Greece in the Early Iron Age (Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze & Iron Age Mediterranean (2014)

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The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean

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Book DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHO9781139028387

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Chapter

10 - Greece in the Early Iron Age: Mobility, Commodities, Polities, an

d Literacy pp. 178-195

Chapter DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHO9781139028387.014

Cambridge University Press

178

10 GREECE IN THE EARLY IRON AGE: MOBILITY, COMMODITIES, POLITIES, AND LITERACY

JOHN K. PAPADOPOULOS

Abstract

This chapter confronts the systemic divide in modern scholar-

ship that separates Aegean prehistory from Classical archaeol-

ogy and considers its ramii cations. In so doing, the problems of

periodization, absolute chronology, and regionality are tackled.

It advocates an approach that follows an historical continuum,

allowing social and political experiments in the Bronze Age

their inl uence on the early Iron Age. It also advocates looking at

Greece holistically, not just from predetermined cores, whether

Mycenaean palaces or Archaic city-state s , and sug ests that

some of the most important developments in political struc-

ture occurred in the tribal, clan-based areas of the Greek world,

often regarded as the fringes. The core of the chapter focuses on

several critical developments in Iron Age Greece that were to

have an impact on the Mediterranean. Among these were over-

seas travel and settlement, as well as the quest for metals. The

latter is not seen simply against the backdrop of technological

innovations or the vicissitudes of supply, but rather involves a

real search for structuring commodities of value that ultimately

led to an economic system of exchange not limited to elites. The

culmination is the invention of coinage . The other great inno-

vation represents no less of a revolution: literacy . It is not just

the adoption of the Phoenician alphabet or of a technology of

writing that is important, but the introduction of alphabetic

writing to the unique cultural context of Iron Age Greece. For

the i rst time in world history, writing was not limited to a

scribal class serving a ruling elite, but instead served as a tool

that could be exploited by anyone.

Introduction

Since the overviews in the 1970s by Snodgrass ( 1971 ), Desborough ( 1972 ), and Coldstream ( 1977 ), the early Iron Age of Greece has seen a great deal of scholarly activity. Much of this has been fueled by new discoveries (sum-marized in Dickinson 2006). The map ( Figure 10.1 ) lists many of the principal sites with important remains from the period between ca. 1200–700 BC. Coupled with new discoveries are new perspectives that have shaped and

redei ned the way we view the period, beginning with the seminal work of Snodgrass (e.g., 2006), and contin-uing with the contributions of de Polignac (1984), Morris ( 1987 ), and many others.

I begin by sketching an overview of early Iron Age Greece, and in the process I point to three critical issues that have plagued its study: (1) the epistemological divide between Aegean prehistory and Classical archaeology (Snodgrass [ 2006 : vi] prefers the dichotomy between ‘archaeology’ and ‘Classical archaeology’); (2) the problem of periodization, which can be taken together with absolute chronology ; and (3) the issue of regionalism within Greece. By pointing to these problems, I also suggest ways to move forward.

From this starting point, I discuss four critical develop-ments in the history of Greece during the early Iron Age. These are not monolithic, nor are they static. Above all they are interrelated and easily collapse into one another; they are not juxtaposed. The i rst emerges precisely in this period of experimentation and follows a pattern already estab-lished in the Bronze Age. The contrast between palatial and non-palatial Greece in the Bronze Age mirrors the contrast, in the early Iron Age, between the Greek polis , on the one hand, and the polis -less tribal state s based on kinship , on the other (see Hall 2007a : 49–53, on polis and ethnos ). Although this contrast becomes most marked in the Archaic period and later, its origins are i rmly rooted in the early Iron Age and the collapse of Mycenaean palatial society.

Figure 10.1. facing page . Map of Greece showing principal early Iron Age sites (prepared by John K. Papadopoulos and Christine Johnston).

Site List: 1. Korkyra, 2. Kalpaki, 3. Liatovouni, 4. Vitsa, 5. Dodona, 6. Polis, 7. Aetos, 8. Same, 9. Astakos, 10. Agrinion, 11. Palaiomanina, 12. Gavalou, 13. Kalydon, 14. Kryoneri, 15. Derveni, 16. Aigeira, 17. Ano Mazaraki, 18. Asani, 19. Aigion, 20. Batra, 21. Chalandritsa, 22. Pharai, 23. Valmantoura, 24. Katarrates, 25. Phlamboura, 26. Elis, 27. Keramidia, 28. Agrapidochori, 29. Lasteika,

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E P I R U S

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A I T O L I A

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A C H A I A

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John K. Papadopoulos

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The second important development is Greeks leav-ing Greece, well articulated in Purcell’s ( 1990 ) model of mobility and l uid boundaries. This movement has impor-tant ramii cations for Mediterranean history. Greek over-seas mobility and settlement has to be seen together with similar movements by other Mediterranean peoples, espe-cially the Phoenicia ns (S. Morris 1992), because this move-ment acts as a catalyst for all sorts of developments in the Mediterranean.

My third issue harks back to the second: it is the quest for metals, the very commodities that dei ne our periodization

(Bronze Age, Iron Age). But I want to move beyond the issue of technological innovation , especially the reasons behind the adoption and use of iron , or the vicissitudes of supply or the mechanics of regional network s for the procurement of metals. Rather, I focus on what I see as a real search for structuring commodities of value that ultimately leads to an economic system of exchange that is not limited to elites. Iron and bronze play a signii cant role, but just as important, perhaps more so, is the often-overlooked metal of the early Iron Age: silver . The culmi-nation of this development is the invention of coinage , an

30. Salamoni, 31. Ayios Andreas, 32. Olympia, 33. Samikon, 34. Gryllos, 35. Rizes, 36. Malthi, 37. Tsoukaleika, 38. Ordines, 39. Volimedia, 40. Ano Englianos, 41. Beylerbey, 42. Pylos, 43. Traganes, 44. Koryphasion & Osmanaga, 45. Koukounara, 46. Kaphirio, 47. Nichoria, 48. Antheia & Aithaia, 49. Volimnos, 50. Pellana, 51. Sparta, 52. Amyklai, 53. Kardamyli, 54. Mavrovani, 55. Geraki, 56. Epidauros Limera, 57. Kato Leivadi, 58. Asea, 59. Tegea, 60. Mantinea, 61. Lerna, 62. Argos, 63. Mycenae, 64. Berbati, 65. Tiryns, 66. Nauplion, 67. Asine, 68. Vista, 69. Halieis, 70. Kranidhi, 71. Hermione, 72. Sambariza, 73. Troezen, 74. Kalauria, 75. Megalochori; Methana, 76. Kounoupitsa, 77. Oga, 78. Loutra, 79. Phlius, 80. Kleonai, 81. Vellow, 82. Corinth, 83. Athikai, 84. Isthmia, 85. Perachora, 86. Ayia Theodoroi, 87. Megara, 88. Salamis, 89. Aigina, 90. Aphaia, 91. Eleusis, 92. Athens, 93. Palai Kokkinia, 94. Phaleron & Mounychia, 95. Mt. Hymettos, 96. Aliki, 97. Anavyssos, 98. Vari, 99. Merenda, 100. Thorikos, 101. Laurion, 102. Spata, 103. Menidi, 104. Marathon, 105. Liossia, 106. Skala Oropou, 107. Panakton, 108. Thebes, 109. Rhitsona, 110. Paralimni, 111. Haliartos, 112. Askra, 113. Mali, 114. Medeon, 115. Khirra, 116. Galayidion, 117. Itea, 118. Delphi, 119. Amphissa, 120. Vranesi, 121. Orchomenos, 122. Mavroneri, 123. Amphikteia, 124. Ayios Athanasios; Modi, 125. Elateia, 126. Kalapodi, 127. Hyampolis, 128. Agnanti, 129. Ai-Georgis, 130. Megaplatanos, 131. Livanates; Kynos, 132. Atlanti, 133. Kastraki, 134. Mitrou & Tragana Lokridos, 135. Likhas, 136. Yialtra, 137. Oreoi, 138. Rovies, 139. Kerinthos, 140. Psakhna, 141. Theologos, 142. Chalkis, 143. Nea Lampsakos, 144. Lef kandi, 145. Phylla, 146. Eretria, 147. Magoula, 148. Amarynthos, 149. Plakari, 150. Avlonari, 151. Oxylithos, 152. Kyme, 153. Skyros Cemetery, 154. Parliani, 155. Perivoli, 156. Ypati, 157. Arkhani, 158. Bikiorema, 159. Lamia, 160. Stylis, 161. Pteleon, 162. Halos, 163. Phthiotic Thebes, 164. Yelestino; Pherai, 165. Aerinos, 166. Sesklo, 167. Kapakli, 168. Megali Velanidia, 169. Iolkos, 170. Volos, 171. Lestiani, 172. Maleai,

