Study Questions: Biers, Chapter 4: “The Dark Ages”
Due in Class Wednesday, 2 September, 2009
Detail of a Hydria from Lefkandi (Skoubris
tomb 51), with confronting archers; around 1000 BCE.) Comments by Jeff
Hurwit.
0. Why are there no Linear B tablets found in Dark Age strata?
1. What are four (4) general characteristics of the Greek Dark Ages?
2. Why is this period also called the “Iron Age”? What examples
of iron work do you find in this chapter?
3. How did people in the Dark Ages
dispose of their deceased, and how was this different from Mycenaean
custom?
4. Where is Ionia, and how did its population
change during the Dark Ages?
5. What is the problem of the “continuity of Iron Age Greece with
Bronze Age Greece”? Where do we find continuity?
6. What was “the political and social structure of Greece”
in this period, and how was this different fom Mycenaean culture?
7. Why did the people in the Dark Ages not use megalithic architecture?
What was their architecture like, and how did it differ from Mycenaean architecture?
8. On what basis did excavators identify the cult area in Karphi?
9. Why is Karphi called a “refugee settlement”?
10. What is the difference between an apsidal
and oval floor plan?
11. Why do you suppose a loutrophoros
was used both “to hold water for a ritual bath before marriage
and often as a funeral monument for unmarried women”?
12. What is “Sub-Mycenaean” pottery, and how was it decorated?
What shapes did it have?
13. Compare the Sub-Mycenaean pots shown in figure 4.7 with the Protogeometric
shapes in figure 4.8. What can you conclude about continuity of Iron Age
Greece with Bronze Age Greece? How do we account for the similarities?
14. How do archaeologists account for the “taller and more slender”
shapes of some amphoras in the Protogeometric period?
15. How did Protogeometric artists
use the compass and multiple brush?
16. How did the shape of the pot affect the designs that were painted
thereon?
17. How do the terra cotta idols from Karphi show continuity from the
Bronze Age?
18. How do we know that people in the Dark Ages wore a garment called
the peplos?
19. What is so unusual about the Centaur
from Lefkandi, and why does Biers say that “facile explanations
are likely to be contradicted by the spade”?
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