A Note on the Absolute Chronology of the Eighth and Seventh Centuries B.C.

Abstract

For absolute dates down to the early sixth century B.C. students of Hellenic archaeology look to countries further east where reliable chronologies have been established. So far very few useful contexts have been discovered, and all or almost all of them are open at one end or the other. What has not been made clear enough is that occasionally two such open-ended contexts can be bracketed to give a more precise fix.One pair is the end of Period V at Samaria and grave 102 at Pithecusae (Ischia). The deposit of Period V at Samaria contained a few fragments of Attic Geometric pottery, and most Palestinian experts are confident that by comparison with other sites in their region it was closed little if any later than 750. Grave 102 at Pithecusae, which was used only for the burial of one child, contained three Corinthian pots and a scarab with the cartouche of the Egyptian king Bocchoris, who came to the throne in or very near to 718; this scarab had had some wear and anyhow ought not to be appreciably later in date than the pottery, since it is unlikely that only old pots were chosen to be buried with a child. So from their contexts the interval between the Attic sherds from Samaria and the Corinthian pots of Pithecusae should not be less than thirty years or more probably, if one allows five years for the wear of the Bocchoris scarab, thirty-five years. Now the development of the relevant phases of Attic and Corinthian pottery is known in fair detail, thanks most recently to J. N. Coldstream's Greek Geometric Pottery; and if one accepts his classification, which seems to me convincing, the latest of the Samaria sherds belong to the end of Attic Middle Geometric II and the latest of the Corinthian pots of Pithecusae is of the middle of the Early Protocorinthian phase, that is distinctly earlier than the end of Attic Late Geometric IIb. To judge by the stylistic character of Attic Late Geometric (which succeeds Middle Geometric II) and the sequence of its workshops, the two finds should be separated by not more than sixty years and, if thirty-five of these years are fixed absolutely as 750–715, then—again absolutely—there is a play of only twenty-five years in the archaeological chronology of this period.