Figure 17 Protogeometric amphora from the Kerameikos cemetery in Athens; height 39.9 cm, ca. 975 BC.
Athens, Kerameikos, Inv. 1073.
Source: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Athens. Photo by H. Wagner.
These tendencies, namely a desire to experiment and an improvement in technical assurance, are taken a
step farther in the period known as the Geometric, from approximately 900 to 750 BC. It is especially in
Attica, the region in which the city of Athens is located and where the finest potter’s clay in Greece can
be found, that we see the flourishing of Geometric pottery. We saw in the pottery of the Submycenaean and
Protogeometric Periods the limited, and tentative, use of geometric shapes to serve as painted decoration;
in the Geometric Period the use of abstract geometric shapes runs wild, completely covering the surface
of the vessel with, sometimes, dozens of bands of small triangles, lozenges, angular meander patterns, and
other regular devices, in a restless but controlled obsession to reduce the exterior of the vase to a
labyrinthine organization of chaos. The surfaces of these vessels are sometimes imposingly large. The
AMPHORA illustrated here (figure 18), like many of the vases created in Geometric Athens, served as
the marker for a tomb. It comes from the very end of the Geometric Period and is impressive not only for
its detailed and meticulous pattern of decorations but for its sheer size; at over one and a half meters in
height, it is likely to have been nearly as tall as the woman whose grave it marked. A vessel of this size
signifies considerable technical skill and great self-assurance on the part of the Athenian potter who made
it, as well as a degree of prosperity on the part of the family of the deceased, who commissioned the
vessel for the very purpose of advertising that prosperity and asserting its own importance.