Athens and Attica in the Early Iron Age and the Early Archaic period have received increased scholarly attention over the last few years.[1] A comprehensive study of Athens and Attica in the entire Archaic period, combining the results of this renewed research and that available on the history and the many categories of archaeological data pertaining to the 6th and early 5th c. BCE, however, was still missing, and Robin Osborne’s volume is thus very welcome. It is published as the (chronologically first, numerically) second volume of the new Oxford History of the Archaic Greek World (OHAGW) series, planned to provide 22 regional case studies in seven volumes. Its editors, Paul Cartledge and Paul Christesen, have found the perfect author for the integrated approach they call “archaeohistory” (p. xxxiv)—Osborne underlines the necessity to combine material evidence and written sources (p. 3). In one important point, though, he diverges from the framework the OHAGW envisions (cf. p. xl): although announcing that his account will begin around 800 BCE (p. 2), Osborne frequently includes sections on the situation “before 800”, effectively sketching the evidence available for the entire Early Iron Age (especially in chapter 4). This is fortunate, since defining the Archaic period as beginning at some point in the 8th c. BCE onwards seems problematic, and a break within the Middle Geometric period would have likewise been unwise. Osborne’s chronological approach to what we could call “Athens and Attica in the Making”[2] makes a great deal of sense.
Following the standards of the OHAGW, Osborne successively works his way through the sources (a short history of excavations as well as the textual sources), the natural setting, material culture (discussing settlement patterns and organization, burial practices and especially pottery at considerable depth), political history, legal history, diplomatic history and external relations (including the Persian Wars and military organization), economic history, familial and demographic history and education, social customs and institutions (mostly the symposion), religious customs and institutions, and cultural history (mostly sculpture), before drawing brief general conclusions. A very short guide to further reading, a brief gazetteer of mentioned sites referring the reader to the various maps, the bibliography and a helpful index round off the volume. The predefined structure of the book may puzzle those who read it cover to cover, as it, for example, disassociates pottery (ch. 4.5) from sculpture and minor arts (ch. 12.1–2), literary sources (ch. 2.2.2) from literature (ch. 12.3), and geography and vegetation (ch. 3) from agriculture (ch. 8.1).[3] This makes it difficult for Osborne to tell a coherent story, but frequent cross-references help to guide the reader, and those interested in specific topics in a variety of regions will undoubtedly profit from the peculiar structure of the book as soon as more volumes of the OHAGW are available.
The array of topics which Osborne skillfully and understandably—with few misunderstandings[4] and omissions of recent publications[5]—presents to a wide audience is too large to consider specifically here. What is most inspiring are his constant efforts to dovetail the various categories of evidence: to combine myths with settlement history, to present changes in styles and motives of painted vases as reflections of changing societal values. Even though Osborne may skate over some issues in which the integration of the written sources and the material evidence would have been promising (e.g. the dubious case of an “Old Agora”, p. 48, or of the end of figured and figural grave markers in the early 5th c. BCE, p. 75), his way of combining the various categories of data is exemplary, and his readings of the data are often inspiring, as is his effort to create narratives. Unfortunately, his skill in creating those narratives results in him rarely dealing with diverging opinions; these are sometimes casually rejected and often not even hinted at. For example, Osborne intriguingly, albeit very briefly suggests that the densification of settlement in Attica in the 8th century BCE indicates political unification (p. 33–35; unfortunately, not fully taking into account the wealth of data available from countless small rescue excavations all over Attica).[6] But as this resolves the question for him, other approaches to the genesis of the unity of Attica are not referred to.[7] Similarly, Osborne provides interesting suggestions about the background of “Solon’s reforms” (p. 138–145), but does not indicate that the historicity of “Solon’s” poems and laws is debated,[8] and that this has potentially disastrous consequences not only for any reconstruction of his reforms, but also for many other fields that Osborne discusses (legal history, military history, economic history, familial history, religion, etc.). Perhaps unsurprisingly, Osborne’s opinion that all the “Solonian” laws are indeed Solonian and belong to an extensive lawcode of the early 6th c. BCE results in him suggesting even a Drakonian lawcode (pp. 135, 143, 166), although other researchers have stressed that the undoubtedly Archaic laws we know from Greece all discuss very particular issues.[9] The (controversial) overall result that the community of Athens had already reached a high level of organization in the 7th c. BCE (p. 297) is, in any case, based on Osborne’s opinion on Drakon and Solon—and his interpretation (pp. 69, 138, 297) of the remains of mass executions (?) in the Phaleron cemetery in the third quarter of the 7th c. BCE (?).[10]
At least in the reviewer’s opinion, the frequent decision not to deal with diverging voices does not strengthen, but rather weakens Osborne’s grand picture. More importantly, it reduces his study’s value as a tool with which students and researchers new to Archaic Athens and Attica can gain an overview of the current state of research and the many discussions tied to it; the book in many parts presents less a general overview than an individual take on the subject. Osborne’s skills as a narrator, which are even more apparent when the somewhat incoherent predefined structure is taken into account, thus slightly undermine his book’s objective. All this notwithstanding, it is a book crammed with interesting ideas and a stimulating read even for those already very familiar with Archaic Athens and Attica. It is a worthy (chronologically) first volume of the OHAGW—the many perspectives of the series’ authors on the Archaic Greek world may well turn out to be as manifold as their objects of study.
