ABSTRACT
Geometric Greece is rich in graves, but traces of the living are comparatively scarce. Whereas eighth-century burials have been excavated at well over a hundred sites throughout the Greek world, fewer than fifty have produced any evidence of settlement. At most of these places the architectural remains are either negligible or missing altogether, the evidence often being confined to a handful of Geometric sherds found in later contexts. The chief reason for this state of affairs is the flimsy nature of most Geometric houses, especially on the Greek mainland where it was the custom to build in mud brick on a rough stone base. This sort of structure had little chance of surviving the hazards of later periods, whenever wide and deep trenches had to be dug for the laying of massive and monumental foundations. Hence we may never gain anything more than a very sketchy knowledge of those major Geometric cities on the mainland which were also destined to enjoy the most distinguished future: Athens, Corinth, and Argos. Thanks to the huge overlay of Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, Roman, and more recent periods, the remains of Geometric houses in these cities are very scanty indeed; at many points nothing is left except for domestic deposits in wells. However, by taking into consideration the wide scatter of contemporary graves, we can roughly plot the inhabited areas; and in each case it seems that the eighth-century city still consisted of a group of detached and unfortified villages, without any obvious centre of public life.1 The same appears to be true of Eretria and Knossos, two other major cities of this period which are less heavily overlaid, and which may therefore reveal more of their plan to present and future excavators.
