Boardman J., Hammond N.G. L. The Cambridge Ancient History Volume 3, Part 3: The Expansion of the Greek World, Eighth to Sixth Centuries BC
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THE MATERIAL CULTURE OF ARCHAIC GREECE 445
was dictated
by
natural features and
the
need
to
protect
the
water
supply.
4
At
Smyrna nature,
in
the form
of
the size
of
the peninsula,
determined what could be walled and there was a big extramural suburb.
Serious urban planning could only be attempted on a new site or on
an old one destroyed by
a
natural disaster. So Smyrna had
a
grid plan
on major axes
for its
houses already
in the
seventh century after
a
disaster of around 700, and that such admittedly elementary planning
was familiar already in the late eighth century is suggested by the fact
that Megara Hyblaea in Sicily also seems to have been laid out on axes.
Moreover,
it
may be that a regular area here was allotted as an agora.
5
This need not have any deep political implications
—
an assembly place
was an obvious need for commercial and military purposes
if
nothing
else.
Megara could not have been unique but elsewhere it is only at sites
like Paestum (Posidonia) that traces
of
the early layout
are
easily
discerned,
and
they
are
more readily determined
for
sixth-century
towns, notably
in
secondary western colonies, than
in the
seventh
century.
For the town and country houses themselves our evidence
is
even
scantier than in the previous period, but, to judge from the comparative
simplicity
of
the later Classical houses, we need assume
no
dramatic
advances on the simple one-roomed structures, usually with an open
porch. Smyrna probably gives the pattern for the richest Greek town
houses
of
the seventh century (fig. 56), some probably two-storied,
flat-roofed with brick walls on stone socles, their blocks carefully faced.
6
The large, irregularly shaped house
at the
south-west corner
of
the
Athenian agora,
7
which some have taken for the Pisistratan town house,
has rooms opening on to a central court and it may be that this common
Classical plan was already
in
use
in
the sixth century.
It
implies
far
greater complexity of the living unit and commensurate wealth. We find
no tyrant palaces
in
Greece but the court and open verandah
{pastas)
are features
of
major domestic buildings on the eastern fringes
of
the
Greek world,
at
'Larisa'
in
Aeolis (fig. 57) and Vouni in Cyprus, and
they contribute to the design of the Classical house.
8
We would expect
no architectural elaboration on Archaic houses in the form of columns
in the newly devised orders, but clay tiling and the painted
or
relief
decoration which goes with
it
were probably
not
long reserved
for
sanctuary architecture alone.
The agricultural
and
technological developments
of
the Archaic
period have been touched upon in the preceding section, and the former
at least had a profound effect on the development of Greek society and
4
H 79, 108-10, 29); Hdt. HI. 54-5;
D
89.
6
c
169;
c
170; H 79, 28-9. Above,
p.
108,
fig. 19. ' D
25, 70-4;
D
24,
14ft
'
F
35, 27-8.
8
H 52,
339-40; H 49.
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THE
MATERIAL CULTURE OF ARCHAIC GREECE
56.
Reconstruction of
a
seventh-century house and granary at Smyrna, by R. V. Nicholls. (After
E. Akurgal, Die Kunst Anatoliem (1961) 301, figs. 2,
;.)
institutions. The changes were mainly
a
matter of shift in emphasis,
however, towards specialist crop production with an eye to export and
barter in some states, but not, so far as we can judge, involving new
crops or radically new techniques. State concern in such matters may
be judged from Solon's legislation against the casual cutting down of
olive trees and regulations about the distances from boundaries at which
they should be planted.
9
The introduction of the domestic hen to Greece
from the east
at
the end
of
the eighth century must have made
a
perceptible but not very important contribution to variety of diet.
Technological change was also more
a
matter
of
volume than
significantly innovatory, except perhaps for some luxury crafts where
Greek studios belatedly learned, or re-learned, techniques of granulation
and filigree with gold, the cutting of hard semi-precious stones with
the bow drill (a familiar implement to the carpenter, of course) and
cutting wheel, the manufacture of faience and glass.
10
The expanding
economy and population created
a
demand
for
more metal goods
answered by the metal-seeking trade and the establishment of emporia
which had begun by the end of the ninth century in the east, and in
9
F
66,
F
60a,
b
and cf. 90.
10
A
7,
56-8, 76, 126-9;
H
'6> '39~4°.
J79—81;
H 78; H 41.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE MATERIAL CULTURE OF ARCHAIC GREECE 447
57.
