On Cyprus, a wave of destructions hit the main centers of the island between 1250 and 1125 BC, following which a new culture developed, combining local styles with a very strong Mycenaean component. At the time or in the following period the island seems to have adopted Greek as its dominant language (Voskos and Knapp 2008). It is hard not to accept this as evidence for large-scale movement of people from the Aegean, in contexts probably combining warfare and refugee movements. For recent discussion of the settlement of putative Sea Peoples as the later Philistines on the Levant coast of Palestine, with an assemblage close to Late Helladic 3C, see Uziel and Maeir (2005).
On Crete, Mieke Prent (2007), following earlier work by Coldstream, finds strong evidence for significant immigration from the Mainland during the Late Minoan 3C period from the evidence of burials, merging culture, and presumably population with indigenous communities. The domination of Dorian Greek in historic Crete is implausibly due to the Mycenaean rule over the Center and West for a limited period in Late Minoan 2-3A (see Chapter 7) and suits rather a much more extensive phase of post-palatial settlement into the island.
Concentrations of new Late Helladic 3C sites in the Northwest Peloponnese, Achaea in its north, and the Dodecanese islands of the Southeast Aegean have been seen as settlements of people fleeing catastrophic warfare in the Mycenaean core states. However, in some areas this is to underestimate the poorly known earlier Mycenaean occupation (Achaea, cf. Gauss 2009); in others these may, as
Dickinson (2006) notes, represent nucleation of surrounding communities into new refuge sites. Certainly on Crete the proliferation of new, defensible settlements in the East seems to be more relocation than migration.
(p. 209b) In the following century (Late Helladic 3C) many centers continue, others are already abandoned, but none have functioning palaces. At just a few sites (notably Tiryns), attempts may have been made, none ultimately successful, to revive some semblance of kingship
At Tiryns, the walls were repaired, while in the Upper Citadel, with its palace, an important building T was constructed over the ruins of the Great Megaron, which some suggest may have represented the residence of a leader attempting to revive regional kingship. In the Lower Citadel (Unterburg) and the outer town (Unterstadt), however, the settlement expands in size, maybe as a refuge center for populations of devastated settlements elsewhere in the Argos Plain. There are other major houses perhaps of a surviving elite in the settlement. At Koukounaries on the Cycladic island of Paros a Mycenaean mansion also of Late Helladic 3C date has a throne with ivory fittings, perhaps also a short-lived claim to local royal status. Both sites were burned in the next phase of the eleventh century (Morris 2000, Dickinson 2006, Maran and Papadimitriou 2006). On Naxos the site of Grotta has a large townlike community with defense works and harbor installations as late as 1100 BC (Crielaard in Raaflaub and van Wees 2006). On Crete in Late Helladic 3C the major Mycenaean center of Khania in the west of the island continued as a planned settlement with well-built if modest houses, showing remarkable international exchange relations with Sardinia and Italy (Hallager and Hallager 2000). Once again, by the eleventh century the site was abandoned, probably for a securer, refuge location as was the norm from this time till the eighth century on Crete.
Knossos and most other major settlements shrank in LM3C (Hatzimichael and Whitley, n. d.).
(p. 210a) Why did recovery take so long?
Imgmar Unkel and Johannes Muller (Kiel University) have remarkable results from the core in Lake Stymphalos in the upland Central Peloponnese (pers. comm.) which shows a first sinkage of rainfall around 1100 BC, then a much more severe drop around 900 BC. If this Greek desiccation were to be found to have a wider effect it would certainly have been a significant factor in the long delay before complex societies reappear after the collapse of Mycenaean palatial power.
(p. 210b) During this long, disturbed period few parts of the Aegean world did not become involved in folk movements. Some scholars link these migrations to the historically attested colonization by Aegean Greeks throughout the Mediterranean and Black Sea in the final Early Iron Age, the Archaic, and early Classical centuries
Although the historic colonizations were in a rather different context, nonetheless we shall later support the idea that one aspect in common is worth stressing, the likely role of elite leaders in shifting settlements and communities from Early Iron Age to Archaic times. A strong contrast, however, between the Early Iron Age settlement moves and the Greek colonial movement of the eighth to sixth centuries BC (Late Geometric-Archaic) is noted by Snodgrass (1994): by the latter period Aegean communities were crystallizing out into towns and dependent secondary rural settlements, so the Greek colonies were founded on this model of town and country, or "polis and chora." (pp. 210-211a) One might tentatively suggest that violent attacks on the Mycenaean state centers by forces internal to Greece, with or without assistance from maritime raiders, caused their definitive removal, ushering in a long period of insecurity which effectively blocked the reconstitution of regional states, and the rule of law, for several centuries
My favored model is merely what seems at present to me the most plausible scenario based on what remains circumstantial evidence. Although there have also been attempts to argue that the palace societies were indeed struck down by famine or drought, and there is some related evidence from Egypt which could introduce this as one element behind the crisis (see Chapter 7), no convincing case for prolonged climatic disaster can be found for the Aegean, and at present other factors must have been critical, even if this is allowed as potentially a secondary contributor.
