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Results for Helladic:

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Helladic

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Helladic culture
CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: The Bronze Age culture of central and southern mainland Greece, with three main divisions: Early (c 3000-2000 BC), Middle (c 2000-1550 BC), and Late (c 1550-1050 BC). It is equivalent to Cycladic in the Cyclades and Minoan in Crete; Late Helladic is equated with the period of the Mycenaean civilization. Each of the three periods is subdivided into three phases designated by Roman numerals.

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Asine

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: modern Koróni
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A pre-Classical Greek settlement and port on the east side of the Akrítas in the Argolid Gulf. It was originally settled by the Argives after the First Messenian War (c 735-715 BC). Evidence of Early, Middle, and Late Helladic settlement and of Hellenistic city walls remains. It was reoccupied during the Middle Ages by refugees from the north who gave it the name of their former village.

askos

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Greek bag""
CATEGORY: artifact; ceramics
DEFINITION: An assymetric vessel, often squat and duck-shaped, with an off-center mouth, convex top, and single arching handle. It was originally shaped like a leather bottle (uter) for holding water, oil, or wine. Some example have two mouths, one for filling and one for emptying, and others are quite unbalanced and have strange mouths. It later assumed the form of an earthenware pitcher. Askos were popular in the Aegean from the Early Helladic to the Classical period.

Cycladic

CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: Concerning the Bronze Age of the Cyclades, Aegean Islands, equivalent to Helladic on the Greek mainland and Minoan in Crete. It is usually divided into three major divisions: Early (c 3000-2000 BC), Middle (c 2000-1550 BC), and Late (c 1550-1050 BC). In the earlier Bronze Age, Cycladic culture seems to be largely independent, but in the late Middle Cycladic to early Late Cycladic, Minoan influence becomes important. After c 1400 BC mainland (Mycenaean) influence replaces the Minoan and many islands were colonized by the Mycenaeans. Colin Renfrew has proposed an alternative Early Cycladic subdivision into Grotta-Pelos, Keros-Syros, and Phylakopi I -- a culture sequence.

Dendra

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Dhendra
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Bronze Age cemetery in Greece with a Middle Helladic tumulus, Mycenaean tholos tomb (15th-14th centuries BC), and rich chamber tombs. The associated settlement may be the Mycenaean citadel of Midea.

Eutresis

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site in Boeotia, central Greece, first occupied in Middle, Late, and sub-Neolithic, but the most important occupation was of the Bronze Age beginning c 3450 BC. The Middle Helladic seems here to have carried on late, unaffected by the Late Helladic of the Mycenaeans elsewhere. The site was inhabited continuously until the 13th century BC, when it was extensively fortified and subsequently abandoned. It was reoccupied in the Classical and Hellenistic periods. Eutresis is the type site for the Early Helladic I Eutresis culture.

Kastri

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site on the island of Kythera, Greece, of an Early Helladic settlement later colonized by the Minoans in c 2500 BC. Kastri prospered from trade between Crete and Laconia. The site of Delphi was occupied by the modern village of Kastrí until 1890, when the village was moved to a site nearby and renamed Delphi. There is another Kastri on the island of Syros.

Kolonna

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Aegean island site of Aegina, occupied since the late 4th millennium BC. The Bronze Age settlement combined Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan cultural traditions. The name of the site is derived from a single intact column of the 6th century BC temple of Apollo.

Korakou

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Bronze Age site of Corinthia, Greece, which became the basis of the classification of Helladic pottery developed by Carl Blegen and Alan Wace. It is the type site for the Early Helladic II Korakou culture.

Lerna

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Long-lived coastal settlement site near Argos in the Peloponnese, southern Greece. Middle and Late Neolithic villages were succeeded by a fortified township of Early Helladic II (c 3000 BC, Early Bronze Age). At this stage it was a fortified township, surrounded by a stone wall with D-shaped bastions. Houses, built of mud-brick on stone foundations, include a building known as the House of Tiles, roofed with stone and terra-cotta tiles -- a very early appearance of this roofing technique. Around 2400-2200 BC it burnt down and was rebuilt in Early Helladic III (Middle Bronze Age), when the first pieces of Minyan Ware appear; the radical cultural change suggests the burning was intentional. Scattered imports from Crete assist in the dating. Two rectangular shaft, royal graves contemporary with the Shaft Grave B circle at Mycenae, c 1600 BC (Middle Helladic), were the latest material on the site.

Malthi

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Bronze Age acropolis in Messenia, Greece, a Middle Helladic site. It was fortified and had houses. There are two tholos tombs at the foot of the acropolis.

Marathon

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A coastal plain on the northeast coast of Attica, Greece, famous for battle between Persians and Athenians in 490 BC and for news of battle being taken by the runner Pheidippides from Marathon to Athens -- about 25 miles. The defeat of the Persians is commemorated by the Soros, the large mound where the Athenians were buried, and the tomb of the Plataeans, which seems to be the grave of the Greek allies. Their fine black- and red-figure ware were grave goods. There are many other tombs: an Early Helladic cist grave cemetery, Middle Helladic tumuli, and a Mycenaean tholos tomb with two horses as grave offerings. The area shows evidence for some kind of occupation from Neolithic times, through Helladic, continuously to Classical.

Matt-painted pottery

CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Middle Helladic pottery with simple decoration in manganese-based purple-black paint on a pale ground. Matt-painted pottery has been found in the nearer islands and even as far as Crete and the Anatolian coast.