Plan of the acropolis and 'palace' at Buruncuk ('Larisa'). Late sixth century B.C. (After
H
52,
239, fig. 134.)
the eighth in the west, as we have seen. The main users of domestic
agricultural or military equipment, enjoyed improved versions of gear
already familiar in the eighth. We might imagine that the dramatic
advances in marble sculpture and monumental architecture from the end
of the seventh century on implied notable technological progress, but
this is probably not true. The marble sculpture was in part inspired by
Egypt, but in Greece iron tools far more effective than any implements
in the hands of Egyptian sculptors were already in general use.
11
Monumental architecture was imposing and it involved the handling
of heavy loads but the methods used relied more on manpower than
engineering skills, and the early temples (even most of the Classical ones)
show little understanding of building loads and stresses.
12
The architects
played safe in their construction methods and the sources of the labour
force at their disposal give us more to think about than their
qualifications as engineers. Rule of thumb dominates even the most
ambitious projects. There were no 'nationally' recognized standards of
measurement such as obtained through large areas of the Near East and
Egypt, and although a standard would have been used for a single
project, another might apply for its neighbour and there are many
irregularities of measurement.
13
Standard weights were clearly not in
general use in Greece until the end of the Archaic period. They never
appear on the scale pans in vase scenes where like is always weighed
against like, and consider the non-commensurability of early coin
standards. Perhaps it was only when coinage began to play a role as
19,
19-
H 33, ch. 2.
H 31
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THE
MATERIAL CULTURE OF ARCHAIC GREECE
58.
Reconstruction of an orientalizing
bronze cauldron and stand from Olympia.
Early seventh century B.C. Height about
1 "5
m. (After
E
234, 82, fig. 49.)
bullion that accurate weighing against agreed standards became
essential, and observation of Egyptian masons could have taught the
merit of accurate linear measurement. In some ways, however, it is the
application of Greek flair and subtlety rather than the predetermined
layouts and grids of the Egyptian craftsmen and sculptors that guaran-
teed the Greek artist that freedom of expression which could lead to
radically new rendering even of traditional subjects. That they could
rise to major engineering projects too, however, is shown by Eupalinus'
tunnel at Samos, cut for a kilometre through the hillside.
14
If observed changes were so much of degree rather than substance,
how do we explain the surely radical difference in the quality and
appearance of everyday life, at least in cities, between the eighth and
the sixth centuries? The opening phase of this period is what
archaeologists have come to call the orientalizing, and it is likely that
we should look overseas for the sources of this new, if only superficially
new, life-style. The metal-seeking which established emporia in the east
at Al Mina, in the west on Ischia, was the signal for important new
developments which were profoundly to affect the culture of homeland
14
DM-
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THE MATERIAL CULTURE OF ARCHAIC GREECE
449
59.
An
Ionian bronze belt
of
Phrygian pattern, from Emporio,
Chios. Seventh century B.C. (After D 22, 215,
fig. 140.)
Greece.
In the
west
the way was
open
for
land-seeking,
for the
colonization
of
south Italy and Sicily which relieved the pressure
at
home and was soon
to
create new and rich markets
for
Greek wares.
And from the east began a flow not merely of metals but also
of
finished
goods, and we may be sure, craftsmen, which between them determined
the new orientalizing styles.
Of the technological gifts from the east we have remarked those of
luxury crafts, the handling of gold and hard stones, to which we should
add
the
carving
of
ivory. Crete and Attica
had
experience
of
these
innovations even earlier
15
but
it
is only
in
the seventh century that we
can see Greek studios in command of the new techniques and producing
wares which
we
could regard
as
wholly Hellenic
in
character.
In
bronzework the great tripod cauldrons which had been the pride of the
Geometric sanctuaries are slowly replaced by the new eastern cauldron
(fig.
5
8),
on conical
or
rod stands, with their exotic animal-head (lions
and griffins) and siren attachments which Greek craftsmen soon copy
and adapt to their own idioms.
18
The new cauldron type with incurving
rim is going to be dominant in both domestic and dedicatory matters,
but the change is again really superficial and the most striking novelty
the finer specimens presented was the cast
or
traced figure decoration
that many
of
them carried. Ionian ladies learn
to
wear and have made
for them bronze belts of Phrygian pattern (fig. 59)
17
and by the end of
the seventh century they have invented their own version of the flowing
eastern sleeved garments, adapted to the demands of the Greeks' rather
primitive skills in dress-making, so that, the
chiton
required no tailoring
but simply the folding, buttoning and/belting of
a
rectangular piece of
cloth. The older
peplos,
a heavier garment and with a longer history
in
Greece, was still worn and
is
even simpler
in
make. The only other
16
See
CAH
m.i
1
, 783;
*
7.
s6ff.
