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TheProtogeometric style (orProto-Geometric) is a style ofAncient Greek pottery led byAthens and produced, inAttica andCentral Greece, between roughly 1025 and 900 BCE,^[1][2][3] during theGreek Dark Ages.^[4] It was succeeded by the EarlyGeometric period.

Earlier studies considered the beginning of this style around 1050 BCE.^[5][6]

After the collapse of theMycenaean-Minoan Palace culture and the ensuing Greek Dark Ages, the Protogeometric style emerged around the late 11th century BCE,^[1] as the first expression of a reviving civilization. Following on from the development of a faster potter's wheel, vases of this period are markedly more technically accomplished than earlier Dark Age examples. From Athens the style spread to several other centres.^[7]

The decoration of these pots is restricted to purely abstract elements and very often includes broad horizontal bands about the neck and belly and concentric circles applied with compass and multiple brush. Many other simple motifs can be found, but unlike many pieces in the followingGeometric style, typically much of the surface is left plain.^[8]

Like many pieces, the example illustrated includes a colour change in the main band, arising from a firing fault. Both the red and black colour use the same clay, differentlylevigated and fired. As the Greeks learnt to control this variation, the path to their distinctivethree-phase firing technique opened.

Some of the innovations included some newMycenean influenced shapes, such as the belly-handledamphora, the neck handled amphora, thekrater, and thelekythos.Attic artists redesigned these vessels using the fast wheel to increase the height and therefore the area available for decoration.

Based on radiocarbon datings and Bayesian models toLefkandi,Kalapodi andCorinth, Toffolo et al. (2013) placed theSub-Mycenaean/Protogeometric transition "in the second half of the 11th century, approximately centered on 1025 BCE."^[9]

Alex Knodell, in his (2021) book, classifies Protogeometric period in three sub-periods:^[10]

• Mycenaean pottery
• Archaic period

• Cook, R.M.,Greek Art, Penguin, 1986 (reprint of 1972),ISBN 0140218661
• Lemos, Irene S. (2002).The Protogeometric Aegean, The Archaeology of the Late Eleventh and Tenth Centuries BC. Oxford University Press.
• Miller, D. Garry (2013).Ancient Greek Dialects and Early Authors, Introduction to the Dialect Mixture in Homer, with Notes on Lyric and Herodotus(PDF). De Gruyter.
• Murray, R. L.The Protogeometric Style: the first Greek style, Gothenburg, Paul Åströms (1975).
• Eiteljorg, H., "The fast wheel, the multiple brush compass and Athens as home of the Protogeometric style"American Journal of Archaeology (AJA) 84 (1980) pp. 445–452.

• Betancourt, Philip P. 2007.Introduction to Aegean Art. Philadelphia: INSTAP Academic Press.
• Preziosi, Donald, and Louise A. Hitchcock. 1999.Aegean Art and Architecture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Greek Art & Archaeology, (Japanese and English)
• Introduction to the Ancient World: Greece, University of Texas at Austin

• 11th century BC in Greece
• 10th century BC in Greece
• 11th-century BC works
• 10th-century BC works
• Ancient Greek vase-painting styles
• Mycenaean Greece
• Iron Age Greek art
• Greek Dark Ages

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata