Rethinking Athens Before the Persian Wars

 &RQVWDQ]H*UDPO$QQDULWD'RURQ]LR 9LQFHQ]R&DSR]]ROL HGV   5HWKLQNLQJ$WKHQV%HIRUHWKH3HUVLDQ:DUV 3URFHHGLQJVRIWKH,QWHUQDWLRQDO:RUNVKRSDWWKH /XGZLJ0D[LPLOLDQV8QLYHUVLWlW0QFKHQ 0XQLFKUG±WK)HEUXDU\     0QFKQHU6WXGLHQ]XU$OWHQ:HOW  KHUDXVJHJHEHQYRQ  3URI'U0DUWLQ=LPPHUPDQQ 3URI'U-HQV8ZH.UDXVH 3URI'U.DUHQ5DGQHU  /XGZLJ0D[LPLOLDQV8QLYHUVLWlW0QFKHQ %DQG  7KLVERRNZDVSULQWHGWKDQNVWRWKHILQDQFLDOVXSSRUWRIWKH'LSDUWLPHQWR$VLD$IULFD H0HGLWHUUDQHRRIWKH8QLYHUVLWjGHJOL6WXGLGL1DSROLª/¶2ULHQWDOH© DQGWKH/XGZLJ0D[LPLOLDQV8QLYHUVLWlW0QFKHQ  8PVFKODJDEELOGXQJ('RGZHOO9LHZVLQ*UHHFH, /RQGRQ 3ODWH ª7HPSOHRI-XSLWHU2O\PSLRVDQG5LYHU,OLVVRV© >KWWSVGLJLXEXQLKHLGHOEHUJGHGLJOLWGRGZHOO@   %LEOLRJUDILVFKH,QIRUPDWLRQGHU'HXWVFKHQ1DWLRQDOELEOLRWKHN 'LH'HXWVFKH1DWLRQDOELEOLRWKHNYHU]HLFKQHWGLHVH3XEOLNDWLRQLQ GHU'HXWVFKHQ1DWLRQDOELEOLRJUDILHGHWDLOOLHUWHELEOLRJUDILVFKH 'DWHQVLQGLP,QWHUQHWEHUKWWSGQEGQEGHDEUXIEDU  'DV:HUNLVWXUKHEHUUHFKWOLFKJHVFKW]W6lPWOLFKHDXFK DXV]XJVZHLVH9HUZHUWXQJHQEOHLEHQYRUEHKDOWHQ  (DFKDXWKRUZDVUHVSRQVLEOHIRUVHFXULQJWKHUHSURGXFWLRQ ULJKWVRIWKHLPDJHVIRUWKHLQGLYLGXDODUWLFOHV  7\SHVHWWLQJDQGOD\RXW9LQFHQ]R&DSR]]ROL 7RPPDVLQD0DWURQH$QQLND%XVFKLQJ  7KH(QJOLVKWH[WZDVUHYLVHGE\+HQU\+HLWPDQQ*RUGRQ  &RS\ULJKW‹XW]YHUODJ*PE+ā  ,6%1  3ULQWHGLQ(8 XW]YHUODJ*PE+0QFKHQ āZZZXW]YHUODJGH TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword Rolf Michael Schneider 9 Introduction Constanze Graml, Annarita Doronzio, Vincenzo Capozzoli 11 DEALING WITH DEATH Some Thoughts on the Pre-Classical Athenian Society Anna Maria D’Onofrio 25 The Submycenaean and Protogeometric Cemetery on 2, Odos Irodou Attikou, Athens, Greece. Remarks on the Spatial Distribution of the Athenian Cemeteries and Burial Customs on the Transition from Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age Marilena Kontopanagou 41 From Amphorae to Cauldrons: Urns at Athens in the Early Iron Age and in the Orientalizing Period Simona Dalsoglio 51 Ladies Returned. On Cypriot-Inspired Shapes in the Early Iron Age Pottery of Attica Jennifer Wilde 65 A Fresh Look at the Kerameikos Necropolis: Social Complexity and Funerary Variability in the 7th Century B.C. Annarita Doronzio 89 The Excavations at Phaleron Cemetery 2012-2017: An Introduction Stella Chryssoulaki 103 SHAPING SPACES Memoryscapes in Early Iron Age Athens: the ‘Sacred House’ at the Site of the Academy Alexandra Alexadridou & Maria Chountasi 115 Thucydides 2.15 on Primitive Athens: A New Interpretation Myrto Litsa 131 Constructing Monumentality at the Athenian Acropolis in the Early 6th Century B.C. Elisavet P. Sioumpara 149 Coming Back to the polis trochoeides. Dealing with the Topography of Archaic Athens Vincenzo Capozzoli 167 Between Tradition and Innovation. The Late Archaic Telesterion at Eleusis Reconsidered Ioulia Kaoura 189 ESTABLISHING COMMUNITIES The Making of the Greek City: An Athenian Case Study Alain Duplouy 207 Diakrioi and/or Hyperakrioi? A View of Archaic stasis in Athens: Between Aristocratic Conflict, the Intervention of the demos and the Use of the Sacred Miriam Valdés Guía 217 Being a Heliast During the 6th Century B.C.? Remarks on the Existence of the People’s Court in Archaic Athens Alexandra Bartzoka 225 The Greek agora in the Context of Sites of Political Assembly in the Ancient Near East Claudia Horst 239 The College of Treasurers of Athena on the Acropolis During the Archaic Period Valentina Mussa 251 Archaic Athens and Tyranny. The Origins of the Athenian Public Finance Marcello Valente 265 Worshipping Women, Worshipping War: (How) Did the Persian Wars Change the Cultic Veneration of Artemis in Athens? Constanze Graml 277 A Question of Object. Class Semantics in Athenian Vase Painting (530– 430 B.C.) Wolfgang Filser 297 BIBLIOGRAPHY 313 INDEX PERSONARUM 357 INDEX LOCORUM 361 Foreword The Munich workshop, Rethinking Athens – The Polis Before the Persian Wars: Interdisciplinary Approaches, organised by a team of young scholars who also edited this book, remains unforgettable. The reasons are manifold. One was the choice of the period, the first half of the 1st millennium BC, in which Wilder Ursprung (Walter Burkert) of Greek people was one of the anthropological catalysts for the development of the polis, namely that of Athens. Another was the group of people invited to participate: a vivid mix of passionate young and senior academics mainly from Europe, predominantly Greece. Here, an important driving force was the generous willingness to share new data about key sites in Athens and Attica, now published in this volume. This openness not only resulted in furthering knowledge but also provided new insights into the meandering process of how the city’s spatial, material, religious, political, social and economic fabric was woven and constantly rewoven over a long period of time. This process came about in quite the opposite way to clear-cut modern categories as it bound together (seemingly) conflicting concepts, such as myth with history, religion with politics, life with death, aesthetics with brutality, glory with violence, success with failure, and agreement with contradiction. Unforgettable was also the constructive discussion and Mediterranean atmosphere of the workshop propelled by a plurality of hermeneutics, original thought, productive criticism, mutual respect, and a lot of enthusiasm and fun. Fortunately for us this book will keep some of the Munich conference spirit alive, in particular Athens' heritage as an exceptional workshop of all aspects of human life. Prof. Dr. Rolf Michael Schneider Professor Emeritus for Classical Archaeology 9 Introduction CONSTANZE GRAML, ANNARITA DORONZIO AND VINCENZO CAPOZZOLI “Mind the Gap” or Historicity as a Heavy Burden for Pre-Classical Athens Is it still possible, in 2019, to rethink pre-Classical Athens? The answer is certainly yes, and we might even say that it is not only possible, but in fact necessary. New field activities (be it planned or rescue archaeology) and the continuous advancement of research, along with the progressive publication of several corpora stored for years in the Ephorates’ archives or even in the International Schools of Athens, require a continuous verification of the previous reconstructions in order to tell new stories of pre-Classical Athens1. It goes without saying that