Some Aegean Reactions to the Chronological Debate in the Southern Levant

Abstract

This paper presents an Aegean angle on the current discussion about Early Iron Age chronology in the eastern half of the Mediterranean. Although lacking any evidence for absolute dates, the Aegean possesses a sound relative sequence, firmly based on several hundred closed groups, in single graves, of whole pots; these show a clear development evident in gradual changes of shape and of painted decoration. These small 'chronological calls' help to illustrate the pace of stylistic development in the various regional schools of Protogeometric and Geometric pottery.

Early Greek exports to five sites in the Southern Levant—Samaria, Megiddo, Tel Rehov, Tel Hadar and Tel Dor—offer some hope of pegging the Greek sequence to reliable absolute dates obtained from Near Eastern historical records. Even if the quality of these correlations may sometimes be far from ideal, their cumulative evidence nevertheless produces an internally coherent picture for the Greek relative sequence. And, when one is face to face with a choice between the 'high' and 'low' chronologies currently being advanced in the southern Levant, the latter alternative offers by far the more credible pace of stylistic change in the Aegean.