most abundant and clear forClassical Athens. It is, therefore, no surprise to find growing evidence formetics—as in immigrants—in the pre-Classical city. In his publication ofa Corinthianizing bowl made in Athens, Dunbabin cogently argued thatthe vessel was made by a Corinthian potter who emigrated to Athens.195

Dunbabin placed the bowl at the head of a Corinthianizing current that

187. Coldstream 1995, p. 401.188. Popham and Lemos 1995.189. Coldstream 1988, p. 30;

Hoffman (1997, pp. 191–245) discus-ses the identity of the occupant of thistomb in some detail. Cf. Burkert 1983.

190. For Eleutherna, see especiallyStampolides 1990a; 1990b. For Kom-

mos, see especially the Stele Shrine,published in Shaw 1989.

191. Hoffman 1997, esp. pp. 153–189, 252–260.

192. Morris and Papadopoulos1998.

193. Morris and Papadopoulos1998, p. 257.

194. Dunbabin 1948, p. 66.195. Dunbabin 1950. The bowl

is made of Athenian clay and wasdecorated by a potter trained in theworkshop of the Corinthian SphinxPainter; see Dunbabin 1950, p. 194(the attribution was originally madeby Payne).


reached its height in the second quarter of the 6th century b.c. FollowingPlutarch (Sol. 24), Dunbabin went on to place the bowl and its makeragainst the backdrop of Solon’s offer of Athenian citizenship to immi-grants who came to practice a trade.196 Here was straightforward evidence,not for the movement of pots, but for the relocation of the people whomade the pots. More recently, further evidence has come to light forCorinthian pottery production, by way of a kiln dating to the later 8th and7th century b.c., in the heart of the Early Iron Age Athenian Kerameikos,in the area that was to become the Classical Agora of the city.197 Corinthians,however, were not the only émigré potters in Athens. Brann commentedon several Protoattic potters, and considered them either as foreigners or,at least, well traveled. She wrote:

The Ram Jug Painter shows some signs of having learned abroadabout such things as Cycladic outline protomes and the use ofbrown paint, but one likes to think of him as an Athenian, albeit atraveler. The Polyphemos Painter, on the other hand, was anAeginetan, or at least he worked in Aegina.198

In discussing the strong Cycladic influence on Protoattic pottery, Brannwent on to note the general absence of contemporary Cycladic pottery inAthens and concluded that “the explanation must be that the potters andnot the pottery traveled.”199 Indeed, there is a long list of potters who mi-grated both to and from Athens, particularly during the Archaic and Clas-sical periods.200 The mobility of potters, and other artisans, can be tracedback at least as early as the Late Bronze Age on the evidence of the LinearB tablets.201 If the Ram Jug Painter was a metic or xenos in Athens he was,perhaps, not the first to boast a Cycladic ancestry. Kenneth Sheedy hascogently argued that the Parian Ad Painter worked in Athens at the end ofthe 8th century b.c.202 More specifically, Sheedy suggests that the Ad Painterlearned to decorate vases in the Workshop of the Würzburg Group, andthat he was also aware of the work of the Analatos Painter.203 The latter,one of the great pioneers of the Protoattic style, may have spent the laterpart of his working career producing pottery at the settlement at Incoronatain the chora of the later city of Metapontion in South Italy, according tothe penetrating analysis of Martine Denoyelle.204

The evidence of émigré potters to Early Iron Age Athens may repre-sent the tip of a large iceberg, given the tenacity of pottery to survive inabundance in most archaeological contexts. Moreover, it is important tostress that not all resident aliens were craftspersons, let alone potters. In

196. Dunbabin 1950, pp. 196, 200.197. Papadopoulos 1996;

Papadopoulos, forthcoming.198. Agora VIII, p. 24. Indeed, the

Ram Jug, the name-vase of the Ram JugPainter, was assumed to be Aiginetanwhen it first appeared, and scholars suchas Pfuhl, Payne, Beazley, and Dunbabindoubted whether it was Attic (see Mor-ris 1984, p. ix, with pl. 10 for the RamJug [Aigina Museum 566]). The

Aiginetan origin of much of the “Pro-toattic” Black and White style has beenmost fully argued by Sarah Morris(1984), though several scholars continueto believe that this potter lived andworked in Athens; see especially Walter-Karydi 1997; Kyrkou 1997, esp. p. 432.

