Archaeology with a side order of fiber crafts

So, background context for those of you not emotionally invested in Ancient Greek Pottery Lore - THIS is the standard [big-picture] chronology of Attic Geometric Pottery (from Coldstream 2008, "Greek Geometric Pottery"):

Ignore the top bit (Proto-Attic/PA), he ain't relevant (sorry proto-attic stans). What REALLY matters here is my buddy the Late Geometric - LG I and LG II and all variants therein (LGIa, LGIb, etc). This is the one which I will focus on today, for I find the way it's been framed to be total, utter bullshit.

You may be wondering "how is this utter bullshit? it looks fine!" Well. Well. For that I must backtrack a little to first discuss the Average Approach To Studying Ancient Pots. Due to multiple factors - especially antiquities trafficking, loss of in-situ contexts, antiquarianism - the Pot People have been molded into a strange lovechild between archaeology and art history. Which means that the analysis of pottery production, and of specific vessels is less about where they were found and more about their shape and decoration [ie, if its a fuckin skyphos or not + how Achilles was painted on it]. This isn’t the only way that ancient ceramics are analyzed - there’s also other indicators such as the clay used to make them (which is very useful for pinning its original production site to a particular geographic region, since the chemical composition of clay can be pretty confidently localized) and inscriptions/writing (ie, signatures by the artisan(s) or the usage of regional alphabets). But figural decoration remains the primary focal points for scholarship centered on Athenian pottery, and influences so much of how Attic vessels are analyzed in comparison to one another and how ancient Greek ceramic production is discussed as a whole.

This is further complicated by the general reliance on figural decoration to assign vases to a particular ‘workshop’ or painter. This is more common with later Archaic black-figure and Classical red-figure vases, which sometimes have signatures, but the method is also applied indiscriminately to unsigned vases with 0 provenance (including Geometric vases). This is all quite vibes based - ie, “the hand is pointing slightly downward so it has to be by THIS GUY!” - and tends to value the figural representation over any sort of written evidence. Beazley (the guy who basically pioneered this method for red-figure vases by staring at thousands of them for decades) actually hated painter signatures (Beazley "Attic Black Figure - A Sketch" 1989 , p. 9) which is… certainly a take! This approach to attribution & workshop studies has been criticized elsewhere (Whitley 1991, Smyrnaios 2017) but in the case of Athenian Geometric pottery (objectively one of the hardest styles to define a definitive workshop using only figural decoration [1]) it’s still Very Common (Coulié 2013, p. 2) and specifically instrumental for how we organize LG vases chronologically (Coldstream 2008, p. 8).

This brings me to the subject of Late Geometric chronology. For this I have to bring in another graph (bear with me again here, guys, please):

This particular diagram is from Davison, 1961 - a published and refined version of her PHD dissertation "Attic Geometric Workshops,” which remains influential in discussions concerning LG pottery (partially because Coldstream significantly relies on her for identifying characteristic works; cf Coldstream p. 3, 33). In her work, Davison organizes a metric fuckton of LG Attic vessels (many of which do not have a definitive in-situ context or provenance) into various workshops, relying primarily on their decoration (Davison 1961, p.6). Davison’s attributions here, including her chronology, were reinforced by Coldstream and are fundamental to current reconstructions & analyses of LG pottery production, and discussions re: the development of the Late Geometric style (especially in Coulié 2013, which is [afaik] the most recent, thorough examination of LG pottery). I want to emphasize here that Davison’s organization of these workshops is according to the painters of LG vessels, not the potters.

Which, in my humble opinion, is an absolutely fucking absurd way to conceptualize Late Geometric pottery workshops. Athenian workshops in the later Archaic period were centralized around the potters, not painters (Sapirstein 2013, 499-500); a theory that is further supported by the presence of faint inscriptions on red-figure pottery (made before firing) which delineate the position & identity of the figures depicted on the vase (Iozzo, 2018). And while I am hesitant to apply a later organization of production to what is, again, a protohistorical period with no written records, I find it far more plausible to center the production of ceramics around the potters, who are making the fucking vases here, rather than Davison & Coldstream’s focus on painters - who are fulfilling a secondary, and ultimately more specialized/individualized role in the process. Especially since painters in Archaic Athens were also not restricted to a particular workshop (Sapirstein 2014, p. 180-181), so the conception that painters were trained in the kind of centralized way that Davison & Coldstream are theorizing here (moreso Coldstream, Davison’s actually kinda flexible re: workshop organization) seems improbable. Regardless, basing the chronological sequence of vessels according to their decoration alone (in my opinion) seems far less useful than the potential route of how these vases were created.

