“Rough Mountains and Unbroken Shores”

Rough Mountains and Unbroken Shores: Continuity, Standardization and Amalgamation in the Ceramic Record of the Iron Age Mediterranean

Constantine Ananiades

Details of two Attic Geometric vases depicting armed men. 8th c. BCE. (Left) New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 34.11.2. Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Right) British Museum GR 1927,0411.1. Photograph © The Trustees of the British Museum. Bottom: Harbor of Kyme (Euboea, Greece). Photograph Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jetty_harbour_Kymi_Euboea_Greece.jpg.

This project focuses on issues that relate to materiality, mobility, and the imprint of the micro and macro landscape encounter in Iron Age Mediterranean, as attested by effective patterns in the ceramic record of mainland Greece, including Attica and its environs, Crete, Cyprus and the Levant.

The collapse of the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean regional powers in c. 1200 BCE left visible traces in the archaeological record. Severe economic disparities in different areas redefined in a decentralized manner the geopolitical landscapes and relations between mono- and multi-ethnic enclaves. Following the rise of inter-regional networks during the Iron Age, distinct spatial formations characterize the distribution pattern of material goods —including considerable amounts of clay objects— across the Mediterranean.

Throughout mainland Greece, Crete, Cyprus and the Levant, small intransigent entités villageoises of pastoral range coalesced with communities of citadel-like orientation on the one hand, and intra-assisted polities and market towns that acted as nodes of wider trade networks on the other hand. Assessment of the degree of involvement in a post-palace-driven, entrepreneurial type of trade leads to different results for each unity involved. Engagement in this novel environment of a re-emerging cross-cultural awareness encompassed twofold local dynamics: diffusionist tactics on a regional level, and transcendental connectivity strategies. Attitudes towards pottery-related materiality consisted in selective exchanges of Proto-Geometric and Geometric ceramic products within old-established posts, potlatch-style qualities of the gift-exchange phenomenon, developments in ceramic technology, and chaîne opératoire hierarchies.

This project aims to examine the extent of continuity, standardization, and amalgamation in the ceramic record of the Iron Age Mediterranean by taking into consideration the process of mapping outward-bound mentalities and relevant remembrance mechanisms in a cross-cultural conceptual framework.