"
D 22,
2i4ff;
D
21; D 54, 49—53.
E 233.
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45O 45^- THE MATERIAL CULTURE OF ARCHAIC GREECE
significant changes in dress may be the embroidery and woven patterns
learned from
the
east
and
some
of
the more extravagant forms
of
jewellery, notably earrings. The Greeks, however, were not so easily
won over by eastern example
to
the extravagant displays
of
jewellery
and dress as the Etruscans, who were being exposed to similar influences
by both easterners and Greeks
at
that time.
This melee
of
orientalia introduced into
or
adapted
by
the Greek
world owned a variety of
sources.
The metalwork displays elements of
Urartian, Assyrian, Syrian and Cypriot derivation and the products are
well distributed through Greek lands. Apart from Phrygian influence
on the still rather provincial Ionians and the odd phenomenon
of
the
apparent eastern immigrants
in
central Crete discussed
on p. 225,
we can discern
no
particular period
or
place dominated
by
any
one
eastern source: there was no sudden and wholly Neo-Hittite or Assyrian
or Babylonian period
of
fashion
in
Corinth
or
Athens, just
a
gradual
infiltration and acceptance
of
the new forms.
The effect
on
what are called the monumental arts may have been
more profound yet the results differ so markedly from their putative
models that here too we may regard eastern and Egyptian example as
hardly more than a catalyst, determining and shaping Greek intentions.
The east introduced the mould for clay high-relief figurines to the Greek
world
and
with
it
what has become rather misleadingly called
the
Daedalic style.
18
This informed the minor arts
of
much
of
Greece
in
the seventh century but
it
introduced
a
stereotype and was essentially
decorative rather than monumental. Knowledge
of
Egyptian art after
the mid century led to Greek exploitation of the harder stone, their white
island marble, for the first time, and the creation
of
figures
at
life size
or more. We know these best
—
the
kouroi
and
korai —
as dedications and
grave markers, but a prime use for monumental statuary must have been
as cult images and
it
is at about this time that the temple-houses, oikoi,
for these images begin
to
receive
a
monumental form and, again
probably through inspiration from Egypt, are decorated with architec-
tural orders: first the Doric in homeland Greece, then the orientalizing
Ionic in the East Greek world.
19
The temples are the only major works
of architecture
of
this period and must have dominated the towns
in
which they stood. They were
a
physical expression
of
the presence of
the patron deity but also
a
demonstration
of
the wealth and labour-
command of the ruling
class,
generally aristocratic, which commissioned
them. Their appearance probably represents the major physical change
in
the
appearance
of
towns
in the
Archaic period, since
the
houses
remained humble and imposing fortifications were,
as
we have seen,
exceptional.
18
H 19,
I3—I5
J
H 2. '* H J2,
chs.
10, 12.
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THE MATERIAL CULTURE OF ARCHAIC GREECE 45 I
The main contribution of the east to the material appearance of life
in Greece must be the impetus given to the figurative arts. In the eighth
century many artefacts were decorated with abstract Geometric
or
orientalizing patterns.
In
the sixth century the majority of clay vases,
serving many more purposes than such
do
today, carried figure
decoration. Virtually every other class of artefact in any material could
be similarly decorated, from the bronze strips fastening the handles
inside shields
20
to wood or ivory boxes; from patterned dress (Athena's
peplos
carried scenes
of
the gigantomachy)
to
finger-rings. All major
buildings carried figure decoration in the round, relief or painted, and
we cannot easily make adequate allowance for much else perishable, in
wood or fabric, which might have been adorned in the same manner.
The sixth-century Greek lived in a world of
icons,
scenes of mythology,
of the gods, of heroic encounters. Some of them were inscribed with
the names
of
the participants
—
many clay vases, for example,
or
the
ivory Chest of Cypselus at Olympia
as
described by Pausanias (v. 17—19),
or the relief decoration
of
the Sicyonian and Siphnian treasuries
at
Delphi.
