Greece, Geometric Period (1100-700 BC)

Introduction

The period from 1200 - 800 B.C. is also called the Dark Age. The period is named for pottery decorated with geometric designs that was made by the ruling and warring Doric civilization.

The Geometric period is the first of the periods into which ancient Greek history is divided. The year 1125 B.C. is conventionally taken as its beginning, a period in which, according to the view of many researchers, began the migrations of Greek tribes -the direction being from large parts of mainland Greece towards most of the Aegean islands, the western coast of Asia Minor and Cyprus. These migrations of large populations which lasted until approximately 800 B.C. caused political and social reclassifications, that have characterized and to a certain extent determined the historical fate of Greek populations as late as the Roman conquest.

Since the data available for researchers until a few decades earlier were few and fragmentary and owing to the overall fall of the living and cultural level in comparison to the previous Mycenaean Age, the period has been characterized in older bibliography as the "Dark Age" of Greek history or the "Greek Middle Ages", a view that has been revised over the last years. After the collapse of the Mycenaean centres the factors that played a decisive role in the further historical course of Greece began to gradually but steadily take shape: during the so-called transition period the historical population of Greece was formed by the fusion of Mycenaean population groups and parts of the peoples that had invaded Greece, whereas at the same time the memory from the glorious Mycenaean past as consolidated in the epic poems has been preserved, the Greek alphabet derived from the Phoenician, arts were revived, the Greek world expanded to many areas of the Mediterranean, a unified ethnic, religious and moral consciousness has been formed by all the Greeks and the population of Greece has been socially and politically organized on the basis of the institution of city-state.

Society

Most attempts at reconstructing the Greek society of the Geometric Period, are based mostly on Homer  and partly on Hesiod. However, the society delineated in the Homeric poems is in all probability a fusion of very different -even if they had belonged to the same period- social forms and their dating has been the subject of wide speculation. The two poems are supposed to be referring to events of the Mycenaean Age, that is before the end of the 12th century B.C.. Yet, through their thorough study experts of the 20th century have reached different conclusions. The poems themselves, composed between the mid-8th and mid-7th centuries B.C., derive from the oral poetry tradition. They must not be related either to the data of the Mycenaean Age, as formulated from archaeological finds and the texts of Linear B script, or the society of the Archaic period. On the contrary, they probably concern the conditions prevailing during the Late Dark Age. They seem to reflect the social actuality of that era, and in particular they focus on the world of the aristocrats, their way of life and ideas. The works of Hesiod, and especially Works and Days, provides information about the life of the peasants towards the end of the 8th century B.C..  The warrior-like Dorians conquered Greece's city-states and created a class of land owning aristocrats from 1100 - 800 B.C. They brought with them iron age technology but also created pottery with geometric designs, thus giving rise to the Geometric Period, due to the Dorians constant warring and subjugation of the population.

Culture

The culture of the Geometric period shares the same general features with other manifestations of that period, such as society and economy, with which it is interrelated. At its outset it bore the signs of the Mycenaean tradition, whereas the subsequent period of the Dark Age left few visible remains, to be able to talk about it with some certainty. In the Geometric period the arts knew a relative flowering, pottery in particular, in which innovations are numerous and conspicuous. The Liteteratyre of the period was mainly oral, but the epic poetry crystallised towards the end of the period thanks to the re-introduction of literacy. As concerns cult  the Mycenaean legacy was ingrafted with new elements, owing both to the arrival of new tribes and the contacts with the East.

Literature

For the composition and communication of poems through time literacy is not required. In the Homeric poems fixed and recurring linguistic formulae and metrical units prove that they are the final product of a long oral elaboration. Linguistic and metrical peculiarities date back to the Mycenaean tradition or even earlier. This tradition seemed to have held stronger in Thessaly, Lesbos and the Aeolian coast facing, before being adopted by the Ionians of Asia Minor and reaching mainland Greece through Euboea or Attica. 

The Greek Dactylic Hexameter -the metrical unit in which the Homeric poems are composed- consists of formula  to a large extent, that may have been preserved orally maybe for a millenium, before reaching their definite form. By the term "formula" a fixed phrase is implied. Its simplest and commonest form is the collocation of the same noun with one or two standard epithets. A characteristic example is the formula "rosy-fingered and early-born dawn". The use of formulae allows not exactly the memorization of a poem, but its composition anew. 