For example, there was an incredibly interesting study semi-recently which analyzed the proportions of skyphoi cups from the Early Geometric through the LG (Smyrnaios 2017). The reason I find it so fascinating - and so useful as an approach to LG workshops - is because the study noted a consistency in these ratios, generally consistent changes in these ratios over time, and - in the case of two specific Late Geometric skyphoi - there was a clear break from the predominant pattern in favor of a different ratio which was used for only them!! (Smyrnaios 2017, p. 119). This (in my opinion) is WAY MORE useful for the reconstruction of a protohistoric workshop, because you can draw a clear, distinct contrast between how they were produced and the other studied examples. While this is not necessarily definitive in a chronological sense (maybe if you could pinpoint specific transitions in the ratio? but I digress), it’s still (again, in my opinion) far more useful than the predominant focus on the style of the painted decoration. There’s also another interesting study re: wheel-made vs. hand-made Protogeometric pottery (ca. 1000-900BCE) that proposes that differences in production methods were connected to who/where/how an individual potter was trained (Rückl & Jacobs, 2016). There’s so much more potential here re: ceramic production and its just being Ignored (well. Smyrnaios is pretty invested but overall this is a very niche area).

And workshop attributions are made even more complicated by the fact that Geometric pottery is so incredibly stylized.[2] So much of these attributions boil down to shit like the torso not being a perfect triangle (Coldstream 2008, p. 43), how fancy they want a meander to be (Bohen 2017, 229), the stars looking a bit sloppy (Coulié 2015, p. 41), the claim that the figures look too big so its gotta be a different workshop (Bohen 2017, also 229, i fucking hate Bohen 2017) - and it’s just… why? Why are we bulldozing past the abstract aspects of this style, the widespread usage of the same motifs and animals, and neglecting the flexibility of an individual painter’s style all to focus on ultimately unknowable technicalities in organization (which, as previously noted re: red-figure, could very well be due to the potter or commissioner, not the painter)? And people have been saying this shit since the 1940s (Chamoux 1945, p. 62-65) so it's not for lack of trying, but rather an insistence on academic stagnation.

Now, going back to Davison’s graph, you may notice something a bit strange about the chronology of Late Geometric workshops. The style itself - and the entire period - is defined by the Dipylon Workshop - and, more specifically, the painter referred to as the ‘Dipylon Master’ (who, judging by Coldstream 2008, p. 33-35 is maybe also thought of as a potter? but I'll get to that).

You may or may not know the Dipylon Workshop from such hits as:

Athens 804, aka ‘The Dipylon Amphora’[3], and my buddy Athens 192, aka the 'Dipylon Oinochoe.' There's lots of amphorai and oinochoai out there in the world so to me they are simply A804 and A192.

The Dipylon Workshop, for all intents and purposes, is seen as the progenitor of the entire Late Geometric style (Coldstream 2008, p. 29, 33, 35, 44) (Brann 1960, Preface, p. 12) (Bohen 1991, p. 62; Bohen 2017, p. 74-75) (Couliè 2013, p. 63-65). The chronology of every single proposed LG workshop relies on how they relate to the Dipylon Workshop. The ‘Dipylon Master’ is not only framed as the beginning of LG art (Davison 1961) (Coldstream 2008, p. 35, 36, 44) (Brann p. 12, 13) (Coulié 2013, p. 65), but also credited with the invention of several LG vase forms (Coldstream 2008, p. 34, 35). Bohen 2017 even calls him "the finest artisan of the Iron Age" (Bohen 2017, p. 72). The claim that this hypothetical lone painter invented entirely new vase forms, by the way, is a bit fucking absurd considering the aforementioned research focused on later Archaic Attic pottery production arguing that vase painters & potters tended to be specialized (Sapirstein 2013, p. 499-500). Yet I kept running into these claims again and again as I did my research.

