The opening ceremony for the 2004 Olympic Games took place not at Olympia, the ancient site in the Peloponnese region of mainland Greece that gave its name to the modern games, but, like the first modern games of 1896, in Athens, the capital of the modern nation-state of Greece. This slippage between places maps an ancient artistic connection forged by two colossal polychrome statues, the Athena Parthenos in Athens and the seated Zeus at Olympia, both designed and produced by Pheidias and artists of his workshop. Neither statue exists today; because of their vibrant splendor, politicians spent, people reused, and time degraded the gold, ivory, wood, jewels, stones, and added pigments that formed them. Elements of both statues, however, persist in reproductions, descriptions, and reconstructions. Pausanias, for example, provides a vivid description of their appearance in the second century ce. In conjunction with other literary references and archaeological and epigraphic evidence, we can today form an idea of how these statues might once have been pieced together and beheld.

The path to the Panhellenic sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi takes a visitor up a steep and winding path from the lush expanse of the plain to the multifaceted sanctuary complex that was considered the navel (omphalos) of the ancient Mediterranean world (Figure 67). Climbing the path towards the sanctuary in the late sixth century bce, a pilgrim would have encountered a small, vibrantly polychrome, temple-like building (Figures 68 and 69).1 Officials from the island of Siphnos commissioned this treasure-house, built about 525 bce, which is thought to be among the first of such buildings erected along the switchback path. Over the next 200 years, dozens more cities would build treasure-houses lining a path to the oracular sanctuary and the Temple of Apollo (Figure 70).2

The Greek temple in dressed stone, with elaborate columnar orders and sculptural decoration, appears rather suddenly in the archaeological record, at the end of the seventh century.3 If one defines Greek architecture by the standards of the Archaic and Classical periods, one may argue, retrospectively, that architecture “did not exist” earlier in the Greek world. For the ages between the fall of the Bronze Age (BA) civilizations and the beginning of the seventh century, Greek temples in most regions were made mainly of earth, wood, and fieldstones, primitive in comparison to Archaic and Classical monuments. Yet if we look instead contextually at these temples and put aside the standards of future architecture, we can appropriately assess the architectural development of the temple.4 Adopting this approach, this book explores the early stages of the most emblematic architectural icon of the ancient Greek world. Ultimately, it will become clear that pre-Archaic temple architecture warrants a dedicated architectural history.

Judging from the present record, temples remained exceptional during most of the Early Iron Age (EIA). From the late ninth through the eighth centuries, this picture gradually began to change, with new sanctuaries and temples established in several regions.9999999 While even in the eighth century temples were far from common and many sanctuaries lacked monumental architecture, from this period onward we find sanctuaries and temples in rural settings as well as settlements.

Beginning in the late eighth century, temples had flourished across the Greek world, many with an ambition that made them monumental by our definition. Yet in design and construction, temples did not differ greatly from houses or other utilitarian structures. In the first half of the seventh century, technological innovation in temple construction transformed Greek architecture. Newly introduced roof tiles and stone ashlars set the temple apart from the rest of the built environment, harbingers of what the temple would become during the Archaic and Classical periods.

This chapter examines the admittedly scant evidence for cult buildings in the Greek world between the eleventh and ninth centuries. Histories of Greek architecture have often depicted this period as the “darkness” out of which Greek temples appeared, more or less suddenly, in the eighth century.1 But how sudden was this appearance, and to what extent can we now trace the early stages of the temple back to previous centuries?

This book has shed light on the formative stages of the Greek temple. From a new perspective, it has considered pre-Archaic architecture in its own context rather than through the lens of later Archaic and Classical developments. Grounded in the archaeological evidence, it has challenged previous interpretations based on old data or speculative reasoning and has proposed new ways to understand trajectories of architectural development over time.