Greek-Levantine Cultural Exchange in Orientalising and Archaic Pottery Shapes
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doi: 10.2143/AWE.10.0.2141813 AWE 10 (2011) 11-42 GREEK-LEVANTINE CULTURAL EXCHANGE IN ORIENTALISING AND ARCHAIC POTTERY SHAPES RICHARD N. FLETCHER Abstract This paper offers several observations on the phenomenon of Levantine influence on Greek pottery shapes of the Orientalising and Archaic periods. The evidence suggests that Levantine influence upon Greek pottery is of greater importance than is currently thought. The article focuses upon pottery shape as an indicator of foreign influence, but also demonstrates that the cultural exchange seen in the Mediterranean before the Classical period was a complex phe- nomenon in which there was a flow of ideas, practices and influences involving the Aegean, the various cultures of the Levant, Anatolia and Egypt. The blending of Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultures that we call Hellenism after Alexander had, in fact, been going on in a limited manner for centuries. This can be demonstrated in terms of pottery shapes: the so- called eclectic nature of Phoenician material culture can be seen all over the eastern Mediter- ranean from Syria to Egypt and to some extent in Greek pottery as well. In the Aegean, Eastern sources are clear for the discoid lip of Corinthian perfume vessels, the sack-shaped olpe and alabastron, and for the various types of Archaic lekythoi and East Greek vessels. Introduction The archaeology of the Orientalising and Archaic periods in Greece has tradition- ally emphasised the study of the decorative arts, particularly in the study of Greek pottery. Such a tendency is easily explained as arising directly from the character of the archaeological record of these periods: the Orientalising revolution is, after all, easily visible in Protocorinthian pottery, whose marked change in decorative style is emblematic, and may serve as a kind of shorthand for the broader socio-cultural changes of the period. However, it has been pointed out that identifying the Ori- ental in the Orientalising revolution can be difficult in other areas of Greek cul- tural production.1 The transmission of cultural ‘borrowings’ from Levantine con- texts into Greek societies did not, as is well known, occur in the form of direct adoption: while the Oriental influence upon Greek material culture is undeniable, tracing Orientalising elements back to their non-Greek (Oriental) ‘originals’ is equally well known to be extremely difficult and often impossible. This is most clearly illustrated by the decoration of Early Protocorinthian pottery, to the extent 1 Burkert 1992, 6. 94637_AWE10_02_Fletcher.indd 11 19/12/11 13:02 12 R. N. FLETCHER that its break from prior styles was radical and the source of inspiration is obvious, but that clear Eastern examples of its signal iconography are unknown. It is such examples of the inspired, interpretive character of Greek adaptation of Levantine culture, as opposed to strictly patterned emulation, that can strongly affect the manner in which the Orientalising period as a whole is interpreted as an era of cultural revolution, and under what circumstances it can be imagined to have unfolded.2 Given the division between Geometric and Orientalising decoration, it is per- haps understandable that ceramic studies based upon alternate categories of evi- dence have been slow to emerge.3 However, this somewhat exclusionary emphasis upon décor is also expressive of a more general tendency in the study of Levantine influence upon Greek material culture. Even when scholars have embraced the idea of Levantine influences in Greek art, a certain restrictedness becomes apparent; W. Burkert’s hypothesis that the Greeks were influenced not only in their art and crafts, but also in their religion and literature, by Eastern models is not widely taken up despite its convincing argument.4 The influence of the Levant, it seems, is artificially constrained by academic convention, and the discourse surrounding the extemporising, ‘Hellenising’ character of Greek borrowings from the East appears to operate upon the assumption that a cultural core of essential Greekness remained unassailable and unchanged throughout the Orientalising period. The normal approach to Protocorinthian–Corinthian pottery, and Greek pottery gener- ally in the Orientalising period, is especially symptomatic of this, in the sense that when we look at pottery, we look for Orientalising decoration, while the vessels themselves are thought to continue to be very much in the Greek tradition, unchanged despite the superficial layering of Levantine influence.5 This paper takes the example of these Levantine influences on Greek pottery shapes in the Orientalising and Archaic periods and shows that they were quite extensive. It demonstrates how Greeks tapped into a wider Oriental source; while not becoming part of the greater Levantine material cultural entity, Greeks were able to partake of its diversity. It is of importance that these influences, coming from the Levant, are in contrast to the absence of clear Eastern templates for Ori- entalising ceramic décor, since the transmission of certain ceramic forms from the 2 One should note similar procedures of adaptation in the Phoenician pottery repertoire (see, for example, Briese and Docter 1992; 2002; Vegas 2005). 