The author might characterize his book “somewhat unconventional” (p. 20), but it is much more than a welcome contribution to the study of seventh-century Attica and its Protoattic style. The issue of the interaction of pots with people is central for Arrington, who offers an inspiring new approach of cultural change beyond “orientalizing” and any elite hegemonies, focusing instead on the margins and the marginalized.
The introductory Chapter 1 sets the areas of focus and the aims of this book. The use of the term “margins” is explained as well as the urge for a regional approach of the cultural interactions with the Near East with Attica chosen as a suitable case study. This chapter also offers a definition of style, a very brief historical overview of seventh-century Attica and of its pottery production, known as Protoattic.
A historiography of Protoattic is provided in the second chapter. Beginning from the 19th century, Arrington sketches how scholars treated vases of this “odd” style and explains how, despite the accumulation of new finds, the focus was placed on the high-quality pieces with figure decoration with “humble” products ignored. For a long period, this “canon” had negatively affected how research viewed not only these objects, but more importantly this period. The last decades saw the use of pottery for the reconstruction of social history with scholarly interest moving from production to consumption of vases. Objects no longer played a main role in the analysis, while attention was paid only on the context of their final deposition. Alternatively, the author seeks to revisit all contexts of Protoattic pottery and to approach the interaction between pots and persons over their life history. Arrington returns to the vases themselves to elucidate subjectivity in various social settings and promises “a space for the margins and the marginalized” (p. 61) with Phaleron playing a key role in this direction.
Chapter 3 examines the relationships of Attica with the wider Mediterranean with the author using the concept of “horizons” while applying network analysis. Arrington discusses both the “eastern” and the “western” horizons, arguing for the formative role that particularly Italy and Sicily played for Attica. The western connections are examined through the mobility of both objects and people. Except for the distribution of the SOS amphorae, there is evidence that artisans have moved from Attica to the West already since the second half of the eighth century BC (Timpone della Motta, Incoronata). Corinth, Euboea and Aigina played the role of the meso-scale intermediaries for Attica, which, however, remained at the margins of the seventh-century Mediterranean networks. In this chapter, Arrington highlights not only the catalytic role of the objects as integral part of the analyzed connectivity, but also that of the artists in the development of intercultural connections.
The section on the “horizon of antiquity” does not seem well integrated into this chapter and has some weak points. The author attempts to reveal the importance of the past for seventh-century Athenians as reflected on their interaction with Bronze Age tombs and tumuli or other architectural remains. The ‘Sacred House’ at the Academy should not have been included in the discussion of cult activity related to the past, since it is clear now that the architectural remains belong to residence(s) of a habitation nucleus active in the eighth and early seventh century BC.1 The case of the oval house in the Areopagus is also problematic and its cultic use remains largely debated.2
Chapter 4, combined with a catalogue of all the burials dating from the late eighth to the late seventh century (Table 1), offers an updated overview of the funerary record in Attica. Since the majority of Protoattic vases originate from the Attic cemeteries, the author attempts an in-depth analysis of the role of the vessels in seventh-century burial rites not limited to the time of their deposition.
Arrington rightly underlines the high degree of funerary variability at the time, despite the dominance of enchytrismoi and primary cremations. More importantly, he argues against “a static social order of agathoi and kakoi” and he reconstructs the seventh century as a period of “social instability and fluidity” (p. 145). In this social frame with the boundaries between the elite and the subelite being blur, the author places the emergence of the Protoattic style in the margins, represented by the Phaleron deceased. His suggestion is intriguing, and it will need to be revisited when the material from the necropolis is fully published.
The fifth chapter is dedicated to the artists and their styles. Moving beyond connoisseurship, Arrington focuses on the many individual “hands” to which the relatively small number of the known Protoattic vases have been attributed. The variety noted in the production is related by the author with the horizontal mobility of painters who seem to have collaborated in groups or with different potters particularly for funerary commissions. The identified “workshops” seem to be the result of this mobility too rather than individual production centers with their personnel. Arrington illustrates how these interactions led to experimentation, the adoption of new ornaments, styles and techniques.
The symposion and the sanctuary are the two contexts chosen in Chapter 6 for examining the use of material culture in group activities and the role of objects in the formation of subjectivity. Despite the lack of concrete evidence for symposia in the seventh century, Arrington choses and discusses particular Protoattic vases due to their shape, mythological scenes or inscriptions in a sympotic context. For the author the “Orient” played a minor role in these practices until late in the seventh and the sixth centuries, when Lydia rises as the main source for the adopted customs.
The pot-people interaction is once more chosen by the author for examining cult activity in seventh-century Attica. Particular types of vases, like the loutrophoroi from the Sanctuary of the Nymph on the south slope of the Acropolis, are seen as personal expressions of the individual worshippers, while adapting to the conformity of ritual and social norms.
The concepts, frameworks and results of the present study are summarized in Chapter 7. In this concluding chapter, the author raises the question of the applicability of his arguments beyond Attica and the seventh century, putting again an emphasis on the importance of the artisans’ mobility for a better understanding of the connectivity of Greeks with the rest of the Mediterranean.
At the end, Arrington returns to the Phaleron, and he expresses his fear that this extensive cemetery, part of which lay today under the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, “will return once again to the margins” (p. 226). Since the publication of this book, the study of this extraordinary cemetery has greatly progressed. Its history is long, not only limited to the seventh century, and both the mass burials and the individual graves reveal interesting life-stories of the individual deceased, offering insights into the social complexities in Attica beyond specific historical events.
The final publication of the data from the Phaleron cemetery will definitely benefit from this well-illustrated book, which succeeded into putting on center stage larger groups of people through their interaction with the objects.
Notes:
1 Alexandra Alexandridou, A. Sacred or Profane? Interpreting Late Geometric Edifices in Proximity to Burials in Attica, in: I. S. Lemos / A. Tsingarida (eds.), Constructing Social Identities in Early Iron Age and Archaic Greece, Études d’archéologie 12 (Brussels 2017), pp. 43–72; Alexandra Alexandridou / M. Chountasi, Memoryscapes in Early Iron Age Athens: the ‘Sacred House’ at the Site of the Academy, in: C. Graml / A. Doronzio / V. Capozzoli (eds.), Rethinking Athens Before the Persian Wars, Munich 2019, pp. 115–130.
2 F. van den Eijnde / M. H. Laughy, The Areopagus Oval Building Reconsidered, in: A. Mazarakis Ainian / A. Alexandridou / X. Charalambidou (eds.), Regional Stories: Towards a New Perception of the Early Greek World. An International Symposium in Honour of Professor Jan Bouzek, University of Thessaly, Volos, 18–21 June 2015 (Volos 2017), pp. 229–248.