Greek Society in the context of "Pottery of ancient Greece"

⭐ In the context of Pottery of ancient Greece, Greek Society is considered to be best understood through the study of pottery shards because they reveal information about


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⭐ Core Definition: Greek Society

Ancient Greece (Ancient Greek: áŒ™Î»Î»ÎŹÏ‚, romanized: HellĂĄs) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (c. 600 AD), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states and communities. Prior to the Roman period, most of these regions were officially unified only once under the Kingdom of Macedon from 338 to 323 BC. In Western history, the era of classical antiquity was immediately followed by the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine period.

Three centuries after the decline of Mycenaean Greece during the Bronze Age collapse, Greek urban poleis began to form in the 8th century BC, ushering in the Archaic period and the colonization of the Mediterranean Basin. This was followed by the age of Classical Greece, from the Greco-Persian Wars to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, and which included the Golden Age of Athens and the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. The unification of Greece by Macedon under Philip II and subsequent conquest of the Achaemenid Empire by Alexander the Great spread Hellenistic civilization across the Middle East. The Hellenistic period is considered to have ended in 30 BC, when the last Hellenistic kingdom, Ptolemaic Egypt, was annexed by the Roman Republic.

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👉 Greek Society in the context of Pottery of ancient Greece

Pottery, due to its relative durability, comprises a large part of the archaeological record of ancient Greece, and since there is so much of it (over 100,000 painted vases are recorded in the Corpus vasorum antiquorum), it has exerted a disproportionately large influence on our understanding of Greek society. The shards of pots discarded or buried in the 1st millennium BC are still the best guide available to understand the customary life and mind of the ancient Greeks. There were several vessels produced locally for everyday and kitchen use, yet finer pottery from regions such as Attica was imported by other civilizations throughout the Mediterranean, such as the Etruscans in Italy. There were a multitude of specific regional varieties, such as the South Italian ancient Greek pottery.

Throughout these places, various types and shapes of vases were used. Not all were purely utilitarian; large Geometric amphorae were used as grave markers, kraters in Apulia served as tomb offerings and Panathenaic Amphorae seem to have been looked on partly as objets d'art, as were later terracotta figurines. Some were highly decorative and meant for elite consumption and domestic beautification as much as serving a storage or other function, such as the krater with its usual use in diluting wine.

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In this Dossier
LINKED FROM (PARENTS)
← Pottery of ancient Greece
LINKS TO (CHILDREN)
Ancient Greek language → Romanization of Ancient Greek → Mediterranean → Greek Dark Ages → Classical antiquity → Polis → Greece in the Roman era → Kingdom of Macedon → Western world → Early Middle Ages → Byzantine → Mycenaean Greece → Bronze Age collapse → Poleis → Archaic Greece → Greek colonisation → Classical Greece → Greco-Persian Wars → Alexander the Great → Golden Age of Athens → Peloponnesian War → Classical Athens → Sparta → Rise of Macedon → Philip II of Macedon → Achaemenid Empire → Hellenistic period → Ptolemaic Egypt → Roman Republic →