1Eighth-century Greek pottery is always rich in problems: some, I hope, capable of solution with the help of valuable new evidence from the West. At the same time one must face other problems of which Aegean specialists were quite unaware until new finds from the West brought them to their attention.

2I present a selections of these problems in chronological order, beginning with the famous MG II skyphoi (coupes in French) decorated with long panels of vertical chevrons. At once the question arises: «are they really precolonial?». If we think so today, Dr Buchner may yet dig up the evidence at Pithecusae which will make us change our minds. But this is a question which I must leave on one side. From the Greek angle, the appropriate questions are «why skyphoi?» and «why chevrons?».

3Let us consider these two questions from the viewpoint of the exporters of Greek Geometric pottery during the first forty years of the eighth century. If you will permit me a brief excursion to the other limit of Euboean enterprise, I would remark that the contemporary Greek exports to the Eastern Mediterranean are more numerous and more varied than those which reached the West. One thinks especially of the earliest of the Cypriot chariot burials, in Salamis tomb 1, which alone contained twenty-two skyphoi, four plates, and an Attic MG II krater1. Such kraters have not so far been found in the West; but they were clearly appreciated by eastern customers2. However, it remains true that, even in the East, the skyphos is by far the commonest shape to be imported from the Aegean. To a Greek, these vessels were essential for daily life, whether for drinking, or — as the scholars of the Athenian Agora suppose — for eating3 as well. They have no plain or handmade counterparts, such as there are for the closed vessels; exactly the same types of skyphoi, wheelmade and painted with geometric ornament, are found in Greek settlements, cemeteries, and sanctuaries.

4So, when the Greeks begin to settle outside the Aegean, the skyphos is part of their way of life: as it were, the eighth-century counterpart of the Mycenaean kylix. Imported skyphoi are used by the Greek merchants of Al Mina; and P.J. Riis4 has supposed that all the eastward exports imply Greek settlers, on the grounds that Orientals had no use for Greek pottery — whereas, for a Greek, a skyphos was a man’s personal possession, the king of object on which, after the return of literacy, he liked to inscribe with his own name. But one must also remember that Greek skyphoi have been found in native cemeteries at Hama5, at Khaldeh near Beirut6, and most recently near Tyre — and of course in the rich princely burial at Salamis, already mentioned. Thus the skyphos, besides being a necessity for Greeks, was also a luxurious article of commerce among non-Greeks: luxurious because its crisp, wheelmade fabric, with shiny paint inside, was thought superior in some respects to the local non-Greek ware. Very soon the Cypriots, for example, started to make their own imitations, as a further compliment to the imports. The earliest shape to be copied is that of the pendent-semicircle skyphos7, although the Cypriot potter did not attempt to achieve the semicircles. From there we pass to local versions of the Middle Geometric meander skyphos. Dr Pecorella’s excavations at Ayia Irini in north-west Cyprus have produced a very close copy8, which one might wish to attribute to an Aegean Greek settler. However, the supporting decoration includes those curious concave chevrons, common to many Cypriot imitations of Aegean Geometric. They recur in almost exactly the same composition, but this time on a local shape and in a local technique — on a stemmed bowl of Bichrome IV from Ayios Iakovos9.