21
The rich mythology of the land had long been explored and
rehearsed by the poets, but the most immediate source for the average
Greek would not have been the formal literary, but the tale told
at
mother's knee (there can be as many oral traditions as there are mouths
to expound them) and the multitude
of
images around him and on
almost everything he handled.
22
The contrast with Geometric Greece is dramatic but the change was
gradual and the easy art-historical explanation is to attribute
it
to the
example of the east, or to say that the Greeks took from the east what
they recognized would serve them to express their interest in narrative.
The truth
is
subtly different. The east may have inspired Greece
to
develop her figurative arts in the eighth century but the idiom adopted,
the Geometric, owed nothing to the east. When eastern styles do take
effect and encourage, for instance, the detailed drawing of black-figure
vases or the outline drawing styles or the Daedalic reliefs, they carry
with them images of no narrative content whatever, only the animal
friezes which are the banal surface-fillers of most seventh-century art
and merely replace the Geometric meanders and zigzags,
or
static
Daedalic frontality. The Geometric artist had managed better, and the
narrative aspirations of Greek artists were best served where oriental
influence was slightest, as on the painted and relief vases of Athens and
the islands.
Not
until
the
sixth century were these orientalizing
trappings fully shaken off and the artists were able to exploit for their
narrative the slightly greater freedom offered by techniques which had
20
H )O.
21
H 19,
157-60.
22
H
18, ch. 15; H 42; H 50; H 19.
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60.
Symposium, from an Athenian black-figure cup by the Heidelberg Painter. About 560 B.C.
(Taranto Museum 110359; after Arch. Rep.
1960/1,
39; H 10, 27, no.
been suggested by the east. These too were not long to satisfy them.
With the sixth century the artist-craftsman presents us with as varied
a view of Greek story-telling as do the poets, and closer, perhaps,
because less ambitious or consciously innovating, to the underlying
narrative with its origins in the Dark Ages or before. Greek rulers were
great propagandists, they used myth and religion to serve political ends,
and they were served by poets and artists. Whatever the degree of
literacy in Archaic Greece, which we may regard as considerable only
by contrast with what went before, and however assiduous attenders
the Greeks may have been of public performances, the more lasting and
influential messages would have been conveyed visually, and there is
more to learn from Greek narrative art than illustration of extant texts.
(On narrative art see Plates Vol.)
Art is also an increasingly important source of information about
contemporary life. Although genre scenes only become at all popular
in the later Archaic period
23
it was customary for the actors of myth
in art to be equipped in modern dress. We learn a great deal about
behaviour and even about regalia in this way. To take an example from
a subject inevitably popular on vases designed to serve a feast, from
about 600 B.C. scenes show symposia, at first in a mythological
setting, at which the guests recline on
klinai.
The practice seems to have
been originally an eastern nomadic one but there is one exceptional
example of it for an Assyrian king, and for some reason the Greeks
adopted the practice enthusiastically. The layout of the symposium with
couches round a room, three-legged side tables and the other gear for
eating and drinking, become familiar from vases (fig. 60) long before
23
H 18, ch. 12.
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THE MATERIAL CULTURE OF ARCHAIC GREECE 453
we are able
to
recognize the excavated plans
of
dining rooms.
24
The
klinai themselves are depicted
in
detail
and
we distinguish
a
luxury
variety with plank-like legs and
a
lighter one with turned legs, more
like
a
high bed. Other exotic furniture
is
introduced
at
about this
time
—
the folding stool
{diphros okladias)
from the east
or
Egypt, and
later in the sixth century Sparta seems to have taken to Egyptian thrones
with legs fashioned as whole lion legs rather than just with the lion-paw
feet
in
the older eastern manner.
25
It was the east, almost certainly, that introduced the use of perfumed
oils.
By the later sixth century the young man's oil bottle, strigil and
sponge become as natural
a
part
of
his personal gear as
in
later days
his pipe, spectacles and pocket book. The practice of oiling and scraping
the skin is of uncertain antiquity.
It
is not
a
Homeric way
of
taking
a
bath
or
self-cleansing, nor
is it
eastern, and the strigil
in its
specially
shaped bronze form
is
not met until the mid-sixth century. Earlier
it
might have been
of
reed (as reported
at
Sparta)
or
even like
a
sickle
knife.
