The Early Iron Age: The Cemeteries

1123 Pages·2018·81.13 MB·English

by  coll.

THE ATHENIAN AGORA
VOLUME XXXVI
THE EARLY IRON AGE
THE CEMETERIES
THE ATHENIAN AGORA
RESULTS OF EXCAVATIONS CONDUCTED BY
THE AMERICAN SCHOOL OF CLASSICAL STUDIES AT ATHENS
I Evelyn B. Harrison, Portrait Sculpture (1953)
II Margaret Thompson, Coins: From the Roman through the Venetian Period (1954)
III R. E. Wycherley, Literary and Epigraphical Testimonia (1957; reprinted 1973)
IV Richard Hubbard Howland, Greek Lamps and Their Survivals (1958; reprinted 1966)
V Henry S. Robinson, Pottery of the Roman Period: Chronology (1959)
VI Clairève Grandjouan, Terracottas and Plastic Lamps of the Roman Period (1961)
VII Judith Perlzweig, Lamps of the Roman Period: First to Seventh Century after Christ (1961;
reprinted 1971)
VIII Eva T. H. Brann, Late Geometric and Protoattic Pottery: Mid 8th to Late 7th Century b.c.
(1962; reprinted 1971)
IX George C. Miles, The Islamic Coins (1962)
X Mabel Lang and Margaret Crosby, Weights, Measures, and Tokens (1964)
XI Evelyn B. Harrison, Archaic and Archaistic Sculpture (1965)
XII Brian A. Sparkes and Lucy Talcott, Black and Plain Pottery of the 6th, 5th, and 4th Cen-
turies b.c. (1970)
XIII Sara Anderson Immerwahr, The Neolithic and Bronze Ages (1971)
XIV Homer A. Thompson and R. E. Wycherley, The Agora of Athens: The History, Shape, and
Uses of an Ancient City Center (1972)
XV Benjamin D. Meritt and John S. Traill, Inscriptions: The Athenian Councillors (1974)
XVI A. Geoffrey Woodhead, Inscriptions: The Decrees (1997)
XVII Donald W. Bradeen, Inscriptions: The Funerary Monuments (1974)
XVIII Daniel J. Geagan, Inscriptions: The Dedicatory Monuments (2011)
XIX Gerald V. Lalonde, Merle K. Langdon, and Michael B. Walbank, Inscriptions: Horoi,
Poletai Records, Leases of Public Lands (1991)
XX Alison Frantz, The Church of the Holy Apostles (1971)
XXI Mabel Lang, Graffiti and Dipinti (1976)
XXII Susan I. Rotroff, Hellenistic Pottery: Athenian and Imported Moldmade Bowls (1982)
XXIII Mary B. Moore and Mary Zelia Pease Philippides, Attic Black-Figured Pottery (1986)
XXIV Alison Frantz, Late Antiquity: a.d. 267–700 (1988)
XXV Mabel L. Lang, Ostraka (1990)
XXVI John H. Kroll, with Alan S. Walker, The Greek Coins (1993)
XXVII Rhys F. Townsend, The East Side of the Agora: The Remains beneath the Stoa of Attalos
(1995)
XXVIII Alan L. Boegehold et al., The Lawcourts at Athens: Sites, Buildings, Equipment, Procedure,
and Testimonia (1995)
XXIX Susan I. Rotroff, Hellenistic Pottery: Athenian and Imported Wheelmade Table Ware and
Related Material (1997)
XXX Mary B. Moore, Attic Red-Figured and White-Ground Pottery (1997)
XXXI Margaret M. Miles, The City Eleusinion (1998)
XXXII John W. Hayes, Roman Pottery: Fine-Ware Imports (2008)
XXXIII Susan I. Rotroff, Hellenistic Pottery: The Plain Wares (2006)
XXXIV Gladys D. Weinberg and E. Marianne Stern, Vessel Glass (2009)
XXXV Janet Burnett Grossman, Funerary Sculpture (2013)
XXXVI John K. Papadopoulos and Evelyn Lord Smithson, The Early Iron Age: The Cemeteries
(2017)
XXXVII Chavdar Tzochev, Amphora Stamps from Thasos (2016)
XXXVIII Carol L. Lawton, Votive Reliefs (2017)
THE ATHENIAN AGORA
RESULTS OF EXCAVATIONS
CONDUCTED BY
THE AMERICAN SCHOOL OF CLASSICAL STUDIES AT ATHENS
VOLUME XXXVI
THE EARLY IRON AGE
THE CEMETERIES
BY
JOHN K. PAPADOPOULOS AND EVELYN LORD SMITHSON
With contributions by
Maria A. Liston, Deborah Ruscillo, Sara Strack, and Eirini Dimitriadou
AMERICAN SCHOOL OF CLASSICAL STUDIES AT ATHENS
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
2017
Undertaken with the assistance of the
Institute for Aegean Prehistory
© American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2017
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Papadopoulos, John K., 1958– author. | Smithson, Evelyn Lord, co-author.
