So far we have described remarkable internal processes within the Aegean, in which the scattered, low-density settlements of the Iron Age were transformed through demographic and political change, between 800 and 500 BC, into a vibrant world of city-states, territorial states, and regional federations of towns and villages. Unsurprisingly these changes were increasingly associated with a revival of intensive cultural and commercial contacts both within the Aegean, but more significantly with peoples and landscapes elsewhere in the Mediterranean and additionally in the Black Sea coastlands.
We should first recall that Greece has never been a homogeneous country, geographically to be sure, but equally economically, demographically, culturally or ethnically. We have focused hitherto on the heartland of Classical states in the Southern Mainland, and the Cycladic Islands adjacent to their east, based on historic sources, urban excavations, and regional field surveys. In this wide zone of Greece, urban and rural demographic takeoff and the associated proliferation of city-states and a rich artistic culture, are well developed during this key period of Late Geometric to Archaic times, but reach their greatest flourishing during the Classical fifth to fourth centuries BC (Bintliff 1997b). The key states in this early takeoff (Figure 9.5) include Athens, Corinth, Argos, Sparta, the Boeotian federation, and several Cycladic islands. The major players in Greek history throughout these centuries are exactly this group of named states. A review of developments in wider arcs beyond this heartland reveals a “wave-effect,” with increasingly later takeoff chronologies for rural and urban population climax development in Crete and in Western and Northern Greece.
This pattern corresponds, intriguingly, to a power-shift over the same period. If the Southeastern “heartland” cities are the key players in Aegean politics from the eighth through early fourth centuries BC, they are then replaced by the emergent Northern Greek powers (Macedon, Aetolia, Epirus) in the final Classical and then the Hellenistic centuries (from the later fourth to second centuries BC). Crete, though not exercising wider military or political power within the Aegean, also emerges from political obscurity and an underdeveloped economy and demography toward the end of this latter period. If we focus on the many factors relevant to comprehending this regional diversity in growth, a combination of general (including geographical) circumstances, allied with unique historical processes, is the closest we can get to “explanation.” I consider it unlikely, on present evidence, however, that external contacts were the central component in the precocious rise of the Southeastern states.
Nonetheless, external contacts played a significant role in the culture and economy of the rising states of Archaic Greece. After the limited external commerce of EIA Greece, it picks up dramatically from LG onwards, so that the early Archaic period is heavily enmeshed into the economic and cultural world of the more advanced states of the East Mediterranean, producing the “Orientalist” character of seventh-century cultural styles in Southern Greece.
Figure 9.5 Waves of population and urbanization over time in the Aegean, from intensive and extensive survey data.
J. L. Bintliff, “Regional survey, demography, and the rise of complex societies in the Ancient Aegean: Core—periphery, Neo-Malthusian, and other interpretive models.’’Journal of Field Archaeology 24 (1997), 1—38, Figure 10, revised.
World History