199. Agora VIII, p. 28. Brann alsocited Schweitzer’s (1955, p. 105) viewthat the painter of the Aristonothoskrater was a traveling Attic potter, once

trained in the Athenian Kerameikos.200. Full details in Papadopoulos,

forthcoming.201. Papadopoulos 1997b.202. Sheedy 1985, pp. 170, 173, 189–

190.203. Sheedy 1985, pp. 189–190.204. Denoyelle 1996. See also the

case of the later Pisticci Painter, one ofthe pioneers of the Lucanian red-figure style (Denoyelle 1997).


Peace 296–298, Aristophanes calls upon a whole slew of foreigners andtradesmen:

éll’, Œ gevrgo‹ kêmporai ka‹ t°ktonew

ka‹ dhmiourgo‹ ka‹ m°toikoi ka‹ j°noi

ka‹ nhsi«tai, deËr’ ‡t’, Œ pãntew le–

You farmers and merchants and carpentersand craftsmen and immigrants and foreignersand islanders, come here, all you people, as quick as you can.205

Some of these foreigners, like Anaxilas, were highly esteemed for theirprudence and virtue; in later times, such a deserving metic could becomean isoteles.206 The funerary monument of Anaxilas further establishes thatthe word metoikos—or more accurately metaoikos—does not first appear inthe second quarter of the 5th century b.c., as has been suggested in earlierstudies,207 but can be traced back at least to the late 6th century b.c. Moreto the point, the very quantity of foreigners living and dying in historicAthens and the Piraeus that can be traced archaeologically, through theevidence of funerary inscriptions and iconography, as well as our literarysources, is staggering.208 Ktesikles’ figures for the time during the ascen-dancy of Demetrios of Phaleron in the late 4th century b.c. include 21,000Athenians and 10,000 metoikoi.209 For the construction of the Erechtheiona century earlier, metic workmen outnumbered the citizen workmen andcivic officials by a ratio of almost 2:1, if the Erechtheion building accountsare accurate.210 Although the evidence for the size of the metic populationin Athens in earlier times is meager and controversial,211 the survivingliterature on resident aliens alone attests their importance in the social andeconomic fabric of the city.

205. J. Henderson, trans., Loebedition (1998).

206. For the isoteles and isoteleia, seeWhitehead 1977, pp. 11–13.

207. See Whitehead 1977, p. 7.208. For bibliography on the literary

sources, see Whitehead 1977; 1984.For foreigners buried in Athens, see Salta1991, pp. 161–239. For a recent overviewof Thracians and Skythians buried inAthens, see Bäbler 1998; note alsoThracians in Athenian iconography,assembled and discussed in Tsiafakis1998 and, generally, Papadopoulos2000. For the metic in Athenian courtsof justice, see Patterson 2000.

209. See Whitehead 1977, p. 97, withfull discussion, including comments onthe veracity of these figures.

210. On the basis of IG I2 373, 374,and IG II2 1654, Pope (1935, pp. 52–53)calculated, among the citizens working on

the Erechtheion, three sculptors, 17workmen, and three civic officials, asopposed to 38 metics, four of whomwere sculptors. The metics weredistributed across several of the demes,including Melite, Alopeke,Skambonidai, Agryle, Kollytos, Koile,and Kydathenaion. One of the 38metics was a woman, Satyra. For thedistribution of metics in demes, see alsoClerc 1893, pp. 450–456; Gomme1933, pp. 39–40. For further commentson metics in Attika, see Wilamowitz-Möllendorff 1887. In Randall’s laterstudy, among the total recorded work-men and specialists inscribed on theErechtheion accounts, the breakdown isas follows: 24 citizens, 42 metics, 20slaves, 21 unknown (107 total); seeRandall 1953, p. 201, table 1. To thelist of demes, mentioned above, wheremetics were domiciled, Randall (1953,

p. 204, table 3) adds Phyla and Sema-chidai (the largest concentration ofmetics, 12, lived in Melite). For the in-scriptions associated with the construc-tion of the Erechtheion, see Stevensand Paton 1927, pp. 277–422 (text andcommentary by L. D. Caskey); Ran-dall 1953 (with references); also Scran-ton’s (1960) general account. In therecent work along the South Slope ofthe Athenian Acropolis in 2001 as partof the “Unification of Athens” project, alarge number of the employedworkmen appeared to be residentaliens, citizens born outside Greece, ornative speakers of languages other thanGreek. Of the languages spoken,Albanian, Pontic Greek, and perhapsalso Serbo-Croatian and Russian weremore commonly heard than modernGreek.