But again, I’m a skeptical bastard. So I got curious. What was the evidence behind this? Who came up with this theory? Where did it come from?

Everyone (Brann 1960, p. 12) (Coldstream 2008, 3) (Davison 1961, p. 6, 23-24) (Couliè 2015, p. 39) kept pointing back to an article by G. Nottbohm as the first to really define the 'Dipylon Master,' describe his style, and attribute works to him. So I go look for Nottbohm’s article. and. oh my god stop the fucking train okay

It’s a JdI article (Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts[Journal of the German Archaeological Institute]) published in 1943 (under the fucking Third Reich, mid-WWII) -> 🚩🚩🚩🤨 I am now incredibly skeptical. I am scanning every sentence for even the slightest hint of nazi ideology. I am on red alert, like the bias equivalent of a tornado siren. I am re-evaluating Coldstream’s proud proclamation that he “Follows G. Nottbohm In Believing Such Distinctions Are Possible” (Coldstream 2008, p. 2 yes he fucking said this) and also his entire reputation. But I’m still withholding complete judgement here. Maybe she’s got decent evidence? Some sort of sound analysis? I don’t know man, this is apparently the whole fuckin reason we treat the ‘Dipylon Master’ as this pivotal figure, surely it has something.

Her evidence boils down to Athens 804, a shitload of Louvre fragments, and a giant oinochoe (bc it has a deer frieze. thats literally it) -> 🚩 - I am now fully judging. I thought there would be more evidence here?? Everyone is just taking Nottbohm’s word for it as if this isn’t the most patchwork shit ever. Chamoux even calls her out for cherry-picking later because the logic here is obviously just a vicious circle (Chamoux 1945, p. 63-64)! And Villard (1948, p. 1072) later kicked at least 1 of her other examples (the Baring Amphora) to the curb. There’s no mention of in-situ context anywhere?? Which is baffling, genuinely baffling, she doesn’t even mention it in passing. Which is astounding to me because the excavation of Athens 804 was actually somewhat fucking documented and was published in German (Brückner & Pernice, 1893), which Nottbohm could have almost certainly gotten access to as a PHD student at the University of Leipzig. Whatever faith I had in this fuckass theoretical guy is nonexistent, it is Gone

Her main comparison against what she attributes to the Dipylon Workshop is Athens 990 (The "Hirschfeld Krater,” whose provenance is [like the Dipylon Oinochoe] mildly fucked up on account of being from Palaiologos’ undocumented 1871 ‘excavation’) -> 🚩 again Nottbohm is establishing an entire workshop that she can compare to the ‘Dipylon Workshop,’ which she is still defining at the same time, which. Honestly she’s just shitting on A990 here. this paper invented the hirschfeld workshop too which just makes this worse since A990 is the defining vessel of that (cf Coldstream 2008 p 41). like can we not consider them both beautiful. must we always quantify. actually this is a nazi paper who the fuck am i kidding. guys, can we re-evaluate this or- oh no. oh god what's she sayin-

«Vielmehr handelt es sich um die schöpferische Tat eines großen Meisters, dem es nicht nur gelungen ist, den ornamentalen geometrischen Stil auf seine höchste Höhe und zur klassischen Vollendung zu führen - eben in der Amphora in Athen - sondern in dem auch die Kräfte dieses Stiles und seiner Zeit so stark wirksam waren, daß ihm die Darstellung der menschlichen Figur im Rahmen dieses Stiles möglich wurde.» 😟😬🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩 the racist & imperialist ideology is in full fuckinv swing and this is only page 15 out of 31. we got it all. the ‘great man’ history where 1 guy singlehandedly spearheaded an entire phase of art (source? Personal Bias. she made it the fuck up i'm not even joking THIS is everyones source here). the conception of one guys art as the ‘peak’ of art and ‘classical accomplishment’. the idea that the ‘Dipylon Master’ was, somehow, just built different and better than everyone else ever. God. Are we really relying on this shit for all our comparative analyses of attic late geometric pottery. like its abundantly clear shes only in this for Athens 804. which… yeah, others at this point were also trying to connect this amphora to other vessels (cf Kahane 1940, p. 477) but Nottbohm is frankly both reaching to an absurd degree here, and is the one everyone's citing here (Coldstream doesn't even mention Kahane [Coldstream 2008, p. 2]! jfc guys). how has nobody reviewed this in the past 80 years.

«Im Verlaufe der gesamten europäischen Kunst ist ihm eigentlich — in der Größe seiner Bedeutung für die folgenden Zeiten — nur ein einziger an die Seite zu stellen, nämlich Giotto.» 🫩😑🫠 🚩🚩🚩 this line makes me feel like im high every time i see it. both for the first half emphasizing ‘in all of european art’ and then the bit comparing him to fucking giotto which sucker punches me in the face every time like are we really fucking serious here guys. Please. this is also immediately after the prior sentence for context, these two quotes are in 1 paragraph Together back-to-back. pages 15-16. Wow

«So ist der Meister der Athener Amphora die erste faßbare Persönlichkeit auf dem Gebiete der bildenden Kunst, die uns auf europäischem Boden entgegentritt! Seine Existenz und sein Schaffen fügen sich auf das schönste dem Bilde der zweiten Hälfte des achten Jahrhunderts ein, das W. Schadewaldt in seinem Aufsatz 'Homer und sein Jahrhundert' entworfen hat. Auch an dem Meister der Amphora erleben wir den Durchbruch der Persönlichkeit aus dem Dunkel der vorhergehenden Jahrhunderte. Sein Gestaltungswille durchbricht mit elementarer Kraft den ornamentalen Formenzwang und erobert sich die menschliche Figur als Darstellungsobjekt. Eines seiner Werke, die Amphora in Athen, in ihrer tektonischen Strenge und fast mathematischen Klarheit des Aufbaus wie der Einzelheiten, bedegutet für uns eine der großartigsten Manifestationen griechischen Geistes und griechischen Kunstwollens überhaupt.» 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩hey uh What the actual fuck (these are her concluding remarks. Btw)

This ^^ is the foundation for how scholarship compares Late Geometric Attic pottery workshops and positions their development. This fuckass article that positions the ‘Dipylon Master’[4] as the ‘first tangible artist on European soil’ who ‘breaks through the darkness of the preceding centuries’ and is ‘one of the greatest manifestations of the Greek spirit and Greek art of all time.’ like. can we all set aside all the decorative analysis this field's been obsessed with for 100+ years and unpack this? like, her framing of the ‘Dipylon Master,’ the fact that she even fucking calls him «Der Meister der Grossen Dipylon-Amphora», and the field all just adopted that shit too for some fucking reason, just. All of it. Chuck it in the bin for now guys. Please. or. no? we’ll just speculate abt which Middle Geometric workshop the ‘Dipylon Master’ came from (Bohen 2017, p. 160-162)? 🫠 🫠🫠🫠 please the racism & facism is right fucking there like am i HIGH?

And Nottbohm’s methodology has been critically reviewed only once - by Chamoux (1945), who was also afaik the first one to actually respond to the article - but… he doesn’t address the ideological bend to it that taints her methodology? He does make some very good points [5] that honestly just look like he got hit by Apollo's dodgeball, where he's like "Nottbohm's terminology will only encourage people to recreate an artist's personality which is ultimately unverifiable, surely we could be doing something better with our time" (Chamoux 1945, p. 68) (i'm paraphrasing & it's all in french). unfortunately he got proven right and this field refuses to do a u-turn. Chamoux why'd you have to focus on other shit besides Geometric pottery please you were the only one[6] on the right track,,,,

Anyways that’s my take on Late Geometric pottery chronology, development & workshops 👍 i hate the "dipylon master founded it all and was First" idea and i dont give a shit if killing it nukes our current chronological dating of the LG because i think the theory should Die

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[1.] The reason I consider Geometric pottery as "objectively one of the hardest styles to define a definitive workshop using only figural decoration" is because Geometric art is - as I've noted above - kinda sparse with figural decoration? And when it does appear, it's very linear & abstract. So emphasizing the decoration here, and treating it like definitive proof of a shared producer for two vases, is just. Bizzare to me.