everyone as always will continue to do so in their own way. This is what makes the Athenische Forschung so exciting: the varied mass of discordant voices, affirmed, overcome 1 This is not the place for an exhaustive bibliography, but it is certainly necessary to mention the major works of the last two decades. Besides the studies focusing on the agora or the Kerameikos in the pre-Classical period – especially the two volumes by J. Papadopoulos (Papadopoulos 2003; Agora 36) – we mention the PhD thesis of L. Costaki on the Athenian road-system from the Geometric to the Roman period (still unpublished but available online: http://www.collectionscanada. gc.ca/obj/thesescanada/vol2/002/NR16008. PDF) and with a different approach, the study of L. Ficuciello on the Athenian roads (SATAA 4). Finally, with the other series of five volumes “Topografia di Atene”, the Scuola Italiana di Atene undertook the task to create a comprehensive and complete lexicon on Athens and partially on Attica (SATAA 1, 1–5). See also Valdés Guía 2012. and then exhumed once more with the new perspective that every generational change brings into the discussion, obviously rooted in their own political and social ideologies. This is why the works of E. Curtius, U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, W. Judeich or W. Dörpfeld regularly resurface in the general debate2. The history and archaeology of pre-Classical Athens are even more exciting because of the very nature of the available documentation: an archaeological record that is certainly scanty, but still far more consistent than the poor written sources, often ambiguous and produced long after the fact. If we wanted to compile an exhaustive inventory of hypotheses, interpretations and historical reconstructions proposed during the last century for all events and structures of pre-Classical Athens, the length of this entire volume would not suffice. This shows not only the complex nature of this dossier, but also the richness of the existing ideas, approaches and interpretative models, so much that often the Athenian archeology has been conceived as a one-off case, forgetting, among others, how much this polis owes to an organic and systemic relationship with the whole of Attica. Every year we witness an impressive bibliographical production and yet one cannot help but notice that the archae2 Curtius 1862; von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff 1881; Dörpfeld 1929; Judeich 1931. 11 C. GRAML — A. DORONZIO — V. CAPOZZOLI ology of pre-Classical Athens is actually riddled with doubts and contradictions, also because of the long history of archaeological research that began with the construction of the “new Athens” in 18333. Even though the documentary gap of the 7th century B.C. – denounced already by R. Osborne in the late 1980s4 – was at least partially filled by the recent study of A. Doronzio5, the same cannot be said for the many other aspects raising similar problems. Still taking into account the 7th century B.C., we must note – what is doubtless surprising – that the chronology of the so-called Kylonian Affair has never been questioned. Many scholars seem to agree on a date between 636 and 624 B.C.6, but it is necessary to remember that according to E. Lévy’s careful study7, the episode should be post-dated by nearly 30 years (597–595 B.C.). Thus, Kylon could have been a contemporary of Solon (though here too we have to decide between high and low chronology)8, with easily imaginable historical, political and institutional consequences. As it stands, the chronological problem persists and should be tackled once and for all. Similar issues are also raised by the Aristotelian mention of the ten Archons and the staseis following Solon’s activities9. In this regard, it would indeed be beneficial to read again L. Gernet’s wise pages with which he inau3 Bastea 2000, 108–118. 146–180. 4 Osborne 1989, 297. 5 Doronzio 2018. 6 Compare for example the paper of M. Valdés Guía in this volume. 7 Lévy 1978, 513–521; Giuliani 1999, especially 36; Duplouy 2006, 86. 8 In this context see the still fundamental study by Flament 2007. 9 Aristot. Ath. pol. 13, 2. 12 gurated a criticist approach to the Athenaion Politeia, proposing – in our opinion – a correct way of interpreting the Aristotelian text10. One could continue with the semi-mythical figure of Epimenides, whose various chronolog(ies) span more than a century are often bent to the needs of modern historical reconstruction11. The same ambiguity lingers around the responsibility for the reorganization of the Panathenaic feast sometimes connected to Peisistratos, underestimating however, that in 566/5 B.C. the Archon was Hippokleides, perhaps the same Hippokleides tied to Miltiades the Elder12. In this respect, it is also worth reconsidering the first Parthenon. If it is true, as the latest research suggests that it was erected during the second quarter of the 6th century B.C., every possible connection with Peisistratos falls apart13. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine he had the time and power to order the construction of the Parthenon, while he was taking his first public steps on the Atheni10 Gernet 1938. See the already mentioned contribution of Flament 2007 as well Flament 2017. Cfr. also Morris 1987, 25: “What faith are we then to place in the particular stories which have survived about early Athens? Following Jacoby, l would suggest that few of the episodes before 550 BC can be trusted in any detail. There is currently a tendency to accept large parts of the Constitution of Athens as a fairly accurate summary of seventh- and early sixth-century history, after a long period of scepticism, but this may not be a welcome trend […]. Traditions about early history were extensively manipulated in fourth-century Athens, and Aristotle or his sources often seem to misunderstand, conflate or invent their information”. 11 Same criticism in Greco 2001, 27. On the written sources related to Epimenides see recently Bernabé 2007, 105–168. 12 Hdt. 6, 127–129. 