The rise of literate state-societies in the Archaic Aegean is not an isolated phenomenon. The recovery of the Near East from similar political and military disruptions at the end of the Bronze Age was followed by the re-emergence of city-states and empires, whilst in Europe as a whole, the period paralleling Late Geometric-Archaic sees population boom and the crystallization of chiefdoms and states. Greater political stability and the impact of iron technology are amongst the key factors (Bintliff 1984), but as these societies expanded, their mutual interactions through trade, alliances, and cultural flows hastened the rise of more elaborate societies. In the longue duree then
LG-Archaic Greece is a part of this millennial trend to more populous and organized societies.
In the medium term, the heartlands of the Aegean see the rise of a cycle of flourishing, which will be followed by stagnation or decline after some 500 years. More peripheral regions however will take off later and their prosperity will last longer: ecological and socio-political factors can be invoked (Bintliff 1997).
As for the short term, Complexity Theory (Bintliff 2003) teaches us that local initial conditions can be critical for future developments. The contingent role of a lawgiver or tyrant in the social conflicts of Archaic Greece can direct a state’s trajectory into divergent pathways, including the extreme democratic experiments of Athens. Yet similar variation can be seen in other, later city-state societies where the absence of a dominating outside political system allows small-scale states to experiment with their social organization, such as in late Medieval-Renaissance Italy (Waley 1988, Bintliff 2004).
World History