[2.] This is not a dig at the LG style here - I think it fucks severely. My main concern is that so many attempts to categorize LG vessels seem to ignore this element of abstraction altogether - or, worse, treat divergences from it as ‘a mistake’ (Moore 2007, p. 18), a ‘collapse’/disintegration (Coldstream 2008, p. 56), or ‘degenerative’ (Brann 1962, 15). This kind of thinking appears in tandem with the concept of Attic(cough Athenian cough) pottery being influenced by Corinth (Coldstream 2008, 56); take from that what you will.

[3.] rip to every other amphora from the hieraian gate cemetery ifg. only One Dipylon Amphora allowed

[4.] the quotation marks i have been using this whole time have been to convey just how much i fucking despise this name and all its shitass loaded baggage that it carries. this is quite an aggressive way to say this now that i think abt it but still im a Hater

[5.] Not including the bit where he tries to use LG battle scenes to date the Iliad. Not touching that with a ten-foot pole. I only care for his critique of Nottbohm ❤️

[6.] this is technically an overexaggeration, Siebert 2010 (p. 311) kinda took up the torch on this one (calling Nottbohm's methodology inadequate lmao) but. i fear its like a tiny corner of french scholarship and the anglophones need to catch the hell up ASAP.

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Sources/Further Reading:

Nottbohm, G.G. (1943) “Der Meister Der Grossen Amphora Im Dipylon,” JdI 58, pp. 1–31.

Chamoux, F. (1945) “L’ÉCOLE DE LA GRANDE AMPHORE DU DIPYLON: Étude Sur La Céramique Géométrique à l’époque de l’ «Iliade»,” Revue Archéologique, 23, pp. 55–97.

Davison, J.M. (1961) Attic Geometric Workshops. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press (Yale Classical Studies).

Coldstream, J.N. (2008) Greek geometric pottery: a survey of ten local styles and their chronology. Updated 2nd ed. Exeter: Bristol Phoenix press.

Coulié, A. (2013) La céramique grecque aux époques géométrique et orientalisante: XIe-VIe siècle av. J.-C. Paris: Picard (La céramique grecque, 1).

Smyrnaios, I. (2017) “Chaîne Opératoire: Moving from Theory to Praxis in the Study of Attic Geometric Pottery,” in L. Nevett (ed.) Theoretical Approaches to the Archaeology of Ancient Greece: Manipulating Material Culture. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, pp. 104–123. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.8287082.

Kahane, P. (1940) “Die Entwicklungsphasen der Attisch-Geometrischen Keramik,” American Journal of Archaeology, 44(4), pp. 464–482. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/499959.

Villard, F. (1948) “UN NOUVEAU CRATÈRE DU DIPYLON AU MUSÉE DU LOUVRE.” Revue Archéologique 31/32, 1065–74. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41028776.

Brann, E.T.H. (1962) Late Geometric and Protoattic Pottery: Mid 8th to Late 7th Century B.C. (The Athenian Agora). Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/3601969.

Siebert, G. (2010) “La réception de l’art géométrique grec dans l’historiographie (fin du XIXe-milieu du XXe siècle),” Ktèma : civilisations de l’Orient, de la Grèce et de Rome antiques, 35(1), pp. 299–312. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3406/ktema.2010.2505.

Štěpán Rückl and Loe Jacobs (2016) “‘With a Little Help from My Wheel’: Wheel-Coiled Pottery in Protogeometric Greece,” Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 85(2), p. 297. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2972/hesperia.85.2.0297.

Iozzo, M. (2018) “Hidden Inscriptions on Athenian Vases,” American Journal of Archaeology, 122(3), pp. 397–410. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3764/aja.122.3.0397.

Sapirstein, P. (2013) “Painters, Potters, and the Scale of the Attic Vase-Painting Industry,” American Journal of Archaeology, 117(4), pp. 493–510. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3764/aja.117.4.0493.

Sapirstein, P. (2014) “Demographics and Productivity in the Ancient Athenian Pottery Industry,” in J.H. Oakley (ed.) Athenian Potters and Painters III: Athenian Potters and Painters III. Oxbow Books, pp. 175–186. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvh1djzf.

Moore, M.B. (2007) “ATHENS 803 AND THE EKPHORA,” Antike Kunst, 50, pp. 9–23.

Whitley, J. (1997) “Beazley as theorist,” Antiquity, 71(271), pp. 40–47. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00084520.