13 See the paper of Sioumpara in this volume. Introduction an political stage as a very young strategos and engaged in snatching Salamis from Megara14. On the topic of Peisistratos, two other peculiar finds from the agora come to mind: the so-called Building F – the house of tyrants according to some, oikos prytanikos according to others15 –, and the nearby necropolis on the north-western slope of the Areopagus. The latter has caused much ink to be spilled regarding its modern (and not ancient!) usage, and without any strong evidence, its interrupted use pattern is related to the erection of the pre-Themistokleian walls of Athens16. Even on this latter matter, needless to say, there is no consensus: a century after the debate between W. Judeich and W. Dörpfeld, there are still scholars who try to deny the historicity of the event in every way, like J. K. Papadopoulos17. With the exception of its conclusions – which we consider problematic –, Papadopoulos’ approach is interesting as far as it raises a central issue of the archaeology of pre-Classical Athens: the relationship between archaeological records and written sources18, and, in the case of the pre-Themistokleian walls, the feasibility of compensating for the absence of the former exclusively by taking into account 14 Hdt. 1, 59, 23–24; Aristot. Ath. pol. 14, 1. 15 On the issue see recently Doronzio 2012, 28–30 with earlier bibliography. See also Osborne 2007, 196: “Most puzzling is the so-called Building F, which is a building of some size; but it remains the case, as with the Temple of Apollo Patroos further north, that a ‘public’ function has only been ascribed to this building because of the later public buildings on the same site”. 16 See the paper of Capozzoli in this volume. 17 Papadopoulos 2008. 18 In this regard see the still useful analysis of A. Snodgrass in Snodgrass 1987, 36–66. and accepting the latter. Clearly, we are often faced with an “either/or approach”, meaning either a material-based, fully archaeological approach to ancient Athens that uses the methodology of prehistorical archaeology and focuses on theory or an approach with a strong historical embedding19 that adopts the history of events/ political history as a framework for interpreting the material remains. In this second case, the information of non-contextualised written sources is projected onto the archaeological record. This problem should not be taken lightly, since it has an even heavier impact upon the issue of the Athenian public places20. Thus, the controversy continues to rage between supporters of a single agora21, that of the Kerameikos, those of two agorai, an older one located eastward of the Acropolis (never found, but considered certain by many), of which the west one – that of the Kerameikos – was the successor22, or even those of two agorai “and a half”23. Furthermore, the old 19 Compare the most recent publications on Athenian topics from a historical point of view: Sviatoslav 2018; Riess 2018. 20 For R. Osborne this controversy is no more than a distraction: “In my view, the question of whether any Athenian referred to an ‘old agora’ is a distraction from the fundamental issue, which is whether Kleisthenic democracy opened up a new and distinctive location for what had become the most crucial activities of public life.” (Osborne 2007, 196). For criticism see Greco 2009, 222 f. 21 Doronzio 2011, 15–85; Doronzio 2012, 11–43; Doronzio 2018, 201–211 with previous bibliography. 22 Robertson 1998, 283–302. 23 Cfr. Greco 2009, 224 f. who suggests searching for the “agora” of Apollodoros somewhere on the Acropolis: “io credo che ci sia una possibilità di salvare la testimonianza ed è quella di mettere in rapporto dialettico l’agora di Apollodoro, non con quella archaia delle pendici 13 C. GRAML — A. DORONZIO — V. CAPOZZOLI matter of the altar of the Twelve Gods is making a comeback: the construction of the building (or at least of the first phase of its peribolos) has been post-dated from the last quarter of the 6th century B.C. to the first years after the Persian Wars, and it has even been suggested that it was relocated from one agora to another, i. e. from the hypothetical one to the east of the Acropolis to that of the Kerameikos24. Not only the altar of the Twelve Gods but also the Leokoreion is travelling, at least within the universe of our bibliography: the latter certainly has nothing to do with the quadrangular abaton found by the American School at the northwest corner of the agora25. This assumption has a major impact on the Athenian topography, since the Leokoreion constitutes the only certain topographical reference point for the pre-Themistokleian walls26. The latter should also give us an idea of the Athenian forma urbis before the building of the dell’acropoli, ma con quella del Kerameikòs [...]. Insomma, non cercherei le tracce archeologiche dell’agora archaia di Apollodoro, perché non è mai esistita, ma interpreterei la notizia come il plasma di un’eteria o di una stasis, nell’ambito della competizione politica ateniese di età classica, disponendo in opposizione dialettica UraniaEgeo-Pericle-Fidia vs. Pandemos-Teseo-KalliasKalamis, evitando di accusare Apollodoro di pasticci e, ancora peggio, di versare nella muta agora archaia alle pendici dell’acropoli tutti gli avanzi della tradizione che non trovano una soddisfacente collocazione, come fanno molti oggi”. 24 On the controversial archaeological remains see most recently: Neer – Kurke 2014, 527–579 with the hypothesis of a “transplantation” of the altar. See instead on the importance of the findspot of the altar on the north-west corner of the agora, near the southern bank of the Eridanos: D’Onofrio 2017c. great city walls of Themistokles: this is how we enter an even darker universe, in which one might feel compelled to rely on the beloved and much abused polis trochoeides of Herodotus, or rather of the Pythia in Herodotus27. But the urbanistic of pre-Classical Athens should not be restricted to an enigmatic wheel-shaped plan – and certainly not to a circular one as many have mistakenly translated trochoeides! Indeed, even assuming that it really existed and had both topographical and geometric concreteness, the polis trochoeides cannot tell us very much about an urban development and a spatial definition that began several centuries before the statement of the Pythia. And finally, we mention one last substantial problem, which is the lack, until the very recent publication of E. Dimitriadou (see infra), of an adequate cartography of pre-Classical Athens, for which we were all too often forced to rely upon the Classical age cartography. We stop here, but this review could be much longer. Nonetheless, we can immediately point out that the whole set of events and artefacts mentioned above relate (or have been related by us modern archaeologists), without exception, to a period between the end of the 7th and the end of the 6th century B.C. But what happened before? Indeed, we come to a fundamental feature of pre-Classical Athens: the absence of monumentality. Working on pre-Classical Athens requires first of all that we give up writing a Baugeschichte, while at the same time adopting the proper methods to study disiecta membra, often difficult to identify and interpret. Yet it is clear that overall pre-Classical 25 Santoro 2015; Monaco 2017. 