173. Argalasti, 174. Theotokou, 175. Domolkos; Neo Monastiri, 176. Pharsala, 177. Plaikastro, 178. Ktouri, 179. Karditsa, 180. Phiki, 181. Trikkala, 182. Krannon, 183. Argissa, 184. Nea Lef ki, 185. Larisa, 186. Marmariani, 187. Chasambali, 188. Argyroupoli, 189. Homolion, 190. Elasson; Chyretiai, 191. Retziouni, 192. Dion, 193. Methone, 194. Vergina, 195. Tsaousitsu, 196. Kastanas, 197. Assiros, 198. Thessaloniki, 199. Olynthos, 200. Sani, 201. Cape Poseidi, 202. Mende, 203. Torone, 204. Koukos, 205. Lagomandra, 206. Kastri, 207. Troy, 208. Methymna, 209. Antissa, 210. Pyrrha, 211. Mytilene, 212. Pitane, 213. Myrina, 214. Kyme, 215. Phokaia, 216. Buruncuk, 217. Sardis, 218. Smyrna, 219. Klazomenai, 220. Teos, 221. Mardagan, 222. Erythrai, 223. Chios, 224. Kato Phana, 225. Emporio, 226. Kolophon, 227. Klaros, 228. Ephesos, 229. Pygela, 230. Panionion, 231. Melia, 232. Pythagoreion, 233. Heraion, 234. Miletos, 235. Didyma, 236. Teichioussa, 237. Iasos, 238. Sinuri, 239. Stratonike, 240. Halikarnassos, 241. Dirmil, 242. Asarlik, 243. Kalymnos, 244. Kos Astypalai, 245. Kos Meropis, 246. Seraglio, 247. Astypalaia, 248. Ialysos, 249. Kamiros, 250. Siana, 251. Exochi, 252. Tzingana, 253. Lindos, 254. Maliona, 255. Ayia Irini, 256. Ypsili, 257. Zagora, 258. Amanakiou, 259. Kardiani, 260. Ktikados, 261. Exobourgo, 262. Galessas, 263. Donousa, 264. Minoa, 265. Naxia, 266. Delion, 267. Paros, 268. Despotiko, 269. Kastro, 270. Hellenikos, 271. Melos, 272. Thera, 273. Modi, 274. Vryses, 275. Khania, 276. Aptara, 277. Khamalevri, 278. Eleutherna, 279. Ayia Triada, 280. Phaistos, 281. Kommos, 282. Kourtes, 283. Gortyn, 284. Prinias, 285. Stavrakia, 286. Phoinikia, 287. Arkhanes, 288. Knossos, 289. Atsalenio, 290. Anopolis, 291. Juktas, 292. Episkopi Pediados, 293. Ayia Paraskeve, 294. Ligortino, 295. Rhytion, 296. Arkades, 297. Psychro, 298. Kritsa, 299. Karphi, 300. Mallia, 301. Milatos, 302. Anaylokhos, 303. Dreros, 304. Vrokastro, 305. Halasmenos, 306. Katalimata, 307. Kavousi, 308. Adhromyloi, 309. Piskokephalo, 310. Vronda, 311. Praisos, 312. Kato

Figure 10.1. Site List (continued).



Greece in the Early Iron Age: Mobility Commodities, Polities, and Literacy

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innovation with global consequences. Although coinage i rst occurs in the context of Lydia and east Greece during the course of the later seventh century BC, and takes of to breathtaking heights among the Greek city-states in the sixth century BC, the search for structured commodities of value goes back to the early Iron Age.

The fourth great early Iron Age innovation represents no less of a revolution: literacy . It is not just the adoption of the Phoenicia n alphabet or of a technology of writing that is important, but rather the introduction of alphabetic writing to the unique cultural context of early Iron Age Greece.

From this, it will be clear that I stray from conventional chronological coni nes, casting a constant glance back to the Bronze Age, as well as a look forward to the sixth cen-tury BC and beyond. I do so in an attempt to break down the divide – the ‘iron curtain’ – between Aegean prehistory and Classical archaeology , and to see history as a continuum.

Sketching the Greek Early Iron Age

The Emergence of Iron and a Scholarly

Systemic Divide

Conventionally, the early Iron Age in Greece extends from the demise of Mycenaean culture (traditionally sometime after 1200 BC: Desborough 1964 ; Dickinson 2006 : 58–61) to the rise of Archaic Greece (ca. 700 BC: Snodgrass 1980 ; Hall 2007b ; Shapiro 2007 ). Part of this period has attracted the pejorative term ‘dark age ’ (Papadopoulos 1996 ). For some scholars, the dark age encompasses the entire era of illiteracy, whereas others allocate it a shorter time span, specii cally the earlier part of the period, viewing the later early Iron Age, or Geometric period, as a time of recov-ery. There is a good deal of consensus that the eighth cen-tury BC heralds a virtual ‘renaissance’ in Aegean culture (Snodgrass 1977 ; Hägg 1983 ), although this may obscure as much as it reveals (Langdon 2008 : 292–97).

In traditional scholarship, the early Iron Age has formed something of an interlude between two comparatively well-explored cultural phases: the earlier, Mycenaean, characterized by a syllabic script (Linear B ) used to record numerous, centrally administered, transactions; the later corresponding to the adoption and adaptation, by the Greeks, of the Phoenicia n (or Aramaic ) alphabet some-time in the eighth century BC (Sass 2005 ). The study of the period between these two proto-literary poles is col-ored by the fact that it is viewed as both a beginning and an end of two scholarly traditions (Classical archaeology and Aegean prehistory ), thus forming an epistemologi-cal divide. For Classical archaeologists, the early Iron Age

signii es the beginning of something distinctly ‘Greek’ or ‘Hellenic,’ although the decipherment of Linear B should have revolutionized the teaching of early Greek history (S. Morris 2007 : 59–60). For Aegean prehistorians, the destruction of the great Bronze Age palace s and the advent of iron (Wertime and Muhly 1980 ) represent a con-venient, if artii cial, stopping point. In many ways, this divide mirrors a more fundamental one articulated by Renfrew ( 1980 ), one that spirals back to the educational underpinnings of the West (e.g., Morris 1994 ; Marchand 1996 ), with the additional divides of ‘history and prehis-tory’ and ‘history and archaeology’ brought to the fore by Morris ( 1994 : 14–15).

