Thermon: the Prehistoric Settlement
Iron Age pottery I
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Sherds from matt painted cups with the typical decoration of vertical lines on the neck and fringes below. |
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Jar necks with another typical decoration - vertical zigzags |
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Sherds from the shoulders of large jars with horizontal bands of zigzags and lozenges. The sherd on the bottom left was found in the early excavations on the floor of Megaron B. |
The matt painted pottery from Thermon belongs to a class used widely in Epirus, Western Macedonia and Albania during the Iron Age but is the only large group of its kind from the south west corner of mainland Greece. A few examples have been found in tombs in this district together with Proto-Geometric pottery in the 'West Greek' style known from Ithaka and other sites. Some of the motifs seem to derive from this Proto-Geometric style but most have their best parallels further north.
The new excavations have confirmed that pottery of this style belongs to the construction and use levels of Megaron B, clearly stratified between levels with Mycenaean pottery and those with Archaic pottery.
So far no certain examples of Proto-Geometric or the later Geometric style of pottery have been identified at Thermon, a fact which is curious considering the wide spread of Corinthian Geometric pottery in particular an the present of bronze objects which are typical of sanctuaries throughout Greece in the 8th C BC