Notes
[1] A. Doronzio, Athen im 7. Jahrhundert v. Chr. Räume und Funde der frühen Polis, Urban Spaces 6 (Berlin 2018); E. M. Dimitriadou, Early Athens: Settlements and Cemeteries in the Submycenaean, Geometric and Archaic Periods, Monumenta archaeologica 42 (Los Angeles 2019); C. Graml, A. Doronzio and V. Capozzoli (eds.), Rethinking Athens before the Persian Wars, Münchner Studien zur Alten Welt 17 (München 2020); J. Paga, Building Democracy in Late Archaic Athens (Oxford 2020); M. Rönnberg, Athen und Attika vom 11. Jh. v. Chr. zum frühen 6. Jh. v. Chr. Siedlungsgeschichte, politische Institutionalisierungs- und gesellschaftliche Formierungsprozesse, Tübinger Archäologische Forschungen 33 (Rahden 2021); N. T. Arrington, Athens at the Margins: Pottery and People in the Early Mediterranean World (Princeton 2021).
[2] Cf. R. Osborne, Greece in the Making, 1200–479 BC, 2nd ed. (London 2009).
[3] It likewise seems surprising that a chapter on architecture is missing; but this may be the author’s decision?
[4] For example, no Protogeometric material (p. 243) has been published from Agrieliki; the Athenian acropolis is not the only Attic site where dedications of large bronze tripods have been found (p. 248), and the dedication of bronzes at this site does not only commence in the late 8th c. BCE (p. 44); the earliest temple (‘telesterion’) at Eleusis dates not to the 7th c. BCE (pp. 249, 260), but to the 2nd quarter of the 6th c. BCE.
[5] For example, G. Sarcone, “Un grande tripode con Gorgone dall’Acropoli di Atene”, ASAtene 96, 2018, 9–33 has convincingly shown that the bronze sheet with a Gorgon from the Athenian acropolis was part of a tripod, and not a temple (pp. 248, 256); the major results of E. Sioumpara on the first Parthenon (cf. e.g. E. Sioumpara, “Constructing Monumentality at the Athenian Acropolis in the Early 6th Century B.C.”, in: Graml et al. (n. 1), 149–166, importantly add to Osborne’s view of the development of temples on the Athenian acropolis (pp. 255–258)—and have now with G. Sarcone, “Borea e Orizia sull’Acropoli di Atene: il frontone del Barbablù, le Grandi Panatenee e l’Ur-Parthenon”, ASAtene 100, 2022, 42–77, already sparked a reinterpretation of its figured decoration; discussion of the stimulating book by Paga (see n. 1) would have enriched Osborne’s discussions of the emergence of temples all over Attica in the Late Archaic period (pp. 260–263). Still unpublished are the new excavations revealing that the settlement of Lathouriza do not give us a “vivid picture of a late-eighth-century settlement” (p. 36), since the buildings in question are modern.
[6] The statement “how could such a growth in the archaeological visibility of settlements occur without raising political questions” (p. 35) revitalizes observations by A. M. Snodgrass, Archaic Greece: the Age of Experiment (London 1980) 24 f., but the growth rates which seem probable for 8th c. BCE Greece (p. 220; see also e.g. the discussion in S. C. Murray, The Collapse of the Mycenaean Economy. Imports, Trade, and Institutions 1300–700 BCE [Cambridge 2017] 214–246) hardly encourage that kind of argument.
[7] Cf. e.g. G. Anderson, The Athenian Experiment: Building an Imagined Political Community in Ancient Attica, 508–490 BC (Ann Arbor 2003); Paga (n. 1); Rönnberg (n. 1), 64–81.
[8] Cf. the preliminary synthesis in Rönnberg (n. 1), 40–56; the two possibly most important contributions to the debate, G. Davis, “Axones and Kurbeis: a New Answer to an Old Problem”, Historia 60, 2011, 1–35 and E. Stehle, Solon’s Self-Reflexive Political Persona and its Audience, in J. H. Blok and A. P. M. H. Lardinois (eds.), Solon of Athens: New Historical and Philological Approaches, Mnemosyne Suppl. 272 (Leiden 2006) 79–113, are missing from Osborne’s bibliography.
[9] Cf. e.g. K.-J. Hölkeskamp, Schiedsrichter, Gesetzgeber und Gesetzgebung im archaischen Griechenland (Stuttgart 1999).
[10] A very different interpretation is sketched in M. F. Rönnberg, “The New Mass Grave(s) at Phaleron, Kylon and the Increase in Elite Competition in Early Archaic Athens”, BABesch 98, 2023, 11–30; in any case, only the final publication of these excavations will be able to provide a firmer basis for far-reaching conclusions.