The fact that an era designated as a ‘dark age ’ is ush-ered in by a technological innovation as evidently singu-lar as the widespread use of iron in the Greek mainland is, in itself, important. But why iron, and why now? For a time, the so-called ‘circulation model’ prevailed (Snodgrass 1989 ), whereby in the eleventh and tenth cen-turies BC copper and tin , together with scrap bronze , were in short supply. This straightforward economic fac-tor led to the adoption of iron, and is in keeping with the historical accounts of the troubled times in the east-ern Mediterranean after 1200 BC. Others, most notably Morris ( 1989 ), contended that the supply and demand of bronze were not the issue, but rather that iron had sud-denly acquired a new prestige that made it the metal of choice for deposition in graves; this, in turn, gave rise to the ‘deposition model.’

There is, however, much to commend both models. For example, early Iron Age burials, such as the celebrated ‘warrior grave’ in the Athenian Agora published by Blegen ( 1952 ) ( Figure 10.2 a and b) – equipped with a panoply of iron weapons ( Figure 10.3 ) – can serve as a ‘poster boy’ for the deposition model (the burial contained the cremated remains of an adult male aged 35–45 years at death). Similarly, Snodgrass ’s economic arguments are cogent, not least that the apparent intensity of the drive to improve the hardness of iron , both in Greece and Cyprus , points to economic necessity as a driving force, placing ‘practi-cal considerations above prestige, function above display’ (Snodgrass 2006 : 127). Moreover, iron ore, in its various forms, occurs too widely in Greece for it to be controlled or rationed, as the deposition model requires. Another point stressed by Snodgrass ( 2006 : 127) is the evidence of Hesiod ( Works and Days , 492–94), where ironworking in the smithy was not only a public activity, but evidently commonplace. Photos-Jones (pers. comm.) would go fur-ther, arguing that ironworking had become a more or less domestic activity, something that was part and parcel of a successful subsistence strategy .




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Against this backdrop, I prefer a third model, one that combines the essential elements of both circulation and deposition, and one that harks back to continuity of practice across the Bronze/Iron Age divide. Indeed, circulation and deposition of critical commodities are processes that are complementary and interdependent. In the same way that bronze , together with gold and silver , was deposited in the rich burials of the Greek Bronze Age (e.g., shaft graves of Mycenae ), so too was bronze, together with iron , and some-times gold and silver, deposited in the wealthy burials of Iron Age Greece, not least those of the Athenian Kerameikos and Agora (Langdon 2008 : 130–43), Lef kandi (Popham et al . 1979 –80), and Knossos (Coldstream and Catling 1996 ).

In the same way that copper and tin , together with so many other commodities, were circulated in the inter-national markets of the Late Bronze Age, to which the Uluburun shipwreck bears elegant witness (Pulak 1998 ; 2001 ; 2008 ; see also Sherratt 2000 ), so too were

metals traded and circulated in the exchange systems that emerged in the early Iron Age, as the evidence of Homer attests (Morris and Powell 1997). For instance, in the Odyssey (1.180–85, cf. 1.105, 417), the ‘oar-loving Taphians’ sail across the wine-dark sea to the land of men of strange speech in order to trade shining iron for copper. Their spe-cii c target was Temessa , on the Tyrrhenian coast of south Italy (Papadopoulos 2001 : 447). The collected deeds of the Taphian pirates, and of their individual princes, such as Mentes, read like a virtual primer for a new breed of Late Bronze and early Iron Age entrepreneur. In addition to trad-ing metals, they were involved in the exchange of another valuable commodity: human slaves . In Odyssey (14.449–52), Odysseus’s swineherd Eumaios was able to buy Mesaulios from the Taphians, and in the Odyssey (15.427–29), the same Taphians seized from Sidon a Phoenician girl, the daugh-ter of Arybas. Elsewhere ( Odyssey 16.425–30), the Taphians raid the Thresprotians. The adventures of these western

Figure 10.2. Athenian Agora Tomb 13 (Deposit D 16:4). Athenian trench-and-hole urn cremation, after Blegen ( 1952 : 280, i gs 1 and 2). (a) Plan and section (east–west); (b) section (north–south). Courtesy of the Trustees of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.




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Greeks span the eastern and central Mediterranean, from the Levantine coast to the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea, and bear witness to the reality of long-distance exchange of commodities, people, and ideas in the early Iron Age.

Deposition of commodities in early Iron Age tombs, however, is only part of the story. Some scholars have emphasized the economics of dedications at Greek sanc-tuaries (Snodgrass 1989 –90), others the importance of sanctuaries in the deposition and public display of valued commodities and exotica , including diplomatic gifts, or for-eign prizes for victors, whether in sanctuaries or at funeral games, or as goods accumulated by wandering heroes (de Polignac 1984 ; Langdon 1987 ). Another scenario sees gift-exchanges between rulers directly with deities, not always between elites (Muscarella 1989 ). Indeed, prominent rul-ers of later periods, such as Midas or Kroisos , lavished gifts on sanctuaries such as Delphi and Ephesos . Such behavior arguably took more valuable commodities out of circula-tion than did the deposition of material in tombs.

The transition from bronze to iron is most visible in the sphere where it mattered most: warfare . For example, a new type of sword , long referred to as the Grif zungenschwert

or Naue Type II, was fashioned in such a way that one could both cut and thrust with them (Snodgrass 1967 : 28–29; Desborough 1972 : 308; Molloy 2005 ; 2010 : 421–22). Snodgrass notes that this was a new and more ei -cient type of sword, developed in bronze during the Late Bronze Age, standardized and mass-produced to a degree not before achieved in Greece, distributed over an extraor-dinarily wide range of space and time, and one that lived on, translated into iron, well after the Bronze Age. Indeed, after the eleventh century BC, this type is usually found in iron, such as the example from the Athenian warrior grave ( Figure 10.3 ). Here, there is continuity across the iron cur-tain in terms of type but not material.

The same is true for other types of objects that are now manufactured in both bronze and iron, including i bulae and dress pins, which were worn and circulated in life, and often deposited with the dead. The important point is that although iron is now increasingly used for all sorts of things, bronze does not disappear: it was still a valued commodity, both circulated and intentionally deposited. In certain contexts, such as sanctuaries , bronze dedications far outnumber iron votives (e.g., Voyatzis 1990 ).

Figure 10.3. Iron weapons and other objects from Tomb 13, after Blegen ( 1952 : 281, i g. 3), including a ‘killed’ sword, iron spearheads and iron knives, a battle-axe, iron snal e bits, an iron hasp, in addition to various other fragmentary iron objects. Courtesy of the Trustees of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.




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The transition from the Bronze to early Iron Age did not involve a full-scale transition from bronze to iron. Perhaps the best way of moving beyond the problems posed by the epistemological divide between Aegean pre-history and Classical archaeology is to the tackle the issue of periodization, together with that of absolute chronol-ogy. Periodization matters. We cannot do without it, but we need to be careful how we construct it (Morris 1997 ; Papadopoulos et al. 2011).