26 Thuk. 6, 57, 1–4. 14 27 Hdt. 7, 140, 5-6. Introduction Athens undoubtedly evokes a much more monumental feeling in its institutional, political, and urban developments than it has in its material culture or architectural productions. How to Approach the Archaeology of Pre-Classical Athens? A workshop on Athens with a focus on the period prior to the Persian Wars is certainly not an original idea and ours will surely not be the last. Already 40 years ago, the symposium “Athens comes of age: from Solon to Salamis” tackled the topic and chose two historical aspects, Solon the lawgiver and the naval battle of Salamis as its temporal bookends. The justification of that volume, namely its aim to bridge “the disparity of the evidence in the different disciplines”28, as well as its criticism of “Athenaicentricity” was definitely valid then. More recent approaches to ancient Athens have since taken up these aims and striven to embed it into the Mediterranean koine29, and to demonstrate how it influenced and was influenced by multiple agents around the Mediterranean Sea during the first Iron Age. Thus following the history-based approach, O. Palagia and E. Sioumpara’s 2017 conference “From Hippias to Kallias. Greek Art in Athens and Beyond, 527–449 BC” (held just three months after our workshop) sought to deemphasize the Persian -Wars and also expanded the territorial frame, looking at Attica’s connections to Ionia30. And recently (June 2019), M. Meyer’s workshop “Innovations and inventions in Athens 28 Childs 1978, iii. 29 Stahl – Walter 2009; Handberg – Gadoulou 2017; Houby-Nielsen 2009. 30 Palagia – Sioumpara 2019. ca. 530 to 470 B.C. – two crucial generations” at Vienna once again emphasized the Persian War aftermath as a terminal point31. These two conferences have two important common features: 1) they are limited to the 6th century B.C. and there especially to the end of the century; 2) they focus mostly on artistic production, not insisting on the institutional, social, topographical and urban implications which, as we will see shortly, have been placed at the center of our analysis. We can thus return to the question announced at the beginning of this introduction. Once the necessity of a continuous rethinking of pre-Classical Athens has been established, the main problem concerns the proper approach. In other words, the central point is not whether we need to rethink pre-Classical Athens but how this should be done. Rethinking a period “without history” (with the exception of the 6th century B.C.) is a complex operation that sometimes calls for peculiar stances, such as that of R. Osborne for 7th century B.C. Athens32. From this point 31 https://klass-archaeologie.univie.ac.at/newsevents/einzelansicht/news/innovations-andinventions-in-athens-ca-530-to-470-bc-twocrucial-generations. 32 “In the past those who have sought to do archaeological history have proceeded, and not least for the eighth and seventh centuries, in an additive way, cataloguing, classifying and counting. It is rare indeed for the archaeological record to be rich enough to enable us confidently to classify according to the categories of that society itself. This does not prevent counting leading us to observe numerous interesting features of a society, but it can fatally obscure dynamics. Faced with a society, which comes to question established categories, to realise and enact the possibility of doing things differently, the counting archaeologists find problems everywhere, but no clues to their answers. For the 15 C. GRAML — A. DORONZIO — V. CAPOZZOLI of view, it will be crucial to proceed as soon as possible to a detailed examination of the methods and theoretical approaches, as they were taken in the Athenian archaeology to date. This goes along with a full-scale reflection of the pre-Classical city’s historiography, which is, in our opinion one of the major desiderata for the Athenian archaeology (and not only for the pre-Classical period). Looking forward, the latest remarkable novelty in research on ancient Athens is the volume of E. Dimitriadou (Original Greek version ǔǴȁǬǯǪDžǫǡǰǤ from 2012; published in English in 201933). Undoubtedly, it is a very important work due to the amount of information and data finally made available to the scientific community34, with a major reflection on both data management in a dedicated database and cartography. Indeed, Dimitriadou’s publication perfectly embodies the digital turn, which is diversifying the methods of archaeological research35. Needless to say, with its historian of a society without literature an entrée into contemporary changing perceptions and classifications is offered by the artistic production. What humble pictures communicate may often be banal, and we may often misread them, but not to try to read them is to leave go of the one line of possible contact offered to us. If I am at all correct with my speculations here then these pictures may be the lifeline enabling history to be written out of archaeology.” (Osborne 1989, 321 f.). 33 Dimitriadou 2012; Dimitriadou 2019. 34 Since the volume at hand was already in its final stages, all participants hardly had the possibility to include references of the recent English version. 