5There are some useful analogies to be drawn between East and West. In Italy, Dr La Rocca has raised the interesting possibility of an early Greek trading station, possibly precolonial, on the site of S. Omobono in Rome10; but otherwise all the imported Greek skyphoi are from native tombs, and must have been traded to natives as articles of commerce. In Etruria, as in Cyprus, the imports soon gave rise to local imitations, whether by Greek or local artisans; and in both areas there are just the same kind of ambiguities which often make it difficult to distinguish between these two categories. But as soon as we consider the decoration, the parallel ceases. At Veii two pendentsemicircle skyphoi have recently come to light11; yet it remains true that chevrons are the rule in the West, but exceptional in the East; and the reverse is true of the pendent semicircles. If we believe that the Euboeans led the way in both directions, how do we account for this discrepancy? For the pendent-semicircles in the East there is certainly a wider chronological span, embracing much of the ninth century as well as the early eighth; and in the light of the sequence at Lefkandi12 it may emerge that this class was commoner before 800 than after. But why, then, are chevron skyphoi so rare in the East? There is not a single one from Al Mina, or anywhere else in the Levant. In Cyprus we know of one — possibly Euboean or Cycladic — from the old British Museum excavations at Amathous13; and two more from Salamis tomb 1 among the twenty MG skyphoi in that context; of the others, five have meander panels, and on the remaining thirteen the decoration consists of two pairs of meander hooks. After seeing them all in the Famagusta Museum I had the impression that all twenty skyphoi painted in the MG style are of Attic fabric, like the krater that goes with them. Here we have one of the chief differences between eastern and western commerce during the period in question: in the East the quantity of Attic exports keeps pace with Euboean, whereas in precolonial Italy I know of nothing which must be Attic. To return to the chevrons: thanks to the precolonial skyphoi, this motif has attracted so much attention that one might be forgiven for assuming it to be the commonest motif on skyphoi of this period. In fact, in most regional Greek styles this is far from being the case, although very few regions are entirely lacking in chevron skyphoi14. The phenomenon we have to explain is not so much their rarity in the East, as their extraordinary frequency in the West: was the West being supplied by some Aegean centre where virtually all the local skyphoi carried chevrons? On present evidence the only such place is Corinth, where almost every shape is invaded by chevrons at this time15; yet none of the precolonial skyphoi is of Corinthian clay. In Attic MG II, then the leading style with the widest repertoire, chevrons were no commoner than meanders or meander hooks16. From the Delos publication17 one is led to believe that, in the islands which supplied the sanctuary, the chevron motif was primus inter pares; and, above all, it was the careless execution of these Cycladic skyphoi which invited comparison with those from the Osta cemetery at Cumae.18 Today we look for some enlightenment from Euboean excavations; but so far the results are rather disappointing, because nowhere on that island is the period in question well enough represented for us to make any quantitative judgements about the frequency of chevrons. At Lefkandi19 we know that chevron skyphoi were current — as also were meander skyphoi. Yet the finds, so far, are extremely fragmentary, and come from the only deposit of this period on the settlesettlement; and even in this deposit the sherds in a MG manner are greatly outnumbered by pottery in a Sub-Protogeometric style, including many skyphoi with pendent semicircles. Chalcis in this period is still virtually unknown; but from Eretria two chevron skyphoi have recently been found in the Swiss excavations20, as Professor Lilly Kahil has kindly informed me. Yet, even if we presume that all the precolonial skyphoi from the West have a common source, we are no nearer to discovering whence they came, or why such an overwhelming proportion should bear the chevron motif. Perhaps in the end we shall be compelled to accept an explanation suggested for other exports by John Boardman, on the analogy of the random element in his Archaic exports to Tocra in Libya21: perhaps all the imported chevron skyphoi came to the West from the same centre in a single consignment? Whether their fabric is homogeneous enough to support such a theory, I do not know. The least one can say is that, however they arrived, they were not all buried at once; this is the impression given by the series at Quattro Fontanili, where the graves with chevron skyphoi span most of the Veii II A phase, leaving plenty of time for use by some of the owners during their lifetime, and for imitation by local potters.

6And here we encounter our next problem; for in amongst this well-stratified series of chevron skyphoi at Quattro Fontanili, and nowhere near its end, is a skyphos with a bird in a square metopal panel (Fig. 1 a)22; and both the bird and the metope are features normally associated with Late Geometric. It is easy to find an ad hoc explanation: did the owner die young, while elderly Veientines were still enjoying the use of their chevron skyphoi purchased two decades earlier? More seriously, let us try to do without such subterfuges. Let us face the consequences of the firm stratification in this cemetery; let us pursue the hypothesis that skyphoi with single bird metopes begin weli back in the period of chevron skyphoi, the period of Attic MG II. How many preconceived notions will thereby be upset, and what are these notions worth?

7In exploring the relative chronology of this bird-skyphos it is natural that we should look first to Attica; there we find a full sequence, well-documented by plenty of grave groups, and a local style which was at that time the most influential in Greece. It was there that the idea of metopal decorations was probably born23; yet even in Attic MG the metopes are rare, experimental, and never seen on skyphoi. Indeed, the Attic skyphoi give us no help at all: as a rule, their decoration changes abruptly from the long panels of MG II to the usual LG designs, containing two or three metopes. Birds always appear in antithetic pairs, often flanking a central quatrefoil.