Periodization and Absolute Chronology

The relative chronology of the early Iron Age is based on painted pottery, the most abundantly preserved item of material culture that has been subjected to closest scrutiny (Desborough 1952 ; 1972 ; Lemos 2002 ; Coldstream 2009 ). The period as a whole has been linked strongly to the vari-ous successive pottery styles of the Aegean early Iron Age: ‘Final Mycenaean’ or ‘Submycenaean,’ Protogeometric (Desborough 1952 ; Lemos 2002 ), and Geometric (Coldstream 2009 ). Pottery style, however, is a misleading indicator of social change, and the vicissitudes of ceramic history should never be confused with social, political, or economic developments. For many scholars, the minutiae of ceramic development often take precedence over more critical economic, social, and political developments.

The translation of relative chronology into absolute terms continues to exercise scholars and has generated a good deal of controversy and revision. The l attening out of the radiocarbon calibration curve between ca. 800–400 BC, and the lack of substantial timber samples for dendrochro-nology , have left the absolute chronology of the Aegean early Iron Age dependent on more traditional approaches, relying on synchronisms with the various cultures of the Mediterranean and beyond. The establishment of the abso-lute chronology is largely based on contexts where artifacts, usually pottery, can be connected with recorded historical events. The only such events in the Greek world are the foundation dates, extracted from Thucydides and later authors, of Greek settlements in Sicily and south Italy . The validity of these dates and their historicity has been ques-tioned (Hall 2008); they are limited to the closing stages of the period (mid-eighth century BC and later), and there is no guarantee that pottery found at particular sites coincides with the literary foundation dates for those colonies.

In the east, early Iron Age Greek pottery is more abun-dant in stratii ed contexts at various sites in north Syria , Cilicia, and Palestine (especially Al Mina , Tell Sukas , Tabbat-al-Hammam , Tarsus , Tell Abu Hawam , Megiddo , and Samaria ), but the historical interpretation of these contexts has led to disagreement (Forsberg 1995 ; Fantalkin 2001 ). The most comprehensive overview of Greek pot-tery in the east is Fantalkin’s ( 2008 ) PhD dissertation,

which deals with Greek pottery in the southern Levant from the Protogeometic period to the beginning of the Persian period. The earliest post–Bronze Age imported Greek pot to the Levant is now the small fragment of an Argive ‘Submycenaean’ one-handled cup rather than sky-

phos from Tell es-Sai /Gath in Philistia (Maeir et al. 2009 ). In addition, a number of contexts, mostly tombs, espe-

cially in Crete , the Dodecanese, and Cyprus , have yielded large groups of pottery of various Greek and Cypriot local styles that has permitted the cross-linking of Greek and Cypriot material (e.g., tomb A1K1 in Orthi Petra at Eleutherna ; Kotsonas 2008 ); in turn, evidence for Near Eastern imports to the Aegean, particularly Crete, has been growing steadily (Hof man 1997 ). Although potentially sig-nii cant, the quantity of Egyptian objects, particularly items inscribed with regnal dates of pharaohs and found in good contexts with Greek material, is limited (Skon-Jedele 1994 ).

Despite the problems, the essential lines of Aegean abso-lute chronology during the later Bronze and early Iron Age are i xed with reasonable clarity, despite a number of concerted challenges (e.g., James et al. 1991 , whose down-dating the end of the Bronze Age to ca. 950 BC cannot be maintained because of both radiocarbon dates and dendro-chronology). A recent dendrodate from Assiros Toumba , proposing that the beginning of Protogeometric should be 1120 BC (Newton et al. 2003 : 185), has been shown to be a victim of the ‘old wood’ ef ect: it cannot be used for abso-lute chronology (Weninger and Jung 2009 : 374–80).

A more ambitious attempt to synchronize the Greek dates with Italian and Swiss dates has provided interest-ing results (Weninger and Jung 2009 ; see also Bartoloni and Delpino 2005 ; Jung 2006 ; Papadopoulos et al. 2011). Good dendrochronological dates from the lakeside settle-ments on the shores of the Swiss and southern German lakes (e.g., Hauterive-Champréveyres at Lake Neuchâtel) provide important eleventh-century BC termini post quem . These dates, however, cannot at present be linked directly to the Aegean, and the only recourse is to triangulate via Italy (Weninger and Jung 2009 : 389–93). Despite dii culties, Weninger and Jung ( 2009 : 416, i g. 14) propose that Late Helladic IIIC be dated to 1100–1095/80, Submycenaean to 1085/80–1070/40 BC, and Early Protogeometric to 1070/40–1000 BC. This chronology – the earlier stages of which are also synchronized with material and events at the Syrian coastal sites of Ugarit and Tell Kazel , as well as Amurru and the Medinet Habu inscriptions of Ramesses III in Egypt – is in broad agreement with the conven-tional chronology, particularly for the earliest stages of the Aegean early Iron Age.

In order to put the absolute chronology of the Aegean on a i rm footing, some have recommended a concerted research program directed at establishing a Holocene radiocarbon-age calibration based on a continuous




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sequence of annual samples. Others have recommended a program aimed at dating human bone collagen from Mycenaean and early Iron Age burials from dif erent parts of the Greek world . If recent work on dating i red ceram-ics using rehydroxylation kinetics proves to be as accurate as it currently appears to be (Wilson et al. 2009 ), then the future promises a powerful and nondestructive avenue for establishing the absolute chronology of all periods of Greek archaeology independent of radiocarbon dating (for the most recent overview of radiocarbon dates in the Aegean based on Lef kandi, Kalapodi, and Corinth, see Tof olo et al. 2013).

With the beginning of the early Iron Age in Greece placed in the eleventh century BC, and probably in the earlier half of that century, there is little clear evidence in Greece dur-ing the ensuing Geometric period that provides conclusive evidence for absolute chronology. For this, we can only look to the east. A remarkably large number of radiocarbon samples from various sites (e.g., Beth Shean , Dor , Khirbet en-Nahas , Megiddo , Tel Hadar , and Tel Rehov ) have pro-vided what seems to be a robust sequence for the southern Levant , especially for the critical period of transition from the Iron I–II periods. Several of these sites have produced growing, but never substantial, quantities of Greek pottery. Despite the large number of radiocarbon samples analyzed, two schools of interpretation have emerged (Mazar and Bronk Ramsey 2008 ; Finkelstein and Piasetzky 2009 ; both with references), and the evidence to date is simply not good enough to bear on the broader issue of the date ranges of the particular phases of the Greek early Iron Age. For this, we can only look to the future, and the hope of more Greek imported material in good eastern contexts.

Thus far, I have presented nothing that is not in keeping with the conventional chronology of the early Iron Age Aegean. The one area where there is need for reconsid-eration is the terminal date of Late Geometric. The evi-dence for this derives from an analysis of what is arguably the largest group of non-funerary early Iron Age contexts anywhere in the Greek world : the numerous wells from the area of the Athenian Agora (Papadopoulos 2003 ). This is not the place to present the argument in detail. If the Agora deposits are regarded as representative and not an accident of survival or preservation, and if we keep the absolute chronology precisely as it is but lower the termi-nal date of Late Geometric from 700 down to 670 or even 650 BC, then many of the problems disappear. But can we lower the date of Late Geometric without violating our carefully constructed chronological scheme? Once it is clear that the Thucydidean dates for the western colonies are problematic, as Hall ( 2008 : 409) has shown, and since any reexamination of the literary and archaeological evi-dence for the supposed destructions of Near Eastern sites suggests that our earlier coni dence in these ‘i xed points’

may have been misplaced (Forsberg 1995 ), then there is little left to anchor the terminal date of Late Geometric in absolute time. As we have seen, radiocarbon cannot come to the rescue due to the l attening of the calibra-tion curve.

