The Early Iron Age Revival of the State, XXIX: Wood For Greeks

 In the relatively small genre of modern scholarly syntheses of Classical literature and current (as of writing) archaeology on some specific subject, timber is actually pretty well treated, though it turns out there's a bit of a controversy behind this.

This is a "Garden pavilion celebrating the origins of Classical architecture, designed by Gervase Jackson-Stops with Ian Kerby" www.follies.uk, July 2008." I'd like to give credit where credit is due, but the link has been redirected to some nice service offering body paint. The source from which I scraped the photo is Philip Steadman's Cabinet of Curiosities (as of date of access, https://www.philipsteadman.com/blog/greek-temples-made-of-wood/). Steadman explains that Jackson-Stops actually started work on two architectural follies in the gardens of the former Horton House, Northamptonshire, upon his 1973 purchase of the property, but does not date or otherwise attribute this very striking photograph of what a timber/wattle-and-daub precursor to a Classical Greek temple might have looked like. The columns, considering that they are made of untrimmed tree trunks, are especially striking. (And seem abundantly supported by the evidence.) Wiki gives Jackson-Stops' dates as 1947--1995, but the look of the photo, to my eye, is closer to the 1970s than the 1990s. 

Steadman blogs on architectural history and this entry covers the Classical evidence that the first generation of Greek sanctuaries were made of timber (Classical authors say so!) and more specifically that the forms, and in particular many decorative elements are skueomorphs of elements of the timber construction. This was the point at which architectural historians of the "late 19th Century" found an opportunity to stand up for the honour of Classical Antiquity and deny the legacy of an age of primitive construction methods preceding the Classical Age of Marble. Exactly how far one might want to push this is a question for someone who wants to push. I mention because it might explain why the modern conversation occasionally sounds a bit tentative. 

Athena Alea at Tegea, modern Tripoli, has come up around here before in connection with speculation about the importance of mid-altitude elevation locations in the transition from the Bronze Age to the Classical. It is a prominent Peloponnesian city at a gazzetted elevation of 665m, which probably sounds paradisiacal in the heat of an Athens summer, if not mid-winter, and was an important city and the site of a celebrated sanctuary of Athena Alea, now in a romantically ruined state and so available for archaeological investigations, which have been ongoing since 1806(!), with a votive pit containing material dating to the early 900s being published in 2006. The pit was closed at some point in the late 700s, and "a simple, metallurgical workshop for the production of small votive objects of iron and bronze was set up immediately above it." (Here I am quoting the report that Erik Østby has been so kind as to post online.)   The workshop was directly in front of "two, and possibly three successive and very simple cult buildings," and these were the apsidal wattle-and-daub structures I have been dancing around. They were internally supported by posts, and were replaced by an "interim" structure in the 620s, so called because the celebrated archaic temple that followed it was on an unprecedented and  monumental scale. It still, however, used wood for columns and mud-brick for walls, with stone for bases, and possibly a tiled roof. Wooden rooftrees presumably supported the roof on the columns, and the various decorations that band the top of surviving Greek temples like the Parthenon, if "skeuomorphic," give us some some sense of how they might have been carved. 

That is, from Steadman, you have to have these on a timber building: 

And on the Parthenon you have metopes and triglyphs

which, if they are skeuomophically derived from the features of timber construction, presumably also carry over the decorative elements that were originally carved into the ends of the beams. This tells us absolutely nothing about the sanctuary of Athena Alea at Tegea. Classical tourists report iconographical representations of the Caledonian boar hunt and of a duel between the local hero Telephos and Achilles on the plain of the Caycus. I am not sure I understand the next passage in the Wikipedia description, but evidently the cult statue of Athena was associated with a sculpture of a boar with ivory tusks "'half a fathom long." These all sound very appropriate for local cult, and perhaps the ends of the rafters were carved into boar's heads. On the other hand, the choice to make a big deal of this particular sanctuary seems to have been fairly late and related to the establishment of a city state at Tegea in the context of war with Sparta. So maybe it wasn't a big deal at all!

Speaking of Sparta, one of the most famous and most thoroughly excavated "wooden" temples, Artemis Orthia, is located there, and several famous pieces of plastic art, specifically a votive lead winged Artemis and an ivory votive offering, illustrate this period. More than one hundred thousand lead, ivory and other votives have been recovered at the site, mostly dating to the 500s, from which I want to single out terracotta masks of human and animal figures, and the striking representation, I assume in a more durable material, of the archaic Artemis Orthia. The low relief carving, so strikingly different from the canons of Classical sculpture offers perhaps the clearest evidence of the way in which the introduction of iron tools coincides with an exploration of the third dimension in both regions. 

In a properly scientific spirit of detached caution I won't leap to the instrumental explanation that interviews with modern Northwest Coast carvers suggests. It might not be the case that the pieces get more elaborate because the tools allow it. On the other hand, that strikes me as the most logical explanation. 

I could go on to talk about boats, but if you think Classical Greek architecture is crowded with hot takes, wait 'till you get a look at Classical maritime history!