35 For Athens, we can name here three projects in progress. The first one is the ARISTEIA database project “The Social Archaeology of Early Iron Age and Early Archaic Greece” under the supervision of Alexandros Mazarakis Ainian: http://aristeia. ha.uth.gr. The online platform naturally comprises several well documented entries regarding 16 extensive catalogue and the great number of newly drawn plans of Athens – freely accessible online (another great merit of the author)36 – the work of Dimitriadou is an essential documentary basis for anyone interested in coming back to the subject of pre-Classical Athens. However, even though the collection and description of these data represent a crucial moment of the analysis, they are not enough to understand the Athenian archaeology in its entirety, especially not for that pre-Classical period that A. Snodgrass has well defined as “an age of experiment”. Taking into account these premises, we decided to not establish a specific methodology a priori. Therefore, this volume follows a multidisciplinary and archaeological excavations in Athens. Cf. also Mazarakis Ainian 2017a; Alexandridou 2017b. A second database online, funded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and carried out by Dipylon (Society for the Study of Ancient Topography), enables queries for all published archaeological remains carried out in rescue excavations: https://dipylon.org/en/2018/06/12/mappingthe-antiquities-athens/. The third project is the «Atlas of the Athenian Funerary Evidence (11th–7th c. B.C.)», established with the objective to provide a tool for the retrieval of information related to burials and burial practices of Athens from the final Bronze until the beginning of the Archaic Age. The project, in cooperation with the Ephorate of Antiquities of Athens, Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, is directed by A. M. D'Onofrio and carried by one of the editors of this volume, A. Doronzio, with the collaboration of A. Duplouy and V. Capozzoli for the elaboration of the digital tool thanks to an agreement between the University of Naples and the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (http://www.unior.it/ateneo/20096/1/atlas-ofthe-athenian-funerary-evidence.html). 36 http://www.dig.ucla.edu/early-athens. Introduction to some extent “relativistic” approach37. By doing so, we intended to enhance the legitimacy of different academic (or indeed national) traditions and their specific approaches: in our view, far from being an obstacle to mutual understanding, they instead offer a distinctive opportunity to work towards inspiring new ways of comprehending complexity together. If this is the most simple and obvious reason, the alethestate prophasis – quoting Thucydides – shall consist of the main historical and archaeological features and patterns of pre-Classical Athens, that – as highlighted –are often bent to radically divergent interpretations. We have sought to strike a balance between the different expressions of the material culture, and art – strictu sensu – constitutes only a small part in the establishment of our critical process, without ever forgetting Osborne’s fundamental lesson on the importance of artistic languages in history, or rather in the “history of a fiction” of the pre-Classical Athenian world38. 37 For a critical analysis of the relativistic approach in archaeology we refer to: Kohl 1997 and Yoffee – Sherratt 1993, especially 13–26, 105–130. 38 Osborne 1989, 318: “If the archaeologist cannot account for his data, when that data is rich and displays not subtle and disputable changes but marked breaks and discontinuities, then his claims to be able to produce history of any sort must seem exceedingly thin. If the historian cannot produce a history which accounts for such major changes in the material world then he must seriously face up to the question of just what it is that his history purports to describe and account for: is the history gleaned from written sources not after all the history of a world but the history of a fiction of the world? The changing fictions of the world are precisely the data from which I wish to start rebuilding an explanatory framework for the understanding of what so changed life at Athens at the end of the eighth century.” Starting from the claim that the history of pre-Classical Athens is nothing but a homogeneous history, a transversal approach based on the longue durée perspective seemed necessary to us. Choosing to focus on the period between the end of the Submycenaean age and 480 B.C., and thus including only a small segment of the Classical period, is obviously not a novelty. This decision fits into an old tradition of studies that perhaps finds its most explicit definition in the always relevant book of Osborne39, but can be found also in the works of E. Dimitriadou and A. Duplouy40. Despite the “epistemological divide” – quoting J. K. Papadopoulos41 –, implied by this choice, it is in the Iron Age that archaeologists recognize the first steps of the polis’ formation, which eventually found its full consolidation in the Archaic period, as R. Martin pointed out already in 1956: “quelques-uns des éléments les plus originaux de la ville grecque se façonnent, se modèlent”, or even slightly later “les deux éléments originaux de la ville grecque […], l’acropole et l’agora, apparaissent déjà dans la structure des villes archaïques, mettant en relief leurs fonctions essentielles, religieuses, défen- 39 Osborne 1996. 40 Duplouy 2019. 41 Papadopoulos 2018. See also Agora 36, 975 f., accentuating the danger of the epistemological divide “of two scholarly traditions: Classical archaeology and Aegean prehistory […]. For Classical archaeologists the Early Iron Age signifies the beginning of something distinctly “Greek,” even though the decipherment of Linear B should have revolutionized the teaching of early Greek history. For Aegean prehistorians, the destruction of the Bronze Age palaces and the advent of iron represent a convenient, if artificial, stopping point.” (Agora 36, 975 f.). 17 C. GRAML — A. DORONZIO — V. CAPOZZOLI sives et politiques”42. Indeed, this history is sometimes the result of communal experiences, but very often also of individual experiences – not only at the time of Peisistratos’ tyranny but already during the early Iron Age43. This last statement is crucial, since the 6th century B.C. seems to dominate all reconstructions of the pre-Classical Athens. Consequently, we must always remember that this century is only one of the several stages of a much longer development, and thus we cannot clearly perceive the first phases of the polis by looking backwards from the monumental character of the 6th century B.C.44. 