Title: The early Iron Age : the cemeteries / by John K. Papadopoulos & Evelyn
Lord Smithson ; with contributions by Maria A. Liston, Deborah Ruscillo, Sara
Strack, and Eirini Dimitriadou.
Description: Princeton, New Jersey : American School of Classical Studies at Athens,
2017. | Series: The Athenian Agora ; v. 36 | Includes bibliographical references
and indexes.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017009483 | ISBN 978-0-87661-236-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Agora (Athens, Greece). | Cemeteries—Greece—Athens. |
Tombs—Greece—Athens. | Iron Age—Greece—Athens. | Excavations (Ar-
chaeology)—Greece—Athens. | Athens (Greece)—Antiquities.
Classification: LCC DF287.A23 P375 2017 | DDC 938/.5—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017009483
printed in the united states of america
by thomson-shore, incorporated, dexter, michigan
To the memory of Eve Harrison
and for Susan Rotroff

PREFACE
This volume has been a long time in the making. It should have taken a number in the
Agora series somewhere between I and XV; instead it is published as Agora XXXVI. In
many ways, the person who should have prepared this volume was Rodney S. Young. Had he
continued his work on the Early Iron Age of the Athenian Agora, shortly after the publica-
tion of his Late Geometric Graves and a Seventh-Century Well in the Agora (Hesperia Suppl. 2) in
1939 and his publication of the Booties Grave in Hesperia 18 (1949), this important body of
material would have been available to the many scholars who turned their attention to Ath-
ens in the Early Iron Age, particularly during and after the 1970s. By moving away from the
excavations of the Athenian Agora and focusing instead on the excavations that he directed
at Gordion, Young paved the way for a younger scholar to take over the publication of the
Agora Early Iron Age material. That scholar was to be Evelyn Lord Smithson.
Evelyn’s association with Athens and the Agora began in 1948–1949, when she was a stu-
dent at the American School of Classical Studies, and it was during this first visit to Athens
that she excavated in the Athenian Agora and dug her first Geometric graves, including the
so-called Warrior Grave (Tomb 13). Soon after, she began her study of the Submycenaean
through Middle Geometric pottery from the funerary and nonfunerary deposits of the Clas-
sical Athenian Agora. Evelyn did not live to complete her magnum opus, which she planned
as a series of several volumes and often referred to as her “life’s work.” This is to be regretted
as her work would have added considerably to our knowledge of Early Iron Age Greece,
particularly as she had strong, often radical, views on Early Iron Age Athens.