If the Late Geometric period is assigned more abso-lute time by extending its terminal date into the seventh century BC, then graves and population would not be so heavily concentrated in the second half of the eighth cen-tury, and the seventh century BC would lose much of its problematic status (e.g., Camp 1979 ; Morris 1987 ; Osborne 1989 ). Such a down-dating does not result in an accordion ef ect; all it does is shrink Protoattic into a shorter period of time. By the second half of the seventh century BC, we return to the conventional chronology. As we will see, this chronology i ts well the era of Greek colonization .

A Diachronic Perspective Diachronically, the traditional view of the early Iron Age in Greece has been one of decline (twelfth and earlier eleventh centuries BC), followed by isolation (later eleventh and tenth centuries BC), then the beginnings of recovery (late tenth to early eighth centuries BC), culminating in the ‘Greek renais-sance’ (mid-to-late eighth century BC). Such an overview, however, lacks explanatory power. Explaining the demise of a culture as archaeologically visible as the Mycenaean has led to much debate. The two most popular scenarios involve an invasion (s) conventionally linked with the erstwhile Dorians (for which, see Schnapp-Gourbeillon 2002 : 74–83), them-selves loosely pinned onto the later literary tradition of the return of the Herakleidai; the other, a ‘social uprising’ (also linked with a Dorian ‘substratum’ of Mycenaean society: Taylour 1964 : 86; Snodgrass 1971 : 186–87, 385). The latter was championed by Hooker ( 1976 : 179), who suggested that the indigenous ‘Helladic’ substratum of Mycenaean society not only forcibly deposed their Mycenaean masters, but also consciously returned to their ancestral customs of individ-ual inhumation in cist and pit graves .

The Dorian invasion/migration has dissolved into a schol-arly mirage (Schnapp-Gourbeillon 2002 : 131–82). In contrast, internal collapse remains an under-emphasized explana-tion, as does ‘Balkanization ’ (i.e., internal conl ict between the various Mycenaean states competing over diminish-ing resources). Another line of reasoning argues that the Mycenaean polities were ‘Potemkin palaces,’ and that once the long-distance route-based economies of the eastern Mediterranean were disrupted, the economic underpinnings of the Myceanean palatial system collapsed (Sherratt 2001 ).

The twelfth century BC is certainly a period of upheaval, witnessing movements of peoples not only in Greece but throughout the entire eastern Mediterranean (Sandars 1978 ; Oren 2000 ; Yasur-Landau 2010 ). Whatever the causes of the demise of Mycenaean culture, there is a signii cant




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shift in the nature of occupation and in subsistence strat-egies in Greece during the later twelfth and eleventh centuries BC, largely dei ned by a less ordered political landscape . The centrally administered palace economies of the second millennium BC gave way to more dispersed forms of economic organization. This new Iron Age pat-tern did not rise suddenly out of the ashes of Mycenaean bureaucracies, but had already begun to take shape long before 1000 BC, contributing to the processes underlying the disappearance of the Bronze Age centers.

Against such a backdrop one aspect often overlooked is: how Mycenaean is Late Helladic (LH) IIIC? On account of the systemic divide between Aegean prehistory and Classical archaeology , we have come to view LH IIIC as ‘Mycenaean,’ even though it is Postpalatial. Since LH IIIC is Postpalatial, there is a strong argument for attaching LH IIIC to Protogeometric rather than to the earlier palatial periods, and to regard developments in LH IIIC as contrib-uting to the social, economic, and political trajectory that ultimately led to the rise of the Greek city-states , before any putative dark age . For many scholars, the ceramic transi-tion from Late Mycenaean to Early Protogeometric is more important than the transition from Palatial to Postpalatial. Greater emphasis should therefore be placed on the impor-tance of LH IIIC as a critical period in the development of the early Iron Age. One result of recasting the way we think of our periodization would be that there is far more conti-nuity from LH IIIC through the early Iron Age and into the Archaic period than is currently conceded. Another, argu-ably more important, result would allow the collapse of the Mycenaean way of life as a major factor contributing more directly to the political experiments that were to follow.

Regionality In the same manner that periodization af ects the way we conceive of the Greek early Iron Age, so too does the process of carving up the various regions of Greece into broader entities. Just as periodization has been largely determined and dei ned by painted pottery, so too has regionality. So far as the traditional picture of the early Iron Age is concerned, there is a good deal of regional var-iation within the Greek world . Nevertheless, although var-ious aspects of material culture play into this (metalwork , burial customs, what survives of architecture), pottery looms largest.

Coldstream ( 2009 ) and others sketched out the regional divisions of Greece based on early Iron Age pottery. Signii cantly, these various regional entities do not always accord with other ways of determining regions, such as the distribution of the later Greek dia-lects ( Jef ery 1990 ). Epichoric script helped to dei ne the spread of literacy and to harden linguistic units that contributed to a more explicit dei nition of Archaic

territorial polities and identities , but these are rarely the same as ceramic units.

Hand in hand with ‘ceramic regions’ is the idea of the ceramic koine – but how relevant is a koine based on painted pottery? Many scholars have spoken, for exam-ple, of a Euboean or Athenian koine (e.g., Lemos 2002 : 212–17). These are, however, ceramic, not political koinai . An early Iron Age Euboean koine is about as relevant as an Athenian (red-i gure) koine in the Classical period: it means very little. Athenian red-i gure pottery was closely copied in many centers (Corinth , Ambrakia , Chalkidike , and in Apulia , Lucania , Paestum , Campania , Sicily ), but does such a koine make sense outside the narrow coni nes of pottery production ?

Another ef ect of these ceramic koinai is that whole swaths of Greece are subsumed under the orbit of other regions solely on the basis of pottery. A classic case in point is Boiotia , which is sometimes seen as being part of the orbit of Attica , sometimes subsumed under that of Euboea . There is, to date, no palatial center on Euboea, whereas the importance of Thebes in the Late Bronze Age cannot be underestimated. Latacz ( 2004 : 242–43), among others, persuasively argues that Thebes was the seat of the ruler of Ahhijawa , adding: ‘Should the Thebes hypothesis prove to be true, then inter alia … the old problem of why it has to be that the catalogue of ships [Homer, Iliad 2.494–759] begins with Boiotia and the Theban region and why the l eet assembled at Aulis is at once explained: Thebes dominated Mycenaean Greece at the time, and Aulis … had always been the natural har-bor of Thebes.’ Indeed, the collapse of the Mycenaean palatial center at Thebes might well provide the impe-tus for a more fragmented but independent network of settlements in LH IIIC, a pattern that was to continue throughout the early Iron Age.