The language of Homeric poems is a mixture of Aeolian and Ionian elements. Certain types seem to echo an older -than the period considered as time of registration- linguistic tradition. The same applies for the material world described therein. Both in the Iliad and the Odyseey objects and customs are mentioned that were not in vogue by the time writing emerged in Greece, such as large silver-riveted swords and boar's tusk helmets. In modern research the view has prevailed that certain heroes of these epics- such as Odysseus, Teucrus and Aias- have been already celebrated in Mycenaean poems. The human type that Odysseus stands for in the Iliad is a new invention though. On the contrary, some other heroes -among whom Nestor, Agamemnon and Achilles- intruded during the Aeolian phase of epic elaboration and match the time of the destruction of the city conventionally called Troy VIIa (around 1200 B.C.). This city, excavated -although not recognized- by Schliemann, is considered the theatre of events from which the Iliad draws its inspiration.

Other epic poems -the Cycle- have been attributed to Homer already from antiquity from which the epitomes as well as isolated verses survive, and also certain hymns. These works differ a lot both from the two big epics and between them and probably belong to a to a subsequent era

Sources:

http://www.ancient-greece.org/

http://www.benaki.gr/collections/greece/prehistorictoroman/e n/index.asp

http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/classics/courses/1998fall/ cl202/resource/meter/metintro.html

Nothing from the mentioned.

During the Geometric period multiple migrations of Greek tribes or parts of them take place from barren and inaccessible areas of the hinterland of mainland Greece towards the plainy and fertile coasts, the islands, the coasts of Asia Minor and Cyprus.

The Dorians originated from north, northwestern Greece ( Macedonia and Epirus). From these points they began to invade toward the south, into the center of mainland Greece, and then to the Peloponnesian, and the southern Aegean islands. Once their invasions of central Greece ceased, their descent to southern Greece produced waves of invasions through the Peloponnesus, into Crete, and westward to Rhodes. Dorian invasion in the Peloponnese is dated on the basis of the catalogues of the Spartan kings to 1148 B.C. or 1104 B.C. according to two different calculations, that little differ from the years 1125 B.C. or 1120 B.C. provided by archaeological data concerning the same event.

Why are you asking only for the Dorians?

We have and other migrations during the Geometric period.

According Herodotus mother home of Dorians (Hylleis, Pamphyloi, and the Dymanes) during the Deucalion Kingdom were in the Pthiotis (middle Greece, close to Thessalia)  and during Doros Kingdom were in the Histiaiotis (Thessalia) region. When Cadmeians they turned out from there, Dorians it dwelt in Pindos and was called Makednian.

Thence moved afterwards to Dryopis (middle Greece)  and from Dryopis it came finally to Peloponnesus (displacing the native Achaeans), and began to be called Dorian.

As you see Dorians was a tribe migrated from its place to other and  in any direction (Macedonia, Thessaly, Peloponnisos, Rhodos, Crete  e.t.c.).

Now if we accept Herodotus work, Mythology (as you said) and finally the archaeological data, we found that Dorians never invaded outside to inside. The Greek member was right.

I hope was clearly.

Now concerning the origin of them if we accept the archaeological evidence and the ancient inscriptions (language, Dorian dialect) were Greeks.

No you are not wrong. I hope you get the picture.

If I understand well the "problem"  between you and Phallanx was the etymologically explanation of the �invasion� term. In Greece we say �Descent of Dorians�, but take it your way of the explanations given with the appearing of them in Peloponnesus yes I agree with you..  But�

Unfortunely one of the ethnological marks of the Ancient Greeks were the domestic or civil wars. During this period we didn�t had any external enemy (actually the Persians appeared after 300 years), so the ambition who will be take the power was a common �habit �. And the Dorians (Spartans, Macedonians) were famous for the military structure of them societies.

The �second coming of the Greeks�   gave a new impulse to culture in Greece : people learned the art of iron-working, cremation started to replace burial, pottery was decorated with geometrical figures, and iron started to replace bronze as the main raw material for the construction of tools and weaponry.

Now back in the topic.

During the Geometric period considerable changes occurred in many sectors of the social, political and religious life as well as the cultural creation of the populations living in the wider Greek territory. The name Hellenes was established as denoting a population group bound together by the same Pan-Hellenic ethnic consciousness

Of decisive importance for the shaping of the people and the culture of Greece was the creation of the Greek alphabet from the Phoenician and the rapid spread of the epic poetry through which the consciousness of a common origin of the Greeks from the same heroic ancestors was cultivated and Homeric religion and ethics were projected as prescriptive rules for human life. The cult of certain gods acquired a panhellenic character and common beliefs pertaining to their qualities, their symbols and their relations between them were disseminated

Towards the end of that period the Olympic Games acquired pan Hellenic impact, whereas the sanctuary of Olympia was established as a meeting place of Greek populations, where similarities and differences between tribes could be discerned. The amphictionies of religious and political character that were being founded or expanding at that period contributed to the same direction of developing common ties.