The Geometric period in the Aegean: two dates for one name

The frame

The Met's timeline for ancient Greece, 1000 B.C.-1 A.D., gives "Geometric period, ca. 900-700 B.C.", followed by "Archaic period, ca. 700-480 B.C.". Its entries for these two centuries are few: ca. 776 B.C., "The Olympic games are founded"; ca. 750 B.C., "according to tradition", Homer composes the Iliad and the Odyssey; and from 750 B.C. the Greeks establish colonies in southern Italy and Sicily, the first known being founded by Greeks from Euboea at Pithekousai on Ischia. The page has no entry on Geometric pottery or art. Source 1.

Boundaries and overlaps

The start of the period depends on the source. The Greek ministry's page on the Kerameikos writes "Geometric (1000-700 BC)"; the Met writes ca. 900 B.C.; the Warsaw table ends "Proto Geometric 1050/1000-900" at 900 and divides the Geometric into "Early Geometric 900-850", "Middle Geometric I 850-830", "Middle Geometric II 830-770", "Late Geometric I 770-730" and "Late Geometric II 730-700". The site keeps the Met's ca. 900 B.C. and says so whenever a source uses 1000 BC. The end, ca. 700 B.C., is common to all three. Sources 2, 1, 3.

On this site

Three articles are placed here. "Olympia: a valley that became a sanctuary of Zeus" is listed for the games, held every four years "beginning in 776 B.C." in UNESCO's words. "Delphi: the beginnings of the sanctuary and the oracle" is listed for the development of the sanctuary and oracle, which UNESCO says began in the 8th century BC; it is also listed on the Archaic page. "The Kerameikos: a cemetery that kept growing" is listed for the increase in tombs in the Geometric and for the Dipylon Oinochoe, dated by its source to the second half of the eighth century BC. No museum object of the Geometric period has been documented on the site yet. Sources 4, 5, 2.