Geometrical decoration—Its origin—Distribution of pottery—Shapes and ornamentation of vases—Subjects—Dipylon vases—Boeotian Geometrical wares—Chronology—Proto-Attic fabrics—Phaleron ware—Later Boeotian vases—Melian amphorae—Corinth and its pottery—“Proto-Corinthian” vases—Vases with imbrications and floral decoration—Incised lines and ground-ornaments—Introduction of figure-subjects—Chalcidian vases—“Tyrrhenian Amphorae.” § 1. THE GEOMETRICAL PERIOD BIBLIOGRAPHY Perrot, _Hist. de l’Art_, vii. p. 154 ff.; _Ann. dell’ Inst._ 1872, p. 138 ff.; _Jahrbuch_, 1886, p. 94 ff.; 1899, pp. 26, 78, 188; _Ath. Mitth._ 1881, p. 106; 1892, p. 285; 1893, p. 73 ff.; 1896, p. 385 ff.; Pottier, _Louvre Cat._ i. p. 212 ff. For Boeotian Geometrical pottery, Böhlau in _Jahrbuch_, 1888, p. 325 ff.; for early Argive wares, Waldstein, _Argive Heraeum_, i. p. 49 ff. The Dorian invasion of Greece, which is generally supposed to have taken place in the twelfth century—the traditional date is about 1100 B.C.—was, like the contemporaneous Etruscan immigration (Chapter XVIII.), only an episode in the general displacement taking place throughout Europe. In Greece it caused a dispersion of the Achaean race, chiefly in the direction of Asia Minor, which, as we have already seen, probably gave rise to the stories of the Trojan War and subsequent adventures of the Achaean leaders. In other words, the Mycenaean civilisation was driven to seek a new home elsewhere, and to lay the foundations of a new artistic development in the cities of Aeolis and Ionia. But its disappearance from Greece was not complete, and Hellenic Greece was from the beginning an amalgam of the old and new elements, the Achaean (or Ionian) and the Dorian, in which one or the other had at different times or in different places the pre-eminence. The Ionian element represents the civilisation of the Mediterranean, succeeding to that of the Mycenaean world; the Dorian, the influence of Central Europe.[930] It has hitherto been a truism of archaeology that the Dorians brought with them from Central Europe a new form of art, of which the chief characteristic is that of _rectilinear and geometrical decoration_, forming, it is obvious, a marked contrast to the curvilinear and naturalistic Mycenaean designs. This new principle was thought to be most conspicuously illustrated by the pottery which now replaces the Mycenaean. But certain recent discoveries have given occasion for some scepticism in regard to the acceptance of this idea as conveying the whole truth; and even if they do not radically alter preconceived ideas, they are at least worthy of consideration.