(p. 211b) Recent scholarly opinion rejects the traditional, partly legendary, model, where the destroyers of the Mycenaean states and the fleeing populations of those kingdoms can already in the Early Iron Age be identified with the speakers of the major regional Greek dialects as they are first well attested in the sixth century BC
The genesis of the historic Greek dialect groups, the Doric, Ionian, Aeolic, West Greek, and Arcado-Cypriot, has in the past been linked to the historic events of the collapse of the Bronze Age civilizations, both through invading groups of Dorians and resisting or displaced groups represented by the other dialect-bearers. Since Mycenaean archives are most closely related to Arcado-Cypriot, and Ionian appears a mix of Mycenaean Greek and Doric, it would seem that much of Mycenaean and Minoan Greece must have changed its form of Greek in the period before the sixth century, by which time the later main groups were in place. Chadwick (1976), however, has presented the provocative view that Linear B was a scribal dialect, while the ordinary population of the Peloponnese might already have spoken Dorian, hence the palaces were destroyed by indigenous peasant armies. There are parallels in Early Modern Europe, where for example in Italy the creation of a standard Italian dialect during the Renaissance from the Florentine Tuscan dialect, remained an elite mode of speech till the twentieth century, when other, often mutually incomprehensible Italian regional dialects yielded to its use (Hall 1997). Nonetheless the Chadwick theory has not been given much credence, not least because in the last generation major advances have been made in understanding the nature of ethnicity in pre-Modern societies. Here most credit goes to Jonathan Hall, who has introduced major insights from the anthropology of group identity and applied them to post-palatial Greece (Hall 1997). Hall makes a convincing case (cf. Dickinson 2006) that the massive disruption to social and political structures in the period of palatial collapse and population dislocation between ca. 1250 and 1050 BC broke down existing population self-identifiers. Only over the following centuries of the Early Iron Age did there gradually arise new networks of economic, political, and religious affiliation over large regions of Greece. These were associated with the coalescence of new dialect groups, those known by the sixth century or later Archaic period. At this time these supra-regional networks sought to ground their significance for incorporated populations through origin myths, and these displaced dialect formation back into the remote heroic past. Hall shows clearly how local cities possessed their own myths which were clearly incompatible with these later grand narratives of "ethnogenesis" (the formation of tribes or peoples). In a parallel fashion Nino Luraghi (2002) has convincingly argued that the later historic opposition between the Spartans of Laconia in the Southeast Peloponnese, and the Messenians of the Southwest, may in fact be a late, Archaic-era, "invention" to explain the military suppression and exploitation as serfs by one part of an original Early Iron Age "Southern Peloponnese" population and culture-group (the Spartans) over the other (the Messenians).
Dickinson (2006) also envisages the gradual formation of regional or even interregional cultural networks across the Early Iron Age as a result of exchange systems in ceramics and prestige goods, as well as the potent fact that every community had need of trade to obtain some or all of the necessary functional and display metals - iron, bronze, silver, and gold. He sees the emergence of shared rituals, festivals, and dialects as tied in too, all helping to account for the map of large "ethnic" divisions by late Archaic Greece such as the "Dorians," "lonians," etc., as well as regional confederacies and religious constellations (amphictyonies).
Nonetheless, most authorities agree that on Crete a significant immigration occurred in LH3C, in the eleventh century BC, bringing a dominant political class of Greek Dorian-speakers to settle in much of Central and West Crete among a non-Greek-speaking Minoan population. In Eastern Crete indigenous language and political foci survived well into historic times (Prent 2003).
(p. 211c) An earlier emphasis on cultural novelties in the post-palatial Early Iron Age, such as dress-pins, cist graves, cremation burial, new weapon types, seen hopefully as the "smoking gun" of invaders and then settlers who laid the palaces to ruin, are now generally explained as gradual introductions
The dress-pin (fibula) began to be used in Late Helladic 3B but then became far more popular in the post-palatial centuries, and may have diffused as an exotic form of dress-fastening from Italy (Dickinson 2006). Iron objects began to appear likewise in Late Helladic 3B but did not become dominant for functional work-objects until the Protogeometric era around 200 years later (Snodgrass 1989). Single burial in cist or pit graves replaced group chamber tombs and tholoi at different rates in each region of Southern and Central Greece, and cremation may at first have been a sign of class, although its popularity was also quite variable compared to inhumation throughout the post-palatial period (Hall 1997, Crielaard 1998, Dickinson 2006). In general, single cremations in cists or pits became the dominant rite in most regions by the Early Iron Age or Protogeometric era onward. Handmade Burnished Ware has given rise to a considerable body of publications in the last two decades, but cannot be taken as a mark of large-scale invaders to the Aegean. Some finds of this unusual class of pottery may mark a reduction in the supply of wheelmade professional wares due to a decline in the circulation of centralized kiln products, but some also seem to represent small-scale movements of people from Italy and/or Eastern Europe, which could in part be linked with the rise of Italian exchange links in the Late Helladic 3C era or indeed with some migrants associated with the Sea Peoples (Rutter 1990, Dickinson 2006, Rutter et al. 2007).
