Art and Archaeology

[...]any new study of art in the so-called Dark Age of Pre-, Proto-, and Geometric Greece must be seized with hope of enlightenment; and a full monograph from Susan Langdon, one of the curators of a virtuous exhibition, From Pasture to Polis: Art in the Age of Homer (1993), is especially to be welcomed. Langdons Art and Identity in Dark Age Greece, 1100700 B.C.E.1 offers, indeed, a new paradigm for the study of the earliest Greek art: nothing to do with Daedalus, or anywhere extraneous; rather, these are images embedded in the rites and rhythms of early Iron Age society in Greece. If we then inquire what pertinence an image of Theseus and Ariadne might have to this context, we must not press too hard: after all, scenes of the abduction of Helen to Troy were evidently frequently deemed suitable for the cassoni or marriage-chests of Renaissance Florence; and Langdon is content to allow the story of Theseus and Ariadne as illustrative of an Iron Age mans claim upon a woman as his possession. Lampeter in Dyfed used to boast a magnificent collection of high-performance AI bulls, the property of the local Milk Marketing Board, which would have excited the admiration of any Greek god; so it was fitting that, in 2006, the university played host to an Anglo-French Celtic Classics conference on sacrifice, whose proceedings have now appeared in the 1 Ancient Greek Cosmogony.