Panhellenes at Methone : Graphê in Late Geometric and Protoarchaic Methone, Macedonia (ca 700 BCE) / Jenny Strauss Clay, Irad Malkin, Yannis Z. Tzifopoulos.

This volume discusses the multidimensional aspects of the unique, and so far unprecedented for Macedonia, 191 sherds from Methone in Pieria, dated to ca 700 BCE, which bear inscriptions, graffiti, and (trade)marks inscribed, incised, scratched and rarely painted. The 191 vessels were unearthed during excavations in ancient Methone in Pieria, the oldest colony of Greeks from Eretria in the north according to tradition. The Methone find is unique for two reasons. First, most of the pottery dates between 730 and 700 BCE, a period from which very few examples of Greek writing survives. And second, inscribed ceramics, scratched or painted, are extremely rare in Macedonia. This new evidence of inscribed pottery from Methone is invaluable for classical studies, and the papers of this volume contribute notably to current discussions about: the Greeks and the Greek language in Macedonia; the Greek colonization; the pottery trade and the early Greek transport amphoras; trade, the symposium, and other contexts for the development of writing; the 'alphabets' of Methone and the introduction of the alphabet in Greece; the dialect(s) of Methone in relation to the Greek dialects; early Greek writing, literacy, and literary beginnings.

In English.

Online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed Apr. 18, 2017).

Includes bibliographical references (pages 329-359) and indexes.

Preface ; Table of Contents ; Introduction ; Part I: Graphê and Archaeology ; Transport Amphorae from Methone: An Interdisciplinary Study of Production and Trade ca. 700 BCE ; The Archaeological Background of the Earliest Graffiti and Finds from Methone.

To Write and to Paint: More Early Iron Age Potters' Marks in the Aegean Counting on Pots? Reflections on Numerical Notations in Early Iron Age Greece ; Texts and Amphoras in the Methone "Ypogeio" ; Part II: Graphê, Alphabet, Dialect, and Language.

The Impact of Late Geometric Greek Inscriptions from Methone on Understanding the Development of Early Euboean Alphabet Methone of Pieria: a Reassessment of Epigraphical Evidence (with a Special Attention to Pleonastic Sigma) ; Part III: Graphê and Culture.

Local 'Literacies' in the Making: Early Alphabetic Writing and Modern Literacy TheoriesForm Follows Function? Toward an Aesthetics of Early Greek Inscriptions at Methone ; Wine and the Early History of the Greek Alphabet. Early Greek Vase-Inscriptions and the Symposion ; Bibliography and Abbreviations ; Notes on Contributors.

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