(p. 211d) Classical Greek historians of events between the age of the Heroes (a legendary era rooted in memories of the Minoan-Mycenaean Bronze Age), and their own era, were unaware of any "Dark Age." The world of the legendary leaders at palace centers is conceived as directly giving rise to the elite-dominated world of early historic Greece with its kings or aristocrats (basileis) claiming heroic progenitors for their dynasties. This seems difficult to accommodate with the archaeological picture
Hall (1997) has shown clearly, however, that Greek legends which were well established for each city by early historic times (the Archaic era), combine potentially accurate if fragmentary memories of the Mycenaean and Minoan eras, with far more that represents additional tales which were created to explain the very different political and ethnic maps of the seventh and sixth centuries BC. In the Plain of Argos, for example, the tiny city-states of Mycenae and Tiryns were of no significance in the latter period compared to the dominant city of Argos, the complete opposite of the Mycenaean situation, a fact that creative and continuous development and elaboration of legend strove to accommodate between the Late Bronze Age and the Archaic era. As Snodgrass (1983) points out, the fact that we know no ancient names for many of the key settlements of the intervening Early Iron Age, such as Lefkandi or Zagora, says a great deal also about the real discontinuities through that period. Both Morris (2000) and Dickinson (2006) are therefore led to conclude that even with much more evidence recently available, the concept of a "Dark Age" retains much of the essential character of the Early Iron Age. "What has been called the 'Dark Age' [is] a real phenomenon" (Dickinson 2006: 239).
(p. 211e) The Lefkandi Elite Grave: beneath the Heroon floor were pits with a male and female elite burial together with four horse graves, the male with warrior accoutrements
The multiple horses sacrificed either represent a chariot-team or cavalry mounts, but in any case were a mark of high status. The concept of a heroic burial, monumentalized and the focus of either later graves or ritual, is not confined to Lefkandi. Equally of note is the inclusion with the Lefkandi dead of a giant krater, 1.8 m high, with a clearly Near Eastern-inspired design, the Tree of Life (D'Agata 2008).
At Grotta on Naxos a settlement possessed a cemetery amid which a group of rich graves was enclosed in Protogeometric times, after which additional burials were placed here, the cluster becoming by Late Geometric times the object of cult practices. In the Late Geometric period they were covered by a memorial mound (Morris 2000, Dickinson 2006).
(p. 211f) Phoenician traders to the Aegean (their presence is known also at the port of Kommos)
Prent (2003) corrects earlier claims of a Phoenician colony at Kommos, a former major Minoan center (palatial?) on the south coast of Crete. An early Temple A uses the ruins of the possible Bronze Age palace or mansion as a focus for a warrior elite-focused heroic cult as at other former Bronze Age centers. This may have formed a place where local elites affirmed their distinctiveness, and the harbor location and elite presence quickly attracted international commerce. Phoenician amphorae, faience figurines, and vessels were signs of these interactions, which culminated in Temple B being erected around 800 BC in a clearly Phoenician design.
(p. 212a) The coastline settlements along the protected Gulf of Euboea were a major area where populations and exchange flourished with only minor disruption from the early post-palatial era into the dawn of historic times
Snodgrass has commented: "The Euboians are the great discovery of early Greek archaeology since World War II" (cited in Papadopoulos 1996). The source of Lefkandi's exotic imports are seen by many as not merely chiefly control over the district's population and their agricultural surpluses, but also as offering indirect access to mineral resources in Attica and Macedonia for Levant traders (Snodgrass 1994). But Papadopoulos (1996) notes that other ceramic traditions, including Attic, were being imitated or imported to the North Aegean in the Early Iron Age, and doubts the existence of colonies from the South until Late Geometric times, although he supports the early interest in Northern metals as a stimulus to such contacts.