8If skyphoi with a single bird metope are altogether foreign to Attica, they are not at all common elsewhere; yet their distribution is interesting. With the example from Veii it is worth comparing a large fragment from Al Mina (Fig. 1 b), hitherto unpublished24, in the Museum of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge, not least for the dotted lozenge above the handle.

9Likewise the well-known skyphos from Narce (Fig. 1 d)25 has a close counterpart in the Hadjiprodhromou collection in Famagusta, said to come from Old Paphos (Fig. 1 f)26; both have quartered lozenges in the field. Another skyphos, also from Paphos, is in the British Museum (Fig. 1 e)27; this has stars instead of lozenges, but the dots below the bird’s beak are repeated on the reverse side of the Tarquinia skyphos (Fig. 1 c), and in general the birds on these two vessels are very similar. Yet another skyphos of this class is said to come from Maroni in Cyprus28, with dot rosettes as the filling ornament.

10Typologically the latest in the group are those where the bands round the lip have been replaced by dots or dashes. No provenance is known for another skyphos (Fig. 1 h) in the Museum of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge29; to judge from the loose rendering of the bird, it should be one of the very latest. Another late example is from Capua grave 248 (Fig. 1 g), which Dr Johannowsky has placed at the end of his IB phase, roughly coinciding with the end of Veii II A30.

11I suspect that all these one-bird skyphoi are Euboean, or close imitations of EuEu-boean; this suspicion is based on the familiar Euboean formula or bird plus lozenge, the far-flung distribution, and the fabric of those pieces in London, Cambridge, and Cyprus which I have examined. This view may seem rash, since no certain examples have yet been published from the Euboean homeland31. Yet one must remember that, for this period, the material so far found at Eretria and Lefkandi is confined to fragmentary pottery from the settlements; many pieces show bird metopes, but very few complete designs can be reconstructed.

12The Euboeans, then, may have been the first Greeks to paint birds on their drinking vessels; but this is not to say that they invented the bird metope. Here, as on other occasions, they were adaptors rather than creative innovators. I have left on one side the skyphos from Tarquinia (Fig. 1 c)32, and its unpublished counterparts from Delos33, Pithecusae34, and Eretria35; these differ from the rest of the group in that the metopes are flanked by horizontal lines, in a manner slightly reminiscent of the Thapsos-type skyphoi from Corinth. The same idea is applied to the two bird metopes on the hydria36 from the same Tarquinian cemetery which produced the skyphos. Here, at last, we can see a point of contact with the Attic sequence, where exactly the same composition recurs on the shoulders of various pouring vessels, all from well-documented grave groups in Athens. A plump oinochoe (Fig. 2 b) comes from the fill of Agora Well Κ37, a small deposit in which every vessel is unusual, but the general impression is transitional from MG II to LG I. Two other oinochoai are from Kerameikos grave 31 (Fig. 2 a)38 and Odos Kriezi grave 26 (Fig. 2 c)39, where the other offerings are of predominantly MG II character; the Kriezi grave also contained a transitional skyphos with a short meander between quatrefoil metopes, but the oinochoe was found resting on a clay tripod stand decorated in the MG manner, with meanders and multiple zigzags. I had previously put these one-metope oinochoai at the beginning of LG I40; but with the new evidence it seems quite likely that they begin well back in the previous phase, at a time when experiments of all kinds were being tried out in the Athenian Potters’ Quarter for the first time; and this particular experiment, so it seems, was quickly taken over by the Euboeans and applied to their skyphoi. So, in absolute terms, the first bird skyphoi might well go back a decade or two before the initial date of Attic LG, which I put around 760.

