Stanford Evolution of Rural Sanctuaries in Geometric Greece Article Discussion One page single spaced reaction to this article (not just summary) including

Stanford Evolution of Rural Sanctuaries in Geometric Greece Article Discussion One page single spaced reaction to this article (not just summary) including thoughts on the arguments presented by the author. I
Mediation) Competition) and Sovereignty:
The Evolution of Rural Sanctuaries
in Geometric Greece
FRANyOIS DE POLIGNAC
Centre Louis Gernet, Paris
Any general theory which seeks to account for phenomena previously considered separately runs the risk of producing an interpretative model which is
too rigid and which treats in an over-schematic way a reality which is rather
more variable and nuanced than the explanations proposed for it: In the case
of a theory based on archaeological data, there is a further danger of which one
must be more or less aware: that ofbeing proved false by a new discovery which
brings into question facts until then held to be certain. Even in the best of
circumstances it is not possible to escape from the necessity of adjusting the
theory in the light of the development of archaeological knowledge and
interpretation. Until now, perhaps simply by chance, the ideas advanced a
decade ago in La Naissance de la cite grecque, about the early history of cults in
the countryside and their role in the formation of cities during the Archaic
period, have not been formally contradicted by the results of excavations carried
out in the mean time. Nevertheless, the moment has come to return critically
to some of the concepts which that work put into play, and to refine them in
bringing more recent discoveries into the picture. 1
According to the classic picture of the city, which still strongly influences La
Naissance, the territory of a city is understood as the ‘space of the citizens’, a
closed space under the control of a single sovereign body. Among the large
number of cult places which are scattered over it, ranging from a simple altar,
or sacred grove surrounded by a peribolos, to a monumental temple, some
manifest particularly openly the authority whose exercise over this space each
city determinedly reserved to itself. These great rural sanctuaries on the edge
of the plain, and small sanctuaries in mountainous or coastal areas, constitute
1
The analysis presented here represents a summation and completion of the changes which I have
made to the text of La Naissance de la cite grecque (Paris, 1984) for the English edition, Cults, Territory, and
the Origins ef the Greek City-State (Chicago, 1995), and the new French edition (Paris, 1995).
FRAN
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