The reasons why she never completed this work are complex and numerous. At the risk
of over-simplification, there are three main issues that I think stand out. First of all, there was
the sheer quantity of the material and the fact that much of it, including that excavated in
the 1930s, was not discarded (which was a good thing). The vessels and fragments from the
well deposits alone number into the tens of thousands and represent material from a type
of context rarely recorded for the period, and not only in Athens. Evelyn’s small physical
frame stood tall to every challenge, however daunting, and her notes on the numerous
pieces that she had selected for study were remarkably detailed. But for Evelyn, a selection
of material, however representative, was not enough, as it did not do justice to the variety of
shapes and wares of the Athenian Early Iron Age. In the case of many of the large nonfuner-
ary well deposits, in addition to the pottery and other small finds entered into the Agora
inventory, Evelyn wished to publish noninventoried pottery that was stored in context (on
some of these she wrote her own separate numbers in pencil or in ink). How, precisely, this
was to be achieved was one of the problems she struggled with, and for which there was no
clear resolution.
Secondly, and in some respects more importantly, Evelyn was a perfectionist. She was not
a prolific author, but her published work is characterized by a laconic, though elegant style
viii PREFACE
and, above all, an astonishing attention to detail. For Evelyn, a catalogue entry had to be
nothing short of a locus classicus for that type of object, whether a decorated pot or an item
of jewelry. Such an ideal would be beyond the scope of most scholars, and certainly beyond
my own capabilities. Although she did not publish a great deal, she was widely acknowledged
as the authority on Athenian Early Iron Age pottery, and the articles that she did publish
have all stood the test of time. What Evelyn did with the Tomb of the Rich Athenian Lady in
Hesperia 37 (1968) or with a handful of tombs from the Areiopagos in Hesperia 43 (1974) was
what she wished to do for every context and every individual object. Indeed, Evelyn’s long
article in Hesperia 43 on the Geometric graves on the Areiopagos perhaps best typifies her
approach to her work. It takes the reader on a Philip Marlowe–like journey through the
neglected excavation notebooks of Wilhelm Dörpfeld and his colleagues, a ferreting out of
pottery and other small finds, some lost or known only from sketches, and the piecing to-
gether of a jigsaw puzzle as complex as an Agatha Christie plot. Had she two lifetimes, Evelyn
would be working on the material still, continuously improving its interpretation.
Finally, there was the whole issue of the structure that the intended volume was to take.
For Evelyn, the value of the Agora material was its context, and her plan from the very begin-
ning was to publish it all contextually. The then director of the Agora, Homer A. Thompson,
had something else in mind. What he envisioned was a Submycenaean through Middle
Geometric version of Agora VIII, and something closer to the structure of Agora XII—a single
volume on the Early Iron Age hitting all the high notes with regard to the pottery, and not
multiple volumes. For Thompson, the context was important for establishing a date for the
material, which would then be presented according to shape or stylistically. Eva Brann’s solu-
tion to the same problem of context vs. stylistic/chronological presentation of the material
was to publish a series of long articles in Hesperia that dealt with the important contexts—
both the tombs and the nonfunerary deposits—and then to prepare a separate catalogue of
the Late Geometric and Protoattic pottery according to shapes, which would be prefaced by
sections on painting styles, the dating of the pottery, attributions, etc.1 Small finds other than
pottery were not included and, for that reason, the full force of context was often lost or
minimized. Such a plan was no solution for Evelyn, and she struggled to come up with a
perfect volume that would achieve both what she wished to do and what Homer Thompson
had in mind.
I first met Evelyn in the Agora in the 1980s, during my tenure as deputy director of the
Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens, just after completing my doctoral dissertation
on the Early Iron Age cemetery at Torone.2 Given our mutual interest in the Early Iron Age
of the Aegean, there was a great deal to discuss, and in the course of our many meetings,
Evelyn invited me to assist her with the study and publication of the Agora Early Iron Age
material and, not least, to assist with the drawings (for which see below). The nature and
quantity of the Agora material was such that this was an opportunity too good to pass up, but
other commitments, particularly my involvement in the excavations at Torone, prevented
me from working on the Agora material immediately, and we decided to postpone this work
until a future time. Evelyn’s untimely death in 1992 meant that we never actually had the
opportunity to work on the Agora Early Iron Age material together. This is something that I
greatly regret.