Minyan Ware

CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A distinctive Middle Helladic pottery -- a gray or yellow wheelmade ware of high quality first appearing at Troy VI and in Greece c 19th century BC. It was the first wheelmade pottery to be produced in Middle Bronze Age Greece. It was ancestral to Mycenaean pottery, and may represent a movement of new peoples into the Aegean area, the first Greek speakers. Traditionally it has been associated with an apparently violent end to the Early Helladic culture, c 2000-1900 BC, and the arrival of Greek-speaking peoples in the Aegean. The term was coined by Heinrich Schliemann. The ware had a soaplike feeling and its forms were modeled after metal objects.

Mycenae

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The chief city of the Mycenaeans of Bronze Age Greece, overlooking the Plain of Argos (Argolid) in the eastern Peloponnese. Inhabited in the Early Helladic period, 2500-1900 BC, it was taken over c 1900 BC by Greek-speaking invaders. After existing as a minor Middle Helladic site, it rose to prominence by the 15th century BC. In the Late Helladic, c 1400-1250 BC, it was surrounded by massive walls of cyclopean masonry, and entered by the monumental Lion Gate. Little remains of the palace on the acropolis, though some houses lower on the slope have survived. Just inside the gate was the Shaft Grave Circle A, with six tombs yielding a great treasure of metalwork of high quality and artistic skill -- weapons, drinking vessels, jewelry, face masks -- and pottery dating to the 16th century BC. Stelae, carved with chariots, hunting scenes, and spirals in relief, stood over the graves. A second shaft grave circle was found outside the city, slightly earlier in date and less rich. Later members of the royal family were buried in the nine great tholos tombs, which include the magnificent Treasury of Atreus. The city escaped the disasters of the 13th century better than the mainland, but Mycenae fell in c 1200 BC, attributed to the Dorians. Mycenae is famous in Homer as home of Agamemnon, leader of Greek heroes at Troy. It emerged from the Dark Ages as a minor town.

Orchomenos

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Important Bronze Age site in Boeotia, central Greece, home of the legendary King Minyas. Extensive remains of the Early and Middle Helladic periods survive, though the Mycenaean levels are badly eroded. A large frescoed Late Helladic structure is probably a palace, and to the east lies the tholos tomb known as the Treasury of Minyas. About 20 km to the east is the huge Mycenaean fortress of Gla, defended by walls of cyclopean masonry 6 meters thick. This fortress and a number of subsidiary forts must have defended the eastern approaches to the Copais basin, which, according to ancient literary tradition, was drained and cultivated by the people of Orchomenos in Mycenaean times. There are impressive fortifications of the Classical city and a 4th century BC theater. Linear B has been found in inscriptions on pots and jars at Orchomenos.

Scoglio del Tonno

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Prehistoric site on a promontory projecting into the harbor of Taranto in Puglie, Italy, where a Middle and Late Bronze Age settlement existed. It was first occupied during the Late Neolithic by people suing Serra D'Alto Ware. It was then abandoned but resettled in the mid-2nd millennium BC by a community of the Apennine Bronze Age culture. A great wealth of material of the 14th-12th centuries BC has been found, including much bronzework and sherds of Late Helladic III pottery, which indicate contact with Mycenaean traders c 1300 BC. After the collapse of the Mycenaean world, Scoglio del Tonno continued to exist and trade with the Greek world It survived until the foundation of the Greek colony of Taras in 706 BC. Scoglio del Tonno was destroyed, after excavation, when the port was extended in 1899.

Submycenaean

CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A phase between the Late Helladic and the Protogeometric periods on mainland Greece, known from its pottery found in cemeteries in Attica and from sites in central Greece and the Peloponnese. It is dated c 1050-1020 BC. Pottery was the first art to recover its standards after the Dorian invasion and the overthrow of Mycenae. Athens escaped these disasters and in the ensuing dark age became the main source of ceramic ideas. For a short time Mycenaean motifs survived on new shapes -- the Submycenaean ware. It gave way to the Protogeometric (c 1020-900 BC) style by converting the decaying Mycenaean ornament into regular geometrical patterns.

Tiryns

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A fortified citadel of the Mycenaeans in the Argolid, Greece, an important Bronze Age center. The palace of its rulers, a megaron opening onto a porticoed court, was decorated with frescoes after the style of the Minoans. They include one of the best surviving representations of the bull-leaping rite and the fresco of a court lady carrying an ornamental casket. The walls of cyclopean masonry contain corbelled galleries, whose construction was attributed by the ancients to the Cyclopes from Lycia. The settlement was occupied from the Early Bronze Age, but the palace and the massive defensive wall were constructed c1400 BC. Excavation also revealed an Early Helladic structure. Tiryns was destroyed c1200 BC, like other Mycenaean sites.

Urfirnis

CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Characteristic ware of the Middle Neolithic and Early Helladic periods of Greece and also the name of the glaze-like paint. The pottery has a buff fabric decorated with a dark lustrous slip or glaze. The sauce-boat and the askos are the most notable shapes.

Vapheio

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Vapheio cup
CATEGORY: site; artifact
DEFINITION: The site of a Mycenaean tholos tomb in Laconia, Greece, dated to the 15th century BC and the style of magnificent gold cup found there. The popular shape was straight or slightly splayed walls widening to the rim, and a single handle. The form occurs in pottery from the Middle Minoan period (late 16th-early 15th century BC) on Crete and was important to the Mycenaeans in the Late Helladic period. The two examples are decorated with scenes of bulls. Other rich grave goods were bronze weapons and fine jewelry.