13This particular composition has an added interest, in that it also provides a link with the leading Euboean vase painter of the next generation. We see it again on the shoulder of a miniature hydria, combined with several new ideas: the grazing animals, the check pattern, the blobs with tangents, and the quatrefoils on the side of the neck. This hydria is the ornamental handle of the huge lid which fits on to the great Cesnola krater, first attributed to Attica soon after its discovery, and then to Naxos by Kondoleon; but Dr Buchner41 and I42 have found independent reasons for re-assigning it, without the slightest doubt, to a Euboean workshop. This is not the place to trouble you with a detailed repetition of our arguments: in brief, I was guided by the close correspondence of detail with recent finds from Lefkandi, Eretria, and — in this case Chalcis; while Dr Buchner, pursuing the affinities of Pithecusan pottery in the Euboean style, was constantly finding his closest parallels on one part or another of this enormous masterpiece. Indeed, almost every feature of its ornament appears somewhere in the West, whether on Euboean exports or — more frequently — on local imitations made in Pithecusae43 or elsewhere. Furthermore, the ovoid shape seems to have inspired, the local olla from Pontecagnano grave 53844, and. is also the ancestor of the much later lion amphora from Pithecusae grave 100045. Again, the idea of a large conical lid crowned by a miniature vase — originally an Attic notion — is seen again on the newly-published krater from Grosseto46, with a small skyphos instead of the hydria. Professor Canciani has with good reason attributed this vase to the Cesnola workshop, believing it to be an import; it repeats much of the linear repertoire found on the name-piece — check pattern, octofoils, blobs with tangents, columns of hatched lozenges — which the Cesnola painter himself chose out of the much larger Attic repertoire to decorate his large pots. Furthermore, vessels like this Grosseto krater must have played a significant part in communicating this rather narrow repertoire to the imitators who were responsible for the Bisenzio style47. In his figured themes, however, the Cesnola painter is much more original; although his style remains close to Attic work of about 750, the central scene on his name-piece occurs here for the first time in Geometric art. The revival of the «sacred tree» theme, not seen in Greece since the Mycenaean period, is probably explained by frequent contacts between Euboea and Cyprus, where the great krater was sent. We now have the complementary evidence of Cypriot imports in LG contexts at Eretria48; and I should not be surprised if the barrel-vase, another Cypriot notion, came to the West through this painter’s influence. The Pithecusan adaptations of the sacred tree, with slender hatched leaves, are well known; and there are also Pithecusan versions of the horse with manger and double axe, and the grazing horses with birds under their bellies.

14Dr Buchner has called the Cesnola krater «a veritable compendium»49 it shows how a single artist, with more imagination than most, can completely dominate a local Geometric school. I believe that he created the Euboean LG style, just as the parent Attic LG style was created by his older contemporary, the Dipylon Master. If influence is to be measured in geographical terms, the Cesnola painter is second to none. Reflections of his work are to be seen in every port of call visited by Euboean traders, from Etruria to Al Mina; and, nearer his home, we are coming to realise the profound impact which his style had on neighbouring lands — Boeotia, Thessaly, the Cyclades, and especially the settlement of Zagora on Andros50. No less striking is the temporal extent of his influence, which lasted until the end of the century. In the absence of any new creative impulse, his figured and linear repertoire was repeated, adapted, and debased by his pupils and successors at home, and by his colonial imitators; his style was gradually diluted by the addition of looser motifs like large hollow lozenges and thick vertical wavy lines. Indeed we can see the beginning of this decline on his own later work — for example, the small hydria in Chalcis51 which may have been his home town. The old precision has been lost, the sacred tree is more cursively rendered; but what is especially interesting is that his metopal system has moved with the times. The three-metope composition, with birds flanking a central quatrefoil, corresponds to the design of many Attic drinking vessels of the 740’s and 730’s52. A contemporary class of Euboean skyphoi was made under their influence, presumably while the one-metope skyphos was beginning to pass out of fashion. On the Euboean skyphoi the quatrefoil is sometimes replaced by a lozenge, as on an example from Paphos53. And there is now a preference for a tall lip, usually decorated with a row of double or triple circles — another idea occurring on the contemporary vessels of Cyprus, and perhaps adopted from them54. This class also has the wide distribution55 in East and West that we have come to expect of Euboean skyphoi, and some of the contexts are of chronological sigsignificance: Al Mina levels 8 and 9, and the lower deposit at Aetos in Ithaca. In the West, the two fragments from Castelluccio in Sicily are of this type, and cannot be far in time from the foundation of the first Sicilian colonies; related to them also is the fragment of a krater from Naxos, recently published by Dr Pelagatti56.

