Greeks, Italians and the Earliest Balkan Iron Age

Abstract

The discovery of an Early Geometric (9th century B.c.) grave containing an array of iron objects at Athens has led to a quickening of interest in the beginnings of ironusing in South Eastern Europe. Two main theories about this have, for lack of conclusive evidence, been current for decades and while all admit iron was known earlier in the Near East than in Europe, the route by which that knowledge reached Central Europe has been hotly debated.Dr Foltiny has recently restated the case for iron-using being brought to Hungary by horsemen from further east and has added to it the suggestion that not only did the knowledge then spread into Central Europe but also southwards into Greece. If he is correct and iron was known in Central and Eastern Europe before 900 B.C. then a major alteration to our ideas of the events of that period becomes necessary. Any theory must, at present, rely on the correlation of the Central European evidence with the better known and closer dated events of the east Mediterranean so that the interpretation of the objects in the Athenian grave mentioned above is vital to Dr Foltiny's theory. It is hoped to show elsewhere that their evidence is ambiguous and in this paper another body of material, from Jugoslavia, a region contiguous to Dr Foltiny's early iron-using centre in Hungary and athwart its communications with Greece, will be considered. The conclusions to be drawn from it are quite different from those which might be expected if Dr Foltiny is correct, for they are that much of Jugoslavia gained its knowledge of iron through trade connexions with Eastern Italy in the 8th–7th centuries B.C. and that Hungary and Greece played little part in the event.