Geometric pottery is abstract and formulaic in design. In the age of Homer, geometric pottery is a tangible artifact representing a cultural rebirth--the narrative arrives out of the Dark Age where culture and myth begin; geometric pottery announces a process of evolution that involves the politicizing of a heroic past. It seems no small coincidence that the pottery occurs during the same age that Homer depicts the struggle between corporate affiliation and the identity of the individual, a major theme in the Iliad.

See my brief lecture on The Judgment of Paris. I would argue that the geometic pottery below replicates the political system underscored in the literature of the ancienct world, found in the last chapter of The Epic of Gilgamesh and in the mythological story of The Judgment of Paris.