15Before we leave the Cesnola Workshop, we should briefly consider the problems of Euboean birds. On minor vases the painters were content with the usual LG marshbird, hatched, and with tail pointing downwards. But on the most ambitious works there seems to have been a deliberate attempt to avoid the banal. On the Cesnola krater itself there are at least six different variations, but the favourite one is a grazing bird in silhouette. The wing stands out a little way from the body in a gentle convex curve, and small feathers are indicated57. This grazing bird reappears, but with hatching, on a cutaway-mouth jug from Lefkandi58; and also on the neck of an oinochoe from Eretria, without the wing59. Within the Cesnola workshop it gave rise to a much bolder stylization, showing the bird in flight, both wings outstretched: there is a careful rendering, with hatching, on a fragmentary krater from Vrokastro in East Crete, and a more summary rendering in silhouette on the rim fragments of a krater from Al Mina60.

16Then there is an alternative version which seems to have no connection with the Cesnola workshop, showing the wing bent at an angle, and hatched in double outline; it accompanies the Euboeans wherever they go, and there are examples from Eretria, Chalcis (unpublished), Al Mina (on a local Bichrome sherd), and Canale in Calabria, on local amphorae made under strong Euboean influence61. There are also Subgeo. metric renderings from Pithecusae (on exhibition) and, of course, Etruria. This is a remarkably varied collection, and it would be pleasant to think that in this field, at least, the Euboeans had invented an entirely new type; yet there is a possible prototype in an extraordinary flying bird with two bent wings, seen from above, on one of the earliest Athenian Dipylon kraters62. One would like to know more about the relation between these various types: contexts would appear to show that Euboean bent wings are later than curved wings, or it may be that the two versions represent two different centres in Euboea, the Cesnola workshop being the origin of the curved wings. On our limited evidence at present, it is difficult to decide between these two alternatives.

17So far I have been discussing the period before the foundation of Syracuse, and the first generation of Pithecusae and Cumae. I shall return in due course to the problems of the latest Euboean Geometric; but before we leave this «protocolonial» generation there is one Corinthian problem to be considered.

18In contrast to the rapid increase in our knowledge of Euboean, our understanding of Corinthian remains virtually static. After a century of excavations at Corinth, pottery of the second half of the eighth century is still poorly represented in its place of origin. This is especially true of the shapes with the finest fabric and the finest painting, i.e. the kotylai, the globular aryballoi, the conical lekythoi-oinochoai, and any shape with early experiments in an Orientalizing style. Indeed, Carl Roebuck has made the reasonable suggestion63 that fine Corinthian pottery during this period was made for export; such a theory would be consistent with Strabo’s statement that the ruling Bacchiad oligarchy, who must have seized power in the middle of the eighth century, were fearless in reaping the fruits of commerce64. In any case I think we should cease to worry about the virtual absence from Corinth of complete categories like the Thapsos class, whose fabric and style are perfectly consistent with a Corinthian origin. Certainly, the abnormal proportion of exports among the fine pottery demands a historical explanation, and they may well have been an «export drive». However, other factors to be considered are the burial customs at home, and of course the hazards of excavations. In the North Cemetery, published by the late Rodney Young, there are a number of LG burials; but many of them are without any offerings at all, no grave contains more than one pot, and these pots do not include any of the fine ware for which Corinth was finding customers all over the Greek world. Indeed, so scanty are the offerings that we cannot even be sure whether the sequence of burials continues without break into the early seventh century; the EPC period is represented only by a krater with dancing women65, imported from Argos. It is easy to suppose that only poor people were buried here, and to hope that one day the excavators may discover a richly furnished Corinthian cemetery of the late eighth century. Personally I have my doubts. There is, in fact, a rich plot of six graves, all of the middle of the century, in the central area later occupied by the Corinthian Agora66: the offerings consist of gold earrings, finger-rings, and hair spirals; a bronze bowl; bronze pins of enormous length and extremely sophisticated design; but — apart from one very early kotyle with a meander — the pots are all handmade, and — once again — no grave contains more than one. So at present it seems as though it was not the Corinthian custom, as it certainly was in Athens, to make finely decorated pottery especially for funerary use; and if this were so, we could more readily understand why the best Corinthian potters concentrated their efforts on small shapes suitable for export. Be that as it may, the Corinthian homeland cannot help us very far in working out the relative chronology of the local style. The well deposits, like those of Athens, have too wide a chronological range to be of much use, and so we must fall back on typology.

