It is impossible to say when this
style made its first appearance in Greece, but it seems to have
flourished for some hundreds of years and to have lasted till as
late as the end of the eighth century B. C. It falls into several
local varieties, of which the most important is the Athenian. This
is commonly called Dipylon pottery, from the fact that the
cemetery near the Dipylon, the chief gate of ancient Athens, has
supplied the greatest number of specimens. Some of these Dipylon
vases are of great size and served as funeral monuments. Fig. 44
gives a good example of this class. It is four feet high. Both the
shape and the decoration are very different from those of the
Mycenaean style. The surface is almost completely covered by a
system of ornament in which zigzags, meanders, and groups of
concentric circles play an important part. In this system of
Geometric patterns zones or friezes are reserved for designs into
which human and animal figures enter. The center of interest is in
the middle of the upper frieze, between the handles.
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