Four Critical Developments of the

Greek Early Iron Age

Palatial versus Non-Palatial – Polis

versus Polis -less Tribal States ( Ethne )

By the closing stages of the early Iron Age, much if not all of the southern Balkan peninsula was composed of two very dif erent types of social and political forms of orga-nization. As Hall ( 2007a : 49) elaborates, ‘Conventionally, a distinction has been drawn between the polis and the eth-

nos – a looser type of political organization associated above all with regions such as Achaia , Elis , Aitolia , Akarnania , Thessaly , and Makedonia .’ I would extend this area to cover Epirus , Illyria , and much of the rest of the Balkan penin-sula. Various Classical authors – not least Thucydides (1.5,




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1.10, 3.94), Herodotus (5.98; cf. 1.96), and Aristotle ( Poetica 1448a.36; Politica 1261a.28) – state that unwalled villages, referred to as komai , were characteristic of an ethnos . Hammond ( 2000 : 345) has argued that the term ethnos in the Greek sources denotes a tribal state based on kinship , and Hall ( 2007a : 49–53) reviews the various meanings of the term ethnos , drawing a distinction between consoli-dated ethne and dispersed ethne . Perhaps the best examples of excavated komai are those of Epirus , particularly Vitsa and Liatovouni (Vokotopoulou 1986 ; Douzougli and Papadopoulos 2010 ). These settlements are certainly small, unfortii ed, and sometimes at relatively high elevations.

A further distinction between poleis and komai is that the latter relied more heavily on specialized pastoralism . In a number of important independent studies, Halstead ( 1990 ) and Cherry ( 1988 ) challenged the prevailing view that the mountain environment and pan-Balkan ai nities of the material culture of the Pindos indicated transhu-mant or nomadic pastoralism. Rather, they interpreted the evidence in terms of sedentary mixed farming , replicating for the early Iron Age the subsistence strategy that dom-inated the lowlands of Greece throughout the Neolithic and Bronze Age, further noting that this pattern does not preclude seasonal use of distant pastures .

In attempting to understand why pastoral nomadism has been so widely assumed as the dominant economic model in the study of early Iron Age Greece, Cherry ( 1988 : 29), following Shaw ( 1982 –83), concluded: ‘From Homer to Ammianus Marcellinus , the pastoralist is dei ned simply via logical opposition to the essential criteria of civiliza-tion : mobile and without established homes, non-urban, polis -less, without properly constituted rules or law-codes, lazy and parasitic (because he does not work the land and harvest crops, like the farmer), an eater of meat (often raw l esh, and even raw human l esh) rather than grain, and a drinker of milk, not wine. By a confused social syllogism, nomadic pastoralism comes to bear the full stigma of uncivilized barbarity.’

The distinction between the polis and the ethnos in the Archaic period, I would argue, has a Bronze Age ances-try in the distinction between the palatial and non-pala-tial polities. Such a distinction extends beyond tracing the ‘borders’ of the Mycenaean world. Among the ethne enumerated by Hall, Achaia and Elis , in the Peloponnese , the heart of Mycenaean Greece, together with Aitolia , Akarnania , and Macedonia , never boasted a Mycenaean ‘palace,’ and even in Thessaly , the only palatial center is at Iolkos (equated with the site of Dimini ; Pantou 2010 ), whereas northern and western Thessaly display a very dif-ferent material record. The passage from a tribal to a state society in early Greece is often regarded as an old problem, but I am not convinced that such a straightforward linear development was the case.

The political pattern that emerged in the Late Bronze Age between palatial and non-palatial was to continue, albeit much altered, in the early Iron Age, surviving the collapse of the Mycenaean world in an unpredictable and overlooked manner. The distinction between palatial and non-palatial mirrors that between the polis and the polis- less ethne . This distinction, clearly visible in the Archaic and Classical peri-ods, was to have enormous ramii cations in later history.

Mobility: Greek Overseas Travel and

Settlement

Osborne ( 1998 ) has noted that ‘colonization ’ is, i rst and foremost, a literary event, and Purcell ( 1997 : 501) has stated, ‘the reference of “Greek colonization” as a mean-ingful term can only be to the concepts of the literary tra-dition … “Greek colonization” is as dead as Bronze Age matriarchy.’ A number of scholars have come to view the process of the foundation of any Greek foreign set-tlement not as a foundation d’une colonie , but rather as a formation d’une polis d’outre-mer (Luraghi 1996 ). The phe-nomenon of Greeks traveling and settling overseas is not a unii ed movement that can be reduced to simple factors. It is a complex and interwoven story of multiple diaspo-ras in the Mediterranean and Black Seas that should not be seen solely in the light of other colonizations, partic-ularly European colonizations from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries AD (Purcell 1997 ). Moreover, it is not just a Greek phenomenon, but a broader Mediterranean one. Most of the earliest overseas settlements – such as Pithekoussai – are not exclusively Greek, but involve Phoenicia ns, North Syrians , Etruscans , and others. Such a reality raises many issues, primary among which are local continuities of exchange network s and nodes. Also at play are scholarly agendas, what Dietler ( 2005 ) has ef ectively called the colonization of archaeology.

At the same time, it is important to stress, as Horden and Purcell ( 2000 : 286) have done, that there is ‘no rea-son to seek special (and, still less, apologetic) explanations [for the overseas settlement of so many Greeks in the Archaic period], any more than for Athenian cleruchies, Roman coloniae , or Venetian and Genoese settlements in the later Middle Ages. The establishment of cash-crop pro-duction in the landscape of the Hellenic overseas settle-ment is one of the more radical and intrusive dislocations in Mediterranean agrarian history.’ Such a dislocation in the Mediterranean and Black Seas is perhaps most conspic-uously visible archaeologically at Metapontion and, in the context of Greek tradition, best encapsulated in the fabu-lous stories of agricultural success at Sybaris .

Chronologically, Greek overseas settlements in the Mediterranean are usually considered to be a historical




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phenomenon of the later eighth to sixth centuries BC, and primarily after 700 BC in the Black Sea; our textual sources go back no further. In material terms, however, the story of Greek mobility overseas is one with a venerable Bronze Age ancestry that transcends recorded history by centu-ries. Indeed, the distribution of Archaic pottery is remark-ably close to that of Mycenaean pottery. To be sure, the names of sites in the west where Mycenaean and Archaic pottery has been found are usually dif erent but very close to one another: prehistoric Broglio de Trebisacce and Torre del Mordillo instead of historic Sybaris and its extramural sanctuary at Francavilla Marittima ; Termitito rather than Metaponto or Siris ; Scoglio del Tonno in place of Taras ; Polla instead of Sala Consilina ; Vivara in the Bay of Naples rather than Pithekoussai , Kyme, or Neapolis ; Molinello , Matrensa , Cozzo del Pantano , and Pantalica in Sicily instead of Megara Hyblaia , Syrakousai , Gela , and Leontinoi (Papadopoulos 2001 : 439–41, i gs 41 and 42). Dif erent also are the names of the scholars who study Mycenaean and Archaic/Classical Greek pottery in Greece and Italy . The important point is that the archaeological pattern seen in the Archaic period mirrors one already in place in the Bronze Age.

The i rst western Greeks were Mycenaeans . In his sem-inal study of Mycenaean pottery in Italy and adjacent areas, Taylour ( 1958 ) listed some 17 sites in peninsular Italy , Sicily , and the Lipari and Bay of Naples islands that yielded Mycenaean pottery; Vagnetti ( 1999 ) expanded the list to 78. The quest for metals has been rightly emphasized as a motive for Mycenaean contacts in the west (Bietti Sestieri 1988 ; see also Gras 1985 : 57–97), but the distribution of Mycenaean pottery cannot be linked solely to metallurgy . Moreover, Mycenaean interests are rarely seen against the backdrop of later Greek interests, including settlement, in Italy and Sicily. What happens in the Bronze Age is often presented as a Mycenaean prologue, a sort of pre-proto-col-onization (Ridgway 1992 : 3–8; Malkin 1998 : 10–14). Taylour ( 1958 : 128–31), however, already postulated the existence of a Mycenaean ‘colony’ at Scoglio del Tonno . The impetus behind this settlement was trade, a familiar story for a site next to historic Taras and in control of one of the i nest har-bors in all of southern Italy. Here, the primary commodity noted by Taylour was not metals, but Murex trunculus , the source of purple dye and, hence, textile production, a story also familiar in a Canaanite/Phoenician context.