19Using typological criteria, we may outline the main development of the standard drinking vessels through the first two-thirds of the eighth century. We begin with the Corinthian counterpart67 of the precolonial chevron skyphoi, datable to the early eighth century by reference to the Attic sequence. From here onwards we notice the suppression of the articulated lip, which transforms the skyphos into the earliest type of hemispherical kotyle (skyphos in French); the process is complete with the emergence of the Aetos 666 kotyle68, and it is at this point that most of us would put the transition from MG to LG. At the same time the shape is deepened, and with a marked improvement in the fabric the walls become much finer. Henceforth the progression is clear, thanks to the numerous exports in the West, and especially to the useful associations in many of the Pithecusan graves. Eventually the Aetos 666 type gives way to the heron kotyle69, for which an absolute date is suggested by the foundation of Syracuse; and since the heron kotyle was also exported to Attica, it can easily be correlated with the Attic sequence. Much less clear, however, are the immediate antecedents of the Aetos 666 type. There is, to be sure, a transitional form, the proto-kotyle70; it has already lost the firmly articulated lip which distinguishes the skyphos, but there is still a slight straightening of the profile near the rim; and the combination of shallow shape and heavy fabric should place this class still within MG II. As far as I am aware, no original proto-kotyle has been found in the West, although the type may possibly have inspired some of the earliest local imitations in Pithecusae. In Greece the distribution, of proto-kotylai is restricted to Corinth, Perachora, Ithaca and Thera; but nowhere are the contexts at all useful for relative chronology71. The sanctuary deposits, and the collective tombs of Thera, give us no help, nor do the occurrences in the Corinthian North Cemetery where the proto-kotyle is never accompanied by any other painted pottery. What is worse, neither the proto-kotyle nor the Aetos 666 type were exported to Attica, so that neither type can be related directly by context to the Attic sequence.

20There is, however, one small cemetery which may tell us something useful about the relations between Attic and Corinthian just before 750. This is the small plot of graves at Ayioi Theodoroi, the ancient Crommyon, on the Aegean shore of the Isthmus. So far, the site has not been fully published, and the finds are only partly illustrated. Almost all the pottery is Corinthian, of the MG II phase. The burial customs are very similar to those in Corinth, and seem to confirm that Crommyon at this time was already part of the Corinthian state. The only difference is that the people of Crommyon were more generous in the number of pots placed in the graves. Grave 372 contained nineteen in all, of which four are illustrated: three Corinthian MG II vases (an amphora and two lekythoi-oinochoai) and a large oinochoe which is an Attic import of Attic LG I a; although the style has nothing to do with the Dipylon Workshop, nevertheless the stiff rendering of the grazing horses and the experimental use of metopes are typical of that stage. One assumes, then, that Corinthian MG II lasted well into the early years of Attic LG I, and this synchronism is confirmed by two other large Corinthian vases decorated in a dark-ground MG manner, with the addition of square bird-metopes borrowed from the earliest stage of Attic LG I: a globular pyxis from the lower deposit at Aetos in Ithaca73, and a belly-handled amphora in grave 18 of the Corinthian North Cemetery74, found with an oinochoe in the MG II manner — with a zigzag panel and a chevron zone. Here we see the last symptoms of Attic influence on the Corinthian Geometric series, since the square bird-metopes vanish as soon as the local LG style is formed. But to return to Ayioi Theodoroi: four graves, including no. 3, contain skyphoi75 with pronounced vertical lips offset from the body, but there is no sign of the kotyle or even of the proto-kotyle. And yet the figured Attic oinochoe can hardly be dated earlier than the 750’s; so we are driven to the conclusion that the proto-kotyle need not represent an essential stage in the development, but is rather the product of a particular workshop which did not happen to supply Crommyon. Skyphoi, meanwhile, were produced in the MG II manner until about 750, when they gave place to the Thapsos class at about the time when the Aetos 666 kotyle took over from the proto-kotyle; and from the evidence of Ayioi Theodoroi grave 3 we can see that there is no room before 750 for either the Thapsos class or for Aetos 666. After this grave there follows a period of some twenty-five years when no more direct correlations can be made between Attic and Corinthian, and the two styles diverge very widely indeed. Eventually the heron kotylai are exported to Attica, and one of the most useful associations is in Vari grave 276, with a figured Attic amphora by the Empedocles painter, about halfway through Attic LG II; and here, because of the wide diffusion of heron kotylai and related vases, we can get a glimpse of the Attic vase-painting which is about contemporary with the foundation of Syracuse.

