On Jul 3, 2010, at 6:18 PM, Somebody Somebody wrote:
> Shane: For various reasons of their own invention
> conventional scholars (without evidence) put a 4+ century "Dark Age"
> between the flourishing of the two cities.
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> Somebody: Well, that's right. Without evidence, it seems like the
> visual arts weren't especially interesting or well developed in this
> period. Protogeometric pottery isn't as extraordinary or unique as
> classical black and red figure pottery. Considering I was referring
> to visual arts implicitly, and not ship-building, the point stands.
But "in this period" begs the question, which is the very existence of
such a period. Some pottery types, like protogeometric, are crude
compared to the "unique...classical black and red figure pottery."
But it is pure assumption that the two types belong to periods
separated by centuries, or indeed that they are not contemporary
("stratification" is the archaeologist's assumption, not a physical
reality reflecting deep sterile layers between potsherds of the two
types). In a class society, the pottery used by peasants always of
necessity is very crude compared to that used by their lords and
ladies--and the two classes live in different locations and toss their
potsherds into different middens. And ship-building, by the way, not
pottery, is the crucial material technology (as writing is the leading
intellectual technology) of ancient Aegean society. In both domains
there is not even a hint of substantial hiatus.
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> I have to say, I don't care for the modern fashion for abolishing
> all dark ages. Suddenly Visigothic Spain is distinguished by the
> title late antique...
There's lots of history of Visigothic Spain. A 'Dark Age," like that fantasized for post-Mykanaean Greece, is distinguished precisely by the total absence of history (just as "dark matter" is distinguished by the total absence of observability).
> Some periods were less urbanized, less literate, and less
> artistically cultured than others. Just as some cultures are today.
> I don't know why this should be surprising since scarcely anyone
> would deny these same distinctions amongst individuals. The debate
> should then be shifted to precisely *which* periods were the darker
> ones.
The term "period" only makes sense within a single society and a single location--periods of Egyptian, Roman, French etc. history. The "debate" can only be about the historical causes for the changes that manifested themselves as different "periods," not about the "lightness" or "darkness" ascribed to those divisions of time.
Shane Mage
This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
kindling in measures and going out in measures."
Herakleitos of Ephesos