Geometric Pottery at Delphi

Abstract

Few terms in archaeology have become as ambiguous as the term Proto-Corinthian. Used at first not unreasonably of a class of small vases found over a wide area, which bear considerable resemblance to Corinthian pottery, the name has come to be applied to a number of vases which differ very widely from the fabrics originally so called. Furtwaengler first extended this term to two vases found near Thebes, and since then the appropriateness of the term has not been seriously questioned. Nowhere is this extension of the term more unsuitable than at Delphi, where a large quantity of Proto-Corinthian ware in the original sense of the term was found, as well as the Geometric pottery which Perdrizet describes as follows: ‘le géométrique delphien appartient à la catégorie appelée protocorinthienne par M. Furtwaengler: il est douteux qu'on puisse l'attribuer à une fabrique locale.’ The most cursory comparison of the Geometric pottery of Delphi, hitherto classed as Proto-Corinthian, with the Proto-Corinthian originally so called, makes it clear that whatever be the provenance of the Geometric, the same name cannot reasonably be applied to both fabrics. In the real Proto-Corinthian pottery a variety of shapes occurs, all of small size. The most characteristic are the aryballos, the lekythos, the pyxis, and the long-necked, flat-bottomed jug. The Delphic Geometric pottery on the other hand has little variety in its shapes, and, as will be seen below, these differ in size and form from the Proto-Corinthian. Again the distribution of Proto-Corinthian pottery extends over a very wide area; it occurs all over the mainland of Greece, in Italy and Sicily, and even in Asia Minor. The vases on the other hand which, as will appear later, may be brought in line with the Geometric pottery at Delphi, are few in number, and only found within a small area.