21In the light of this discussion, a simplified time chart (Fig. 3) sets out the chronology of the three local schools which we have been considering, based largely on the common drinking vessels, and going down to c. 720. It remains true that the general conversion to a LG style occurred earlier in Athens than in any other centre; and this conversion followed a phase of lively artistic ferment, during which several new ideas were tried out for the first time. One such idea, the bird metope, was sporadically adopted in Corinth, and perhaps still earlier in Euboea, when the local MG styles still had a decade or two to run.

22As we pass into the late eighth century, chronological problems become less acute. From the viewpoint of the Greek homeland, the chief interest now shifts to the increasingly wide variety of centres now exporting pottery to the West. In some cases the quantity is minimal, certainly too little to prove commercial initiative: for example, the Argive sherds at Megara Hyblaea, and the Laconian at Taras. For Athens some trade, if only on a very limited scale, is attested by the SOS amphorae, which must have been containers in the first instance, whatever their secondary uses may have been in the West. There are also three Attic figured vases decorated with running dogs: a krater fragment from the Syracusan Agora, a one-piece oinochoe from Canale77, and a piece from a similar oinochoe from Pithecusae (on exhibition). All three are from the prolific workshop of Athens 897, and the shape of the oinochoai recurs in three more plain examples from the Pithecusan cemetery, fully coated in paint. Have we here another instance of random trade, the wide diffusion of a single cargo?

23Claims for Cycladic exports have been made in the fragments of circle-metope amphorae from Syracuse and Gela78 and the Subgeometric hydriai from Milazzo79; but these claims were made before the identification of Euboean pottery in the West, and may therefore need to be re-appraised. From Rhodes the most celebrated export is the Nestor kotyle from Pithecusae, but some steady commerce is implied by the large number of KW (Kreis-und-Wellenband) aryballoi with spaghetti ornament on the shoulder. «Semi-oriental» is the apt term applied to them by Dr Ridgway; the shape is one of several unguent forms made of Rhodian clay, but imitating oriental shapes, decoration, and techniques. The same reasoning which admits Greek resident potters in Etruria must allow Phoenician craftsmen living in Rhodes80.

24During the past decade there has been rapid progress in the exploration of the Achaean region of southern Italy, especially of Sybaris and its Oenotrian neighbours Amendolara and Francavilla. It would be surprising if the imported and colonial pottery from these sites showed no rapport at all with the LG style of the Achaean homeland, which is known from several useful grave groups of c. 70081. The decoration is in a diluted Corinthian manner, with light ornament widely spaced — as on some of the latest Thapsos-type skyphoi — and fine lines below; but many of the motifs are quite individual. Among the drinking vessels, kantharoi are preferred to skyphoi; they are larger and deeper than their Corinthian counterparts, and seldom carry anything more than a few reserved lines on a dark ground82. This shape is also popular in Elis and Ithaca, which to some extent share a common style with Achaea; and in southern Italy its presence has been noted by Professor de La Genière in the cemeteries of Amendolara and Sala Consilina83. Perhaps this favourite drinking vessel of the Achaeans is also represented among the oldest deposits found at Sybaris84, although it may not be easy to recognize from small fragments because of its lack of decoration.

25But all these local schools are very poorly represented in the West, in comparison with the large amount of pottery in the Corinthian and Euboean styles. Here I shall concentrate on the Euboean, where most of the problems lie: for the Corinthian consists largely of imports, and is therefore easily matched with pottery from the homeland. What is more, the task is simplified because in the homeland we are dealing with a single centre, Corinth itself. On the other hand, the western pottery in the Euboean manner comprises a large proportion of local imitations made in Pithecusae by colonists, made in Etruria by resident Greeks or by hellenized Etruscans, and made elsewhere by other native peoples — for example at Canale and at various places in Sicily. And, we ask ourselves, imitations inspired by which centre in Euboea? From the fragmentary pottery found at Eretria and Lefkandi we can now learn a certain amount about the local settlement repertoire, but we are still very much in the dark about Chalcis; and the cemetery material is confined to the rather meagre yield from two burial grounds at Eretria. There, as at Corinth, one cannot help being slightly pessimistic about future prospects, in view of the extraordinary scarcity of pottery in the rich aristocratic cemetery recently found by Swiss excavators near the west gate; it may be that the Eretrians, too, preferred to honour their distinguished dead with more spectacular offerings than finely decorated pottery. So, when we view the many divergences between the homeland and the West, there are three factors to be borne in mind: the scarcity of grave offerings at home, our present ignorance of Chalcis, and the local character of colonial work from Pithecusae, which had had plenty of time to diverge from the parent Euboean style — wherever in Euboea that may have been.