42 Martin 1956, 75. 80. Martin’s view was, actually, a one-off case and it was not until the 1970s, when a general revision of the traditional historical tendencies took place, which – as A. Snodgrass indicated in his introduction to Archaic Greece – commonly identified the Archaic period as “merely a prelude to the decisive achievements of Classical Greece”: Snodgrass 1980, 11. That is how M. Austin and P. Vidal-Naquet concluded that the Archaic period was the most important age in Greek history, since it carried out significant innovations, acting as a necessary prelude to the Classical age: Austin – Vidal-Naquet 1972, 63. See more recently Greco – Torelli 1983, 114 in particular: “in pratica sono i quartieri arcaici ad aver fissato i momenti dello sviluppo della città, condizionandola nell’epoca della sua maggiore espansione classica, piuttosto che ritenere questo condizionamento come qualcosa di trasmesso dall’età micenea a quella seguente”. 43 Cf. most recently Duplouy 2019, in particular 63–126. 44 Already Polignac 2006, 205 perfectly characterises the intrinsical weakness of this modus facendi, which tries to gain from the much better known urbanistic evidence of the end of the Archaic period the main features of a the historically many centuries older reality: “[...] c’est en effet en fonction de situations de l’archaïsme avancé – le VIe siècle au plus tôt, si ce n’est même plus récentes encore –, que nous élaborons notre modèle de la ville grecque, sélectionnons les 18 Therefore, our intention was to resist the temptation of “restricting” pre-Classical Athens only to the 6th century B.C. and its prominent characters and, consequently, many of the following contributions are dedicated to the Iron Age and the early Archaic period. In our volume, both well-known and new contexts and materials are revisited and their commonly acknowledged readings are challenged (cf. Capozzoli, Dalsoglio, Doronzio, and Wilde). The new perspectives become especially apparent when textual or iconographic sources are read against archaeological remains or are revealed as being result of the author’s projection of their biases onto a long gone past (cf. Mussa, Bartzoka, Graml, and Filser). Especially enriching are comparisons between Athens and other, non-synchronous cultures (cf. Horst and Valente), which allow Athenian peculiarities, such as isonomy or taxation systems, to be reconsidered. Moreover – as already mentioned – the history of Athens is also the history of a city in a close and continuous relationship with its region45. traits et les catégories descriptives susceptibles de définir le fait urbain […] et définissons ainsi un modèle au regard duquel nous élaborons nôtre échelle de valeurs de l’urbanisation. L’analyse des situations plus anciennes risque donc de se résumer à une simple projection rétroactive des critères identifiés dans un contexte plus tardif […]”. 45 Cf. on this matter see the project “Lands of Meaning. A Geographical Information System Study of Space and Social Praxis in Ancient Attika, Greece, from the Mycenaean Age to the birth of Democracy (1200–480 BC)”: https:// www.pantheonsorbonne.fr/axe-de-recherche/ landsofmeaning. Here, N. Arvanitis attempts to understand the cultural, political and symbolic dynamics within Attica, which lead to the emergence of the polis Athens. Another project on Attica is “The Borders of Attica”, where S. Fachard Introduction Studying Athens by remaining within its asty – which is itself very hypothetical at least for the pre-Classical age –, means losing sight of the city’s origins. That is precisely the reason why some contributors have left the geographical boundaries of pre-Classical Athens and consider the region outside the city more broadly (cf. Chryssoulaki, Alexandridou – Chountasi, and Kaoura). The opportunity to publish preliminary results of ongoing doctoral research or key results of recently completed dissertations in English and therefore to disseminate these results was one of our main goals. Additionally, papers from senior scholars, working in different fields and contributing their long-honed expertise on various aspects of Athens (cf. Sioumpara, Duplouy, D’Onofrio, and Valdés Guía) and colleagues working at the Greek Ephorates (cf. Chryssoulaki and Kontopanagou) enriched the volume, by presenting their fascinating new discoveries and adding new pieces to the puzzle, which nevertheless remains very fragmentary in parts. Layout of the Contributions Our volume is subdivided into three thematically organized sections: “Dealing with Death”, “Shaping Spaces” and “Establishing Communities”. follows a geo-historical approach and focuses on issues regarding the spatial arrangements connotating the borders between greater regional policies through a comparative analysis of the settlement structure including cultural, economic, and religious aspects: http://www.chs-fellows.org/ author/sfachard/. The official website of the project (http://www.bordersofattica.org) is no longer available. Dealing with Death The first section explores questions linked to funerary evidence and covers the earliest chronological period discussed in our workshop. The first contribution by Anna Maria D’Onofrio (Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”) focuses on kinship-based burying practices. Her work investigates the mechanism of pseudo-kinship groupings and the sense of shared ancestry developed through the kinship pattern. This conceptual perspective allows questions regarding the presence of an Athenian “aristocracy” to be re-examined. Marilena Kontopanagou (Ephorate of Antiquities of the City of Athens, Hellenic Ministry of Culture / University of Peloponnese) presents new data from the excavations of the Submycenaean and Protogeometric cemetery on Odos Irodou Attikou – one of the first organized flat cemeteries in Attica after the Mycenaean period, resembling the Kerameikos cemetery – and gives us a glimpse at the Athenian society during the transition to the Early Iron Age through funerary material culture. Both inhumation and cremation