Greek Geometric Pottery

Our knowledge of the dawn of the Hellenic civilization—ca. 900 to 700 BC—is heavily reliant on found artifacts and artisinal matter. Geometric pottery, a leading art of its day, is of special importance for the historians of early Greece—in a large part because it’s plentiful enough to establish a chronology for a period without any contemporary written documents. This volume focuses on a comprehensive study of ten local styles and their relations with one another—culminating in an attempt to fix their absolute chronology in light of the evidence. Finally, a historical sketch shows how the results of the pottery analysis can be combined with other archaeological evidence and later written sources in order to throw more light on the political, social, and economic development of the early Greek city-states.