26With these reservations in mind, I end with a few comparisons which may help to keep our pessimism within limits. I have already mentioned the lion amphora from Pithecusae grave 100085; even if it is local work, it is distantly related to the Cesnola krater not only in shape, but also in the columns of lozenges framing the central scene; whereas the heavy supporting ornament (wavy verticals, elongated blobs with tangents, broad bands below) is typical of the later generation; and so is the roaring lion, perhaps copied from gold bands. Closely comparable is a casual find in the Athens National Museum said to be from Eretria, and this provenance can no longer be doubted86. Furthermore, we can now distinguish more clearly the Euboean element in one class of Boeotian Subgeometric amphorae87.

27Secondly, there is the continuation of Attic influence on Euboean figured drawing. This may seem paradoxical, in view of the rarity of Attic exports in the late eighth century. Nevertheless the Eretrian cemetery by the sea has produced a large figured amphora with warriors and chariots88; it has been called Eretrian89, but I am convinced that it is Attic because of its clay, and its very close resemblance to the Athenian Subdipylon group first assembled by Jean M. Davison90. A local amphora fragment from Pithecusae91, showing a procession of warriors, echoes the same manner, presumably conveyed by the continuation of Atticizing imports from Euboea. Another image borrowed from the Attic figured repertoire is that of the cavalier, perhaps through a wish to do honour to the horse-owning aristocrats of Euboean stock. The Attic prototype is seen on the reverse side of the well-known ship krater in London92. Euboean versions appear on fragments from Vrokastro and Zagora, both within the orbit of the Cesnola workshop93; later imitations in the West include a piece from Pithecusae94, a stand of Oriental type from Cerveteri95, and — perhaps latest of all — the procession of horsemen from the acropolis of Cumae96. There is a similar correspondence in the Attic and Euboean renderings of women, wearing cross-hatched dresses and with their long hair stylized in the same manner: on the Euboean side, good examples are seen in the dancing women on the amphora neck from Eretria shown to us by Professor Kahil, and also in the mysterious women on the neck of the barrel-jug from Pithecusae97.

28Finally there is the question of the Corinthian element in the Euboean style, which begins much earlier in the West than at home; this is surely because Corinthian exports were reaching Pithecusae and other western sites in considerable quantity from c. 750 onwards, whereas in Euboea they are hardly known before EPC, and not frequent even then98. In this category the most widely dispersed class is the imitations of kotylai with two rows of stiff-legged birds, present at Eretria, and also at Al Mina and Pithecusae where they appear to be Euboean imports. Yet the corresponding closed shapes in the colonial cemeteries have yet to find any good parallels in Euboea, perhaps because they are all Pithecusan imitations; I refer especially to those globular aryballoi and other slow-pouring shapes which have in common a motif unknown in Euboea — a herring-bone pattern on the handle99. Otherwise there is a fairly close parallel for the aryballoi from the west gate cemetery at Eretria100, whose handle has the usual ladder pattern. Conversely, on the shoulders of Eretrian aryballoi, one of the most characteristic motifs of this time is the crab; indeed, Dr Descoeudres has distinguished an Eretrian Crab painter101, drawing attention to the relevance of the crab as an Eretrian emblem, later applied to Eretrian coins. If crabs do not figure in the West, does this mean that, by the time of the globular aryballoi, the Eretrians had lost the initiative in the West to their Chalcidian rivals? From literary sources there is some support for this view; but we shall have no way of testing it from archaeological finds until Chalcis is systematically excavated.

29In conclusion: when speaking about the problems of eighth-century pottery from the Greek angle, one cannot help devoting most of the time to Euboea. Because the material is so fragmentary and so widely dispersed, the study of Euboean Geometric is both tantalizing and frustrating; nevertheless, because of recent excavations in Italy and in Euboea, in no other local Geometric school has our knowledge progressed so rapidly during the last generation.