In 1992 I received a letter from Homer Thompson inviting me to complete the Agora
volume on the Early Iron Age that Evelyn had begun. I was also contacted by Eve Harrison
1. See Brann 1960, 1961a, 1961b; Agora VIII.
2. Which was published, almost 20 years later, in Papado-
poulos 2005a.
PREFACE ix
and Susan Rotroff, Evelyn’s closest friends and literary executors, and I quickly set about
finding out what needed to be done; among other things, I already knew that I would be
responsible for completing the majority of the drawings of the pottery and other small finds.
Susan Rotroff also passed on to me the various electronic files on Evelyn’s computer that
dealt with the Early Iron Age Agora deposits (I still have those antiquated, and today unread-
able, floppy disks), as well as Evelyn’s archive, including her various notebooks, photographs,
and correspondence, not least that with Vincent Desborough and Nicolas Coldstream. When
I agreed to take on this project, I was under the impression that I would be responsible for
essentially cleaning up a catalogue of material that was already largely done—dotting the
“i”s and crossing the “t”s—penning what introductory and interpretive sections remained
to be done, and generally seeing the text and illustrations through the press. This was a task
I gladly undertook. When I began to work on the material and the volume in earnest, how-
ever, I quickly discovered that although there was a draft catalogue of some of the contexts,
this was very brief, and the accompanying catalogue of objects from each deposit curtailed
to the point that it was difficult to make sense of without a fuller description or more com-
plete illustration.
What was therefore begun as a labor of love turned into a multiyear project that took on
a life of its own. Once I had completed a reconnaissance of all the deposits under my pur-
view, it was clear that a synthetic survey of the type Homer Thompson had in mind was not
the way to go. I therefore returned to a version of Evelyn’s original scheme, but in order to
gain a handle on the sheer quantity of the material, I decided to break it up into two main
groups: the tombs and the nonfunerary contexts. This volume publishes the former. A study
of the potters’ debris found in the nonfunerary deposits has already been published, and
this provides a glimpse of the sort of material that these contexts will provide.3 The plan is
to present the nonfunerary deposits in a future Agora volume.
What was also clear from a survey of all the Agora contexts was that the story of Athenian
Early Iron Age pottery and other small finds could not be written on the basis of the Agora
deposits alone. Without the material from the Athenian Kerameikos, together with that of
the many other excavations in and around Athens, it would not be possible to present a full
picture. Indeed, the finest examples of Athenian black- and red-figure pottery—as well as
the vast majority of such pottery—was found outside of Athens, and the publication of the
black-figure, red-figure, and white-ground material from the Athenian Agora alone does not
provide an accurate and complete overview of these pottery styles.4 The Early Iron Age de-
posits from the Agora are not dissimilar, as some of the most idiosyncratic examples of Athe-
nian Protogeometric and Geometric pottery have been found outside of Athens, in the ex-
cavations of important sites such as Lefkandi and Knossos. Moreover, there is all the Early
Iron Age Athenian pottery scattered throughout the numerous museums and collections of
the world. Without the incorporation of all this material, any overview of Athenian pottery
of the period would be incomplete in the same way that Agora VIII by itself does not provide
the full picture of Athenian Late Geometric and Protoattic pottery.5 Put another way, the
Agora Early Iron Age deposits do not provide a “textbook” overview of the pottery of the
period in the same way that Agora XII does for Athenian black and plain wares of the 6th,
5th, and 4th centuries. The value of the Agora Early Iron Age deposits lies in their context,
and especially in the fact that the material derives—unlike that from the Athenian Keramei-
kos—from both funerary and substantial nonfunerary deposits.
3. Papadopoulos 2003a.
4. See Agora XXIII, XXX.
5. Cf. Cook 1963.