Although Taylour’s hypothesis of a Rhodian colony was challenged, his lead forced students of the Italian and Aegean Late Bronze Age to look more carefully at the mate-rial record. Among other things, the pattern of the distri-bution of pottery, both Mycenaean and Archaic , and that in between, does not a priori point to colonial movement. For example, one of the most common types of early Iron Age pottery in the west, the Thapsos class, probably made

at the Corinthian colony of Ambrakia , does not follow colonial movement, as there are no Ambrakian colonies in Italy (the only Corinthian colony in south Italy and Sicily is Syrakousai i.e., Syracuse). The evidence underscores a dif erent type of movement of commodities, people, and ideas. As Osborne ( 1998 : 268–69) reminds us, it is a far more complex reality than just ‘trade before the l ag.’

Other patterns share a similar material imprint across the Bronze and Iron Age divide. In Mycenaean times, Ridgway ( 1992 : 7) points to a basic distinction in the Italian peninsula between primary (coastal) and secondary (inland) reception points. The same is true in the historic period, when there is a distinction between the coastal Greek poleis and the indig-enous hinterland. Similarly, Malkin ( 1998 : 80) has noted that the Euboeans were the i rst ‘on both sides of Italy : both in the Bay of Naples and in the Ionian Sea.’ Precisely the same is true for Late Helladic I–II pottery in Italy some seven or eight centuries earlier (Papadopoulos 2001 : 440, i g. 41). Furthermore, the ‘great leap’ in the history of Greek set-tlement of which Malkin ( 1998 : 80) speaks, referring to the fact that the earliest ‘Greek colony’ – Pithekoussai – was also the most distant, is another feature that enjoys a Mycenaean ancestry. Indeed, the distribution of Mycenaean pottery in general is a virtual blueprint for the distribution of Greek pottery in the historic period.

The overseas mobility of Greeks and Phoenicia ns in the early Iron Age culminates in the spheres of control shown on the map ( Figure 10.4 ). Like so many other things, the pattern seen in the early Iron Age was one already well trodden in the Bronze Age.

Structuring Value through Metals

It is important to return to metal, but to move beyond bronze and iron and focus on the commodity that was to become in the early Iron Age, as it had been in the Late Bronze Age, the measure of value: silver . As Wallace ( 1987 : 396–97) has argued, long before coins were ever intro-duced, the three basic functions of money – a standard measure of value, a means of exchange, and a means of storing surplus wealth – had been i lled by various other materials, including silver bullion. In Egypt and the Near East , weighed silver, in whatever form, was used as cur-rency well before and after the introduction of silver coin-age in Greece (Schaps 2004 ), with standard Mesopotamian units of weight such as the shekel and mina widespread throughout the Mediterranean (Wallace 1987 ; J. Williams 1997 : 16–23; Schaps 2004 : 34–62). In their choice of silver as the metal for the earliest coinage, the Greeks of the Archaic period followed a tradition well established in the eastern Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age. Once again, this was not just a Greek phenomenon, for silver features prominently in Phoenician activity in Spain and




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the western and central Mediterranean (Bartoloni 2009 ). The Río Tinto has been mined for copper , silver, gold , and other minerals by Iberians, Tartessians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Visigoths, Moors, and, most recently, the Spanish government. Silver was another of those things that the Greeks adopted and adapted from the Near East , but once they took possession of it, they transformed it in unpredictable ways.

Conceptually, a kind of coined metal involving some form of stamping may have existed in the Levant prior to the tra-ditional invention of coinage by the Lydia ns and east Greeks around 600 BC, in the form of seals ai xed to bundles of weighed metal (Thompson 2003 ). Although this idea of sealing for weight and purity verii cation was widely prac-ticed in the ancient Near East, stamping a clay sealing on a cloth bundle containing a pre-measured amount of silver is not the same as stamping the silver itself. As Schaps ( 2004 : 49) stresses, ‘The silver of the Near East had never been coined; it was weighed at each transaction, and the scale was an essential accessory to every sale.’ This dif erence is amplii ed by the fact that once the Lydians and Greeks began striking true coins, and the coins became widely available and hoarded in the ancient Near East, there was resistance to coinage in the Phoenicia n homeland and the Syro-Palestinian sphere more generally, as well as in Egypt .

As for the earliest true coins, Herodotus (1.94) clearly states that the Lydians were the i rst to use gold and silver coinage ( nomisma ). The earliest coins were made of elec-trum, a naturally occurring mixture of gold and silver, in Lydia, sometime near the end of the seventh century, per-haps as late as ca. 600 BC. What is interesting about these earliest coins is that they were more akin to gifts or med-als than true coins (Price 1983 : 5–8). This is supported by the size and context of the earliest electrum issues. Their minute size suggests they were not intended to be handled frequently or to circulate widely in long-distance trade , and they are restricted to western Asia Minor . Moreover, unlike later coins, these earliest issues were deposited in sanctuaries , such as the Archaic Temple of Artemis at Ephesos (D. Williams 1991 –93). Indeed, such a deposition below a temple suggests that they were buried as religious or votive dedications, or as a foundation deposit, in the same manner as other objects of value were deposited in early Iron Age graves and sanctuaries.

By the middle of the sixth century BC, silver coinage takes over ( J. Williams 1997 : 25–26). The earliest silver issues came from Lydia , probably in the reign of Kroisos (ca. 560–547 BC), and at about the same time or soon after, Aigina , Athens , and Corinth were among the i rst Greek city-states to mint silver coinage. But why did the Greeks

GadesMalaka

Massalia

Carthage

Neapolis

Syracuse

Melita

Lepcis Magna

Tocra

Cyrene

Taras

Sybaris

Epidamnos

Phokaia

Miletos

Naukratis

Sidon

Tyre

Sinope

Panticapaion

Odessos

Greece, 750 BC

Phoenicia, 600 BC

Etruscan Territory

Greek Influence

Phoenician Influence

Olbia

Byzantium

ChersonesosRome

TrapezosNUMIDIA

IBERIA

TARTESSUS

GALLIA

ILLYRIA

EGYPT

Figure 10.4. Map of the Mediterranean and Black Seas showing the Greek, Phoenician, and Etruscan spheres of control (prepared by Christine Johnston and John K. Papadopoulos).




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take that i nal step, as Kurke ( 1999 : 11) asks, to mint coins at all, particularly as many kingdoms of the Near East and Egypt continued to use weighed silver bullion?

By asking this question, Kurke returns to the fact that coinage must be linked with the polis , and she of ers an alternative narrative behind the development of various forms of money in Greece. The issue is cast as ‘an ongoing struggle over the constitution of value and who controlled the highest spheres of exchange, between the traditional elite and the emerging city-state ’ (Kurke 1999 : 12). Kurke sees the invention of coinage in Greece arising out of the seventh–sixth-century BC crisis of justice and the unfair distribution of property. The idea that the creation of coin-age was more political than economic is not new: Finley ( 1973 : 116–19) articulated it, as did others.

