The Dark Age of Greece : an archaeological survey of the eleventh to the eighth centuries BC / A. M. Snodgrass.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Snodgrass, Anthony M., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Greece--History--Geometric period, ca. 900-700 B.C.

Greece.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (491 pages)

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2008.

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Summary:

GBS_insertPreviewButtonPopup('ISBN:9780748614035);To be the first full and convincing historian of obscure centuries and the interpreter of a difficult and unpromising material culture is more than falls to most scholars in the course of a lifetime." So wrote the anonymous TLS reviewer in 1972. The Dark Age of Greece is now reissued with an extensive foreword in which the author considers what effect three decades of research and scholarship have had on his original findings and arguments. Professor Snodgrass constructs a narrative of four centuries of Greek history from an exhaustive synthesis of literary and archaeological evidence - pottery, burial-practices, architecture and metalwork, and what can be discovered of religion, commerce, and language. He argues that this was in truth a dark age, from the perspective both of scholarship and, more importantly, of the people who lived through it in poor, isolated communities, conscious of lost skills and departed glories. The recession was caused, he shows, not by external factors but by processes of internal collapse. And yet, although the book reveals material discontinuity, its ultimate conclusion is that at the most fundamental level of culture, human population, a continuity can be discerned, between the greatness of Mycenae and the rebirth of urban civilization, the dawning of the Classical age. The Dark Age of Greece remains the most comprehensive and coherent account of this period in the history of ancient Greece. It is a vital source of ideas and evidence for students, as full of interest as ever for the general reader."

Contents:

Frontmatter

Preface

Contents

List of Illustrations

List of Abbreviations

Foreword to the new edition

1. The Concept of a Dark Age

The Literary Evidence

Chronography

Other Types of Evidence

Notes

2. The Regional Pottery-styles

Terminology

The Latest Bronze Age Styles and the Problem of Submycenaean

The Rise of Protogeometric and the Attic Series

The Regional Grouping of the Pottery Styles

Hand-made Wares

3. The Chronology of the Early Iron Age In Greece

Primary Dates and the Attic Series

Other Evidence for Absolute Chronology

Absolute Dating

4. The Grave

Principles of Classification

Regional Developments

Conclusions

Appendix

5. Iron and Other Metals

Technical Factors

The Initial Spread of Iron-working

The Hypothesis of Bronze-shortage

Other Regions of Greece

Conclusions: Isolation and Stagnation

Crete, Macedonia and Epirus

The Earlier Geometric Period

The Later Geometric Period

The Finds from the Sanctuaries

6. External Relations

The Evidence of Dialect and Tradition

The Great Destructions

The Second Wave of Disturbances

Retrospect

The Advent of Protogeometric

The Revival of Communication

The Final Emergence

7. The Internal Situation

Decline:the 12th and earlier 11th Centuries

Isolation: the later 11th and earlier 10th Centuries

Intimations of Poverty

Political and Social Structure

The Problem of Continuity in Religion and Art

The Beginnings of Recovery: the late 10th to early 8th Centuries

The Greek Renaissance: the middle and later 8th Century

Historical Consciousness in Poetry and Art

General Index

Site Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781474472746

1474472745