Preface to the Second Edition

For the Second Edition, I have updated information in the chapters and the (largely Anglophone) Further Reading; added two new sections (Excursus II on “Archaeological Gaps: Attica and Crete” and the section on “‘Greek’ Culture: Unity and Diversity” in Chapter 11), as well as a Guide to Electronic Resources; and expanded somewhat the geographical coverage of the material considered. In making these revisions, I have benefited greatly from the comments of reviewers of the First Edition as well as from responses to questionnaires that were distributed by Wiley-Blackwell to instructors who have adopted the book for their classes.

There is, however, one respect in which I have remained stubbornly faithful to the intention behind the First Edition: the chapters continue to be arranged thematically rather than chronologically, even if there is a loose chronological progression from start to finish. The rationale for this is twofold. Firstly, this has always been, first and foremost, a book about historical method and a theme-based approach, focused on targeted questions, is an especially effective way of tackling methodological issues. Secondly, the nature of the evidence that is at our disposal for the Archaic period is not generally conducive to writing the sorts of straightforward narrative history that are possible for other regions and periods. The latter claim is, as one reviewer has commented, hardly novel, though even the more skeptical studies of Archaic Greece typically find it difficult to avoid adopting a continuous chronological narrative, despite the fact that the various types of evidence employed are unevenly and differentially distributed across the centuries that separate the collapse of the Mycenaean palaces from the Persian War.

In addition to the friends and colleagues acknowledged in the Preface to the First Edition, I would like to thank Gert-Jan Burgers, Lieve Donnellan, Irad

Malkin, and Gocha Tsetskhladze for sharing their work and ideas with me. Finally, a special debt of gratitude is owed to Ben Thatcher, Elizabeth Saucier, Kitty Bocking, and Ian Critchley for their prompt and efficient assistance and, especially, to Haze Humbert, whose cheerful and indefatigable support and encouragement over several years have been much appreciated.