In Homer , an interesting pattern of the use of silver emerges in the context of gift exchange between elites. In the Odyssey (4.615–19), for example, the guest-gift of ered by Menelaos to Telemachos is a mixing bowl of solid silver with a rim of gold, made by Hephaistos himself and given originally to Menelaos by his friend, the king of Sidon . Elsewhere in Homer ( Odyssey 4.125–26), Helen received as a gift a remarkable silver basket from Alkandre, the wife of Polybos, in Egypt .

The pattern we i nd in the Late Bronze Age with silver as the primary medium of value and fungibility is largely the same in the early Iron Age. In this post–Bronze Age, less-centralized period of entrepreneurship, the quest for metal – including bronze, iron, gold, and silver, fueled by the reality of Greek overseas mobility – involved regional networks. Local exchange cycles and routes of long-dis-tance trade were determined by active intervention and response, and the Mediterranean as a whole can be seen as a single interacting system. Much depended on input – including maritime expertise and capital – from the east, not least Phoenicia . The input, however, of any advanced economic organization – Greek, Punic, Italian, or other – drew together or af ected the fortunes of communities throughout the Mediterranean (Sherratt and Sherratt 1993 : 374–75). The early Iron Age Mediterranean was a world of l uid boundaries, where consumption played an important role, the whole functioning as a network, without a cen-ter. Although the culmination of this development was the invention of coinage in the later seventh century BC, the real search for structured commodities of value goes back to the Late Bronze and early Iron Age.

The Literacy Revolution

One of the most important developments of the Greek early Iron Age was the adoption and adaptation of the Phoenicia n alphabet (Powell 1991 ). Precisely where and

when this happened has been a matter of debate. I pre-sent here the schematic language family trees of Naveh ( 1982 : 10) and Sass ( 2005 : 12), as drawn up by the latter ( Figure 10.5 ). As for the time of the adoption, the latest would appear to be around 750 BC, a date in keeping with the earliest Greek inscriptions, such as the Dipylon oinochoe ( Figure 10.6 ), as well as the date of Semitic pro-totypes. As Sass ( 2005 : 145) notes, after the middle of the eighth century BC, several Phoenician and Aramaic letters evolved away from the shapes that served as models for the corresponding Greek letters. Despite Naveh’s ( 1982 ) strong arguments for the adoption occurring earlier, around 1100

750

800

850

900 BC

Pro

to-C

anaanite

Phoenic

ian-A

ram

aic

Ara

bia

n

Ara

maic

Phoenic

ian

Gre

ek a

nd

Phry

gia

n

Hebre

w

Figure 10.5. Schematic family tree of the early alphabetic scripts (and below, for comparison, the pertinent segment of the tree in Naveh 1982 : 10). After Sass ( 2005 : 12) (prepared by Christine Johnston).




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BC, the latest evidence, based primarily on letter forms, would suggest that a date range of ca. 825/800–750 BC can be substantiated reasonably well by the Semitic evi-dence (Sass 2005 : 145).

The issue of where the transmission or adoption occurred is more problematic, in part because there are no fewer than three alternatives for the mother script of Greek: it could have been exclusively Phoenician, or Phoenician/Aramaic, or Phrygian deriving from Phoenician (Sass 2005 : 133–52). In all three, the Phoenicia n alphabet is the lowest common denominator. As for the physical place or places where the adoption and adaptation took place, sev-eral areas in the Mediterranean have been suggested, from Al Mina in the east to Pithekoussai in the west. Cyprus has loomed large in this discussion, especially the Phoenician settlement at Kition , as has Euboea – with eastern inscrip-tions from Lef kandi and Eretria – and other Aegean islands , including Rhodes and Crete (Powell 1991 : 12–18). The problem is well framed by Sass ( 2005 : 149): ‘The fact that at least four dif erent locations for the adoption could be defended so eruditely and with such excellent argu-

ments … indicates that the evidence presented thus far is perhaps less forthcoming than one would wish.’

If, however, the idea that the mother script of Greek was Phrygian, deriving from Phoenicia n, is true (see Sass 2005 : 146–49), then one should look more to the eastern Aegean and western Asia Minor as the place of adaptation. The overlap of the shared vowel letters in both Phrygian and Greek seems to rule out an adoption independent of one another: ‘Either the Phrygian script was adopted from the Phoenician and subsequently the Greek from the Phrygian, or vice versa’ (Sass 2005 : 147). Phrygian or Greek prece-dence, however, relies on absolute chronology that, as we have seen, is a thorny issue. There is certainly no inkling of Phrygia grammata in the Greek tradition, in contrast to Kadmeia grammata . Whatever date Herodotus had in mind, he does mince his words:

The Phoenicia ns who came with Kadmos … introduced into Greece, after their settlement in the country, a number of accomplishments, of which the most important was writing , an art till then, I think, unknown to the Greeks . (Herodotus 5.58; translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt)

Figure 10.6. The Dipylon oinochoe. Athens, National Museum 192 [2074], with the inscription ‘He who, of all the dancers, now performs most daintily.’ Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Athens, NM 4700–4701 (photograph by Eva-Maria Czakó).




192

For Herodotus, the place of transmission was mainland Greece, directly from Phoenicia ns. What is clear is that we simply do not have sufficient evidence to clinch the issue of the place(s) where the adoption happened. But wherever it occurred, the critical issue is that the alpha-bet was introduced, in the course of the early Iron Age, to the specific cultural context of Greece, and what the Greeks did with it. For the first time in world history, writing was not limited to a scribal class serving a rul-ing or religious elite. Writing became a tool that could be exploited by anyone. Henceforth, a bard could reach across centuries to relate a real or imagined world of heroes, a woman could write poetry, a farmer could write of works and days, even on the birth of gods, a playwright could construct figures of high tragedy or slapstick comedy, a seasoned traveler could recount his journeys and the customs of the peoples he chanced across, a failed and frustrated general could write a history of a war, and any male citizen could scratch on a potsherd the name of whomever he wished to ostracize.

Coda: A Look to the Future

I want to end with a look ahead and to return to the i rst of the developments in the early Iron Age discussed above, namely the dichotomy between polis and polis- less states. In spectacular fashion, Philip II, in the fourth century BC, showed how powerless poleis were in the face of his Macedonia n, tribal , clan-based, polis- less state with central authority. His son, Alexander III, extended his empire from Greece to the frontiers of India, including all of Egypt . In a similar fashion, Pyrrhos of Epirus , in the third century BC, extended his empire from the Peloponnese well into Illyria , before turning his gaze to Sicily and the Italian pen-insula. Philip the Macedonian and Pyrrhos the Molossian did much more than build empires; they built cities – real cities – ushering in a new form of urbanism . Just at the time when the Macedonian and Epirote komai were being aban-doned, large cities, such as Pella , were being founded, as was the large theater at Dodona, the former by Philip, the latter by Pyrrhos. This was synoikismos at an unprecedented scale.

The Greek polis , which was both established and stable, went about as far as it could go. In contrast, what was to become the crucible of Greek political activity were the tribal, clan-based states with central authority. It was they who not only ushered in the Hellenistic age, but also paved the way for a new type of urbanism. At the core of this development lie the processes that took shape in the for-mative period of the early Iron Age.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to a number of colleagues for sharing their research with me and for providing copies of papers prior to their publication, especially Alexander Fantalkin, Jonathan Hall, Reinhard Jung, Antonis Kotsonas, Aren Maeir, Amihai Mazar, and Ei e Photos-Jones. My thanks, too, to Christine Johnston for preparing the maps (Figures 10.1 and 10.4), and to the editors of this volume for their input.

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