3 This is probably a product of the perceived dramatic difference evident between the Geometric and Orientalising in the Corinthian style, but it is well to remember that no such sharp division occurs in other styles – such as the Protoattic. 4 Burkert 1992; West 1997. 5 Neeft 1987, 23–29. 94637_AWE10_02_Fletcher.indd 12 19/12/11 13:02 GREEK-LEVANTINE CULTURAL EXCHANGE IN POTTERY SHAPES 13 Levant appears to have occurred in a far more direct manner. The immediate value of this observation lies in the support it provides to Burkert’s hypothesis that Levantine influences upon the Greek Orientalising period exceeded the realm of the ‘purely’ decorative – support, moreover, in the form of clearly derived shapes whose movement from East to West can be reconstructed without reliance upon intermediate evidence.6 This in turn potentially contributes to the understanding of the Orientalising phenomenon as it unfolded. The evidence suggests that the transmission of Eastern influence upon decoration and of Eastern influence upon shape occasionally took place in two distinct modes, the one highly adaptive and the other more directly adoptive. Thirdly, attempting to focus upon shape in the Orientalising period potentially opens up several lines of further inquiry.7 Shape is generally dealt with as a second-order category of meaning in the archaeological record, a factor that underpins the construction of ceramic typologies but which is not assigned the same depth of significance as decoration. This is not difficult to grasp: the iconographic and symbolic properties of decorated pottery offer a much richer window into their cultural context of production, while shape presents itself as a comparatively inert property of function, literally an otherwise blank ground- ing for decoration. It is an ontological difference that must be taken into account as well when reviewing scholarship on the relation (or disjunction) between Orien- talising decoration and the vessels that bear it. However, it is true that the higher potential significance of ‘function’ lies in its reference to culturally embedded prac- tices, more ephemeral than the pottery itself and more complex than basic human activities of cooking and eating; there is a level at which mixing, pouring and drinking vessels cohere, for example, into the symposium. In terms of the Orien- talising period, then, the transmission of shapes is a potential indicator of Levan- tine influences upon not just Greek pottery decoration, but upon the performative identity practices with which certain pottery shapes are associated. Greece and the Levant from the 10th to the 7th Centuries The orthodox starting point for any exploration of Levantine influence upon Iron Age Greece has recently been in Euboea and the Dodecanese: trading connections were set in motion ‘first by the Phoenicians and then by the Euboeans’.8 Although such a statement is very much open to debate, it is clear that the earliest and most sustained contact between the Aegean and the East after the fall of Mycenaean 6 S. Morris 1992. 7 Briese 1998; 2000; Briese and Docter 1994. 8 Burkert 1992, 21. 94637_AWE10_02_Fletcher.indd 13 19/12/11 13:02 14 R. N. FLETCHER civilisation involved Euboeans and Levantines.9 Numerous finds of Eastern mate- rial at Lefkandi support this, and several significant points can be made about these objects. First, the material is Levantine and Cypriot of the 10th to 8th centuries. Second, as J.N. Coldstream points out, ‘these oriental luxuries imply more than a single chance visit; their contexts, spread as they are over a whole century, surely indicate regular commercial exchange’.10 Third, the Lefkandi finds coincide with a time of revival in the Aegean bronze industry after a lapse during the earlier part of the Greek Dark Age.11 Objects from the East were being brought to Lefkandi as early as the 10th century,12 but these imports were soon to have a wider distribution in the 9th cen- tury with Eastern material turning up at four other Aegean sites: the Kerameikos cemetery at Athens, with its group of rich aristocratic graves; the northern ceme- tery at Knossos and Teke tomb J in Crete; the Seraglio cemetery at Cos; and Kom- mos.13 However, in the 8th century, the situation seems to have changed. The valuable Levantine material was no longer circulating in the Aegean, particularly metal vessels, but there were large amounts of amulets and scarabs.14 Such objects had always been part of Levantine exchange and are found mainly in sanctuaries, but also at other sites such as Aigina.15 Few have attempted to explain why the nature of imports changed thus in the 8th century. It is possible that we have not found the so-called ‘valuable’ objects because they were no longer being buried; on the other hand, it is also probable that with contemporary changes in the structure of societies, possibly as a result of foreign contacts, such gifts were no longer neces- sary.