Low Chronology and Greek Protogeometric and Geometric Pottery in the Southern Levant

Abstract

The article deals with the absolute chronology of the Iron Age in the Southern Levant and the Aegean world. It first discusses the chronological gap between the conventional dating of Protogeometric pottery in Greece, and its appearance in the Southern Levantine assemblages. The question then asked is whether the Low Chronology recently proposed by Finkelstein will free us from the difficulties raised by the prevailing dating. A brief examination shows that one cannot use the accepted dating of Greek Protogeometric and Geometric pottery to support the ‘Finkelstein correction’, but rather his Low Chronology provides, for the first time, a basis for the absolute chronology of the Dark Age in Greece. At the end the article proposes a common denominator to reconcile the differences of opinion between major chronological approaches. These may be explained by the differences in the length of existence of the relevant strata.