graves (“trench and hole” form) are attested. Striking is the presence of double graves that may indicate strong ties, maybe familiar, that connected the two dead buried in them. Simona Dalsoglio (Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”) provides a detailed overview of all attested cases of incinerations in urns in Early Iron Age Athens with a focus on the use of the cauldron and their discovery context. Aiming to detect changes in burial practices she connects the appearance of cauldrons, used as urns, with the re-appearance of inhumation, the predominant funerary rite in the Late Geometric period. In her view, the use of cauldrons as 19 C. GRAML — A. DORONZIO — V. CAPOZZOLI urns is linked to the most predominant burials within the elite graves. The article by Jennifer Wilde (State Museum of Archaeology Chemnitz) studies elite burials. She concentrates on the whole range of Cypriot-inspired vessels in the Submycenaean and Protogeometric period and their uses as prestige objects in predominantly rich female burials. With this approach, she provides new interpretive tools to assess the symbolic meaning of these pottery shapes, their role in the formation of elite burial rituals and exchange(s) between Attica and Cyprus at the beginning of the Early Iron Age. Annarita Doronzio (Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”) builds on the results of her aforementioned book to offer a revised picture of the well-known Kerameikos Cemetery during the Orientalising period. As opposed to other scholars, her analysis includes not only the well-known graves with Opferrinne, but the whole range of graves, including rich inhumation graves with metal grave goods and child burials. Her research focus is on the often-claimed exclusion of women from the “formal burial”. This alleged lack of women’s graves is, after a review of all available data, not forthcoming, as the examples discussed show. The exceptional new finds from the cemetery in the Phaleron Delta, amongst them the famous Biaiothanatoi are presented by the Head of Excavations Stella Chryssoulaki (Ephorate of Antiquities of Piraeus and Islands, Hellenic Ministry of Culture). The ongoing excavation in the area of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC) revealed burials dating from the 8th to the 4th century B.C., with the main phase of use in the Archaic period. Among the burials are peculiar cases, such as two pit graves of couples found holding hands and a burial of a woman who died in labour. 20 Moreover, horse burials are common. For the first time, the preliminary study of the 78 captives is presented in English. Due to state of the art excavation techniques, the data retrieved from this site may now answer many questions on burial practices and kinship, which remain unanswerable for the 19th and early 20th century excavations46. Shaping Spaces Expanding the focus to the developing cityscape, the second section of our volume partially still includes burial sites, but focuses on analysing spaces with an eye to their embedding in the settlement structure. Alexandra Alexandridou (University of Ioannina) and Maria Chountasi (Ephorate of Antiquities of East Attica, Hellenic Ministry of Culture) provide a thorough re-evaluation of the well-known site of the Sacred House in the area of the Academy. Based on a re-examination of the findings, they refute a purely sacred character of the building. The initially domestic complex is understood as part of a kinship-based settlement with burials and ritual activity. Based on the embedding into this broader setting, the authors propose that the location of the Sacred House was chosen with regard to the collective memory of the entire area. The article by Myrto Litsa (Independent Researcher) focuses on the area south of the Acropolis and tests the famous passage of Thucydides’ second book on primitive Athens with regard to several archaeological remains located there. She also relates the introduction of the cults in this area to the abundant presence of water as the most prominent agent in ancient ritual practice. Elisavet Sioumpara (Service for the Restoration of the Acropolis Monuments [Y.S.M.A.], Hellenic Ministry of Culture / 46 http://phaleron.digital-ascsa.org. Introduction Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) presents the main results of her research on the first temple on the Acropolis completely built in stone, the so-called Hekatompedon. Based on her thorough analysis of the architectural fragments, she proposes a reconstruction of the temple and its location on the Acropolis and suggests a new dating in the first quarter of the 6th century B.C. Vincenzo Capozzoli (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) offers new insights on the urban layout of the Athenian civic centre before the Persian Wars, by reconsidering the Archaic funerary documentation known for this period, as well as the grave monuments reused in the Themistokleian city walls, and by taking into account the material data on the road system and the main written sources (Herodotus and Thucydides) on the so-called polis trochoeides. With her study on the architecture of the late Archaic Telesterion of Eleusis, Ioulia Kaoura (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) detects Cycladic influence in the assembly building alongside unambiguously Attic innovations. Overall, the late Archaic Telesterion emerges as a highly innovative and experimental building, since it applies architectural forms for open-air buildings such as theatres in an interior setting. Establishing Communities The third section of the volume is devoted to the development of community, taking into account political, economic and also religious institutions. In his paper, Alain Duplouy (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) elaborates the idea of the polis as a community made through the interaction of individuals. Shifting the focus from the development of the institutions of a well-structured city-state, he concentrates on the performative aspect of individual and group behaviours, establishing a new approach to Athenian citizenship and to the citizen community by focusing on society and lifestyles. Miriam Valdés Guía (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) analyses