211. Whitehead 1977, pp. 97–98.


Potters like the Parian Ad Painter and the Ram Jug Painter, amongothers, provide a potential glimpse of Cycladic immigrants working inAthens generations before the reforms of Solon. Whether we call them“metoikoi” or “foreigners” (j°noi) or even, simply, “islanders” (nhsi≈tew)does not really matter.212 They, together with Corinthians and other for-eigners—craftspersons, traders, and others—who were to become numer-ous in Athens in the course of the 7th and 6th centuries b.c.,213 demon-strate that resident aliens enjoyed a venerable prehistory in the city. Theyfurther suggest, through direct human agency, the manner in which a largeamphora like P 14819, with its idiosyncratic life history, may have madeits way to Late Geometric Athens: a Cycladic amphora accompanying aCycladic immigrant.

A C K N OW LED G M EN T S

Many friends and colleagues have assisted in the preparation of this articleand to all I extend my warmest thanks. Within the Agora, I am especiallygrateful to John Camp for his unfailing encouragement and support, toCraig Mauzy for his help with many of the illustrations used in this study,to Annie Hooton for her fine drawings, and to Jan Jordan and SylvieDumont for all sorts of assistance. Numerous colleagues in the Cycladeshave graciously shown me and discussed material in their care, includingmuch that is unpublished. I am particularly grateful to the Ephor of theCyclades, Mariza Marthari, for her constant assistance, as well as to thefollowing: Christina Televantou, Dick Green, and Alexander Cambitoglou(Andros); Nota Kourou (Tenos); Yannos Kourayos and Robert Koehl(Paros); Vassileios Lambrinoudakis and Konstantinos Zachos (Naxos);Photeini Zapheiropoulou (Donousa); Mariza Marthari and Maria Katri(Syros); Christos Doumas (Thera); Lila Marangou (Amorgos); and Rich-ard Catling, Irene Lemos, and Petros Themelis (Euboia).

I have benefited from discussions both in the past and more recentlywith four colleagues in particular, who have taught me a great deal aboutthe islands of the archipelago: Lila Marangou, Nota Kourou, RichardCatling, and Kenneth Sheedy. For discussing a range of ceramic problemsin East Greece I am indebted to Lela Walter-Karydi and Despoina Tsia-fakis. Thanks are due to Fred Cooper for sharing with me his thoughts onthe Hephaisteion. I am also grateful to Sarah Morris and Stavros Paspalasfor all they have done and continue to do on my behalf, to Hans RupprechtGoette and Raimund Wuensche for assistance with illustrations, RobertFinnerty for preparing the maps, and the anonymous Hesperia referees,who have done much to improve this study. Throughout Evelyn’s notesand correspondence on Anaxilas’s amphora, the following individuals’ namesstand out: Nicolas Coldstream, Nota Kourou, Ken Sheedy, and the lateVincent Desborough, all of whom offered help and sage advice. I am gratefulto all of the above and also to Eve Harrison and Susan Rotroff. Finally,this study would not have been possible in its present form without theexcavation notebooks of the late Dorothy Burr and Homer A. Thompson:they were the excavators of Anaxilas’s amphora.

212. For these terms, and othertypes of foreigners who might beresident in Athens, including proxenoi,see Whitehead 1977, pp. 6–20.

213. For the various categories ofnon-Athenians in Attic inscriptions,see Pope 1935. See also the evidenceassembled in Papadopoulos, forthcom-ing, ch. 3.


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John K. Papadopoulos and Evelyn Lord Smithson†

U n i v e r s i t y of Ca l i f or n i a , L o s A n g e l e sdepartment of c l ass ic s andt h e c o t s e n i n s t i t u t e of a r c h a e ol o g ya2 10 fowlerl o s a n g e l e s , c a l i f or n i a 9 0 0 9 5 - 1 5 1 0

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