26
There had been small containers for oil in the Dark Ages, even,
but at the end of
the
eighth century the smaller Protocorinthian
aryballoi
are the first
of
a long series
of
oil flasks, mainly for male use, and the
oiling—scraping practice
is
likely
to go
back
at
least
as far. The
iris-scented oil of Corinth was known to Pliny (HNxui. 2.1) and
hirinon
is painted
on
the rim
of
a late Archaic Athenian flask. Knowledge
of
other foreign oils
and
perfumes
is
implied
by the
copies
of
Lydian
vessels (the so-called
lydia)
designed, we imagine, for Lydian bakkaris,
and the clay copies of Egyptian
alabastra
(the Corinthian clay' alabastron'
has
a
different ancestry), both introduced
in
the sixth century.
27
The production of the elegantly decorated aryballoi for perfumed oil
was an important factor in the prosperity of Corinth's potters' quarter,
though we can hardly say that they were necessarily a significant factor
in that city's trade. But this sort of specialist production in the potters'
quarter can be
a
useful indicator
of
trade
in
the wares themselves,
in
the materials they contained,
and
perhaps
in
other more important
materials which they accompanied.
28
There were many other specialist
workshops to serve the luxury market at home and abroad but the only
products which we can trace with any success apart from the ubiquitous
clay pottery are bronze vessels. Sparta and Corinth are prominent here
but other studios can and will be recognized. The success they enjoyed
may be gauged both from the dedications at the Greek sanctuaries and
from
the
more remarkable pieces which travelled
far
beyond Greek
lands
-
the famous Vix crater from the grave of a Celtic princess near
24
H
39;
H
54. "
H 63,
4
}-6, 15-18.
26
H
17; H
6. "
G4A; Semonides
fr. 16
West.
28
c
10;
c
34.
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THE
MATERIAL CULTURE OF ARCHAIC GREECE
Paris
is
the best known example,
29
or
the many craters from Illyrian
tombs. There was a brisk trade with the barbarian too, up the Adriatic
into the Balkans and from the head of the Adriatic into Switzerland and
central Europe.
The bronze vessel types which were exported are Greek
in
design
and
it is an
accident
of
survival that the biggest and best are found
outside Greece.
The
Greeks could think
big for
themselves too
—
Cypselus' big beaten gold statue
of
Zeus at Olympia (Strabo 378); the
Samian six-talent crater with griffin protomes and seven-cubit bronze
kneelers as support (Hdt. iv. 152); the silver crater with its iron base
made by Glaucus of Chios for Alyattes to dedicate at Delphi (Hdt.
1.
25);
the life-size silver bull recovered by the French from beneath the Sacred
Way
at
the same site.
30
The exotic and colossal were not
for
export
only. The potters, however, sought their markets more deliberately. The
lively production
of
column craters
at
Corinth must have been their
response to an appreciative market in Etruria, but it was the Athenians
who started
to
produce deliberate export models like the Tyrrhenian
amphorae of the second quarter of the sixth century, while in the second
half of the century some pottery owners, notably Nicosthenes, copied
Etruscan shapes
to
decorate in the Athenian black-figure style for the
Etruscan market. The Nicosthenic amphora had such
a
special appeal
that virtually
all
examples went
to
Cerveteri. Other Etruscan shapes
taken up for export were the
kyathos
(dipper), one-handled
kantharos
and
deep one-handled cups.
31
Athens and Corinth are the prime exporters
of painted pottery
in
the Archaic period, yet they were by no means
the only,
or
even always the.leading artistic centres
of
Greece. Other
cities which were either more self-sufficient
in
food and materials,
or
which were engaged in handling rather than producing goods for trade
(like Aegina, Chios) may have felt less need to develop an industry for
the export of manufactured goods.
Of the ships
in
which trade was conducted we know all too little,
and that from representations on vases or deductions about performance
from remarks
in
texts. The warship powered by oar and,
at
need,
by
sail, is more familiar. Of the bireme, with two levels of oarsmen, there
are no unequivocal representations until the sixth century. Then too we
see the occasional merchantman, heavier, full-bodied vessels with and
without oarsmen.
32
One seems threatened by a pirate bireme on an Attic
cup (fig. 61).
33
The trappings of war are better documented from pictures (fig. 62)
and dedications
at
sanctuaries.
34
The
regular hoplite panoply
was
29
C
94; A
7,
22O-I.
30
E
8l.
H 18, 36-7, 64-S.
32
H 59; H 22, 53-5.
1
H
21 ;
H 22, 65-8; H 18,
fig. 180.
34
H 69; H 7O, ch. 3; H
31
33
1
5-
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