the impact of stasis on the formation of Athenian democracy. She weighs the influence of the horizontal stasis between the aristocratic families over influence against territorial tensions stemming from synoecism and the vertical stasis regarding economic struggle and increasing debt. In her view, both these lines of conflict became acute only at the time of the Peisistratids, but the institutions of the polis had already been established at that time, leading to the fully developed Athenian democracy. The institution of the Archaic Heliaia is the topic of the paper by Alexandra Bartzoka (University of Athens / Open University of Cyprus). With her thorough analysis of the written testimonies, she argues against the uncritical projection of Classical sources back onto the Athenian People’s Court of the Archaic period. She accordingly rejects an establishment under Solon and proposes Kleisthenes as the founder of the Heliaia. Claudia Horst’s (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) contribution demonstrates that assembly structures and sites existed also beyond the Greek world. She offers a survey of a variety of public places that existed in Mesopotamia, which have not yet been analysed in relation to Greek agorai. Based on the multifunctionality of Greek agorai, she retraces examples of assembly, trading etc. in the urban contexts of Mesopotamia. Valentina Mussa (Sorbonne Université) retraces the development of the financial administration of the cult of Athena on the Acropolis and the emerging polis. The coexistence of two administrative boards, the 21 C. GRAML — A. DORONZIO — V. CAPOZZOLI naukraroi and the tamiai, makes it impossible for them to have developed successively. Finances are also the focus of Marcello Valente’s (Università di Torino) paper. He traces the invention of the Athenian taxation system. In antiquity, taxes were perceived as an interference in personal freedom and associated with tyranny. The Athenian taxes were expanded under the Peisistratids to fund the “national” defence against external enemies and internal affairs of public interest. Even after the end of the Peisistratids, the usefulness of such reliable public funding therefore led to the perpetuation of the tax system into the Classical period. Constanze Graml (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) focuses on the veneration of the goddess Artemis. Since written testimony mentions her aid in the battles against the Persians, she includes pre-Persian archaeological evidence in her analysis in order to test whether the Persian Wars had an actual impact on the perception of the deity. While it becomes clear that commemorative rituals with relation to the Persian Wars were embedded in the cults for Athenian Artemis, the consideration of material down into the Hellenistic period reveals that this did not occur immediately after the Persian Wars, but only after several decades. An image-based approach to the analysis of social hierarchy is attempted by Wolfgang Filser (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin). He analyses objects depicted in the vase images, which refer to specific activities such as sports or craftsmanship. Although the depictions mainly refer to the leisure class, hints as to the remaining Athenian population can be detected. The polyvalence of figures and objects allows the extreme poles of society to coexist in the image. While the images need not be read as documentation of real Athenian life, they have a coherence 22 in themselves that allows them broach the issue of social classes. Rethinking Athens in a lively and pleasant environment and making these thoughts available in printed form would not have been possible without the help of many different people47. The keynote speakers Alain Duplouy (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), François de Polignac (École Pratique des Hautes Études), Anna Maria D’Onofrio (Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”) and Elisavet Sioumpara (Service for the Restoration of the Acropolis Monuments [Y.S.M.A.], Hellenic Ministry of Culture / Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) channelled the various approaches presented at the workshop. All speakers and listeners alike were eager to discuss the various topics, connected the widespread pieces of information and certainly added new insights to the ideas presented. Feedback by Nikolaos Arvanitis (Marie Curie Fellow – Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), Luigi Gallo (Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”), Henry Heitmann-Gordon (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), Hermann J. Kienast (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Athen), Marion Meyer (Universität Wien), Aenne Ohnesorg (Technische Universität München), Florian Ruppenstein (Universität Freiburg), and Gunnar Seelentag (Universität Hannover) polished some key points of our approach. Of 47 Seizing the dynamic spirit of the assembled scholars working on Geometric and Archaic Athens, we founded the “Trochoeides Network – Research Network on Pre-Classical Athens”, which all interested scholars are cordially invited to join. See our official web-site: https://trochoeides. hypotheses.org/ Introduction course, we claim exclusive rights to any of the inevitable oversights. Ruth Bielfeldt and Rolf M. Schneider supported the idea of this event from the beginning and offered invaluable aid in many aspects. Martin Zimmermann kindly accepted our proceedings for the series “Münchner Studien zur Antiken Welt” and Ramona Ramtke of the Utz Verlag was patient and permanently helpful in the preparation process of the volume. The Deutscher Archäologenverband e.V., the universities of Munich (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität), Naples (L’Orientale) and Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne), the Herbert Lutz Gedächtnis Stiftung and the LMUMentoring program funded the travel costs of the participants and enabled the publication. Henry Heitmann-Gordon, Annika Busching, and Elise TacconiGarman helped make the volume at hand readable and Tommasina Matrone (Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II”) supported the typesetting process. Munich, Naples and Paris 8th November 2019 23