(p. 212b) Ian Morris (1987) thesis: Early Iron Age formal cemetery burial became reserved for a social elite
Although burial studies outside of Athens are too few so far to test the validity of Morris' scheme throughout the Aegean, support has come from the Knossos North Cemetery and elsewhere (Dickinson 2006), although Dickinson cautions that exceptions do exist. Incidentally, Morris (1987, 2000) has given varying estimates of the proportion of the peasants who were not allowed formal burial in Protogeometric-Middle Geometric times, from a quarter to half. While accepting the Morris thesis as valid at least for parts of the Early Iron Age Aegean, Dickinson wants to know where this very large number of missing bodies was disposed of, since spare parts of human bones, while found in non-ritual deposits, fall far short of the numbers sought, and no trace of possible mass graves or "charnel pits" has been located.
(p. 212c) The Lefkandi Heroon: the impressive residence from which the community was kept under elite sway
A number of issues remain unresolved by the Lefkandi excavation. First, was this a real chief's house, or a simulacrum of it built purely to bury the supposed local rulers? Second, were the burials first put in place, before a deliberate fire destruction of the house, or afterwards? Partial destruction by the modern landowner of the site before excavation has meant that the vital stratigraphic evidence is missing to resolve these problems. The idea that there were other "great houses" spread across the extensive settlement and burial zone at Lefkandi (Morris 2000) is hypothetical. However, in favor of the possibility of multiple elite houses at Lefkandi are the separate cemeteries scattered over this large site, of which that of Toumba around the Heroon is the richest, perhaps then the dominant social subgroup, while the other grave clusters contain some rich graves among many poorer and may well represent competing lesser clans within the overall settlement (Crielaard 2006). The parallel drawn with very weakly dated but probably Early Iron Age large megaron buildings at Thermon in Aetolia (Morris 2000) is disputed: Dickinson (2006) considers these as early temples. The latter author does, however, point to possible chieftains' houses at the Cretan Early Iron Age refuge settlements of Kavousi and Phaistos, as well as in the sequence of larger houses at Nichoria (IV-1) and (IV-5) in Messenia. Haggis believes for the settlements of Early Iron Age Crete that each had a dominant family (cited by Dickinson 2006). At Zagora on the island of Andros the Geometric settlement possessed a central house with multiple rooms, units next to an open space suitable for public meetings and the only known sanctuary of the settlement, and might also be a chieftain's residence (Lang 1996).
(p. 212d) As our knowledge of rural settlement in the Early Iron Age improves, we may expect many more examples of small centers of power and exchange
Dickinson particularly and surely rightly points to the west coast of Anatolia for future discoveries of major Early Iron Age sites, given the importance of this area of contemporary Greek settlement (Ionia) in early historic times and its being the supposed homeland of the poet Homer (some argue, perhaps even living at the partially excavated site of Old Smyrna).
(p. 212e) With the birth of the Early Iron Age a new social framework was put in place by elite families (later known as basileis) with the support of a yeoman middle class (making up the other and larger part of the free population or agathoi). Together these groups controlled a large body of serfs (the kakoi)
The stabilization of the new post-palatial order into petty chiefdoms or clusters of such in town - like settlements, was associated with firm rules on burial privileges to enforce the main status division between these upper classes and the lower class, but also with the creation of "heroic" symbolism to link the new chieftain class to the dimly remembered (or idealized through oral epics - proto-Iliads and Odysseys) world of the Mycenaean kings and princes. The Lefkandi burial, with its memorial mound and chariot/cavalry horses, is the most striking example. Additionally, obtaining exotic prestige objects from the Eastern Mediterranean, however antique, may have been a way to indicate that elites using these at feasts or for burial were able to set themselves apart from the rest of their communities who did not have access to such material culture (Dickinson 2006). After 900 BC, as we enter the Geometric era, more and more distinctive status burials appear to have marked this elite culture throughout Southern Greece. But already in Protogeometric times other settlements were showing evidence of an elite class from warrior burials and finds of prestige gifts.
(p. 213a) the other half retained a form of serfdom (Thessaly, Sparta-Messenia, much of Crete)
D'Agata (2008) has suggested that alongside the creation of the basileis local elite class, on Crete the parallel rise of a broader division between serfs and a middle-upper class of citizens could be observed from the tenth century, with ceramic scenes of initiation rites for young warrior males, which by Archaic times was the basis for political life in many cities on the island, and was by then reaffirmed by the communal dining practices for the male citizen class.
(p. 213b) The Messenia Project was only able through extensive survey to record a relatively few locations as occupied in this time-period
The Messenia Project was, however, an "extensive survey," covering very large landscapes through air photos, village enquiries, and visits to likely site locations, often surveying from vehicles, very different from the small landscapes explored by the subsequent generation of "intensive" or field-by-field pedestrian surveys, such as the current PRAP survey of the Pylos district in a small sector of Messenia (Davis 1998).
(p. 213c) Snodgrass contrasts two forms of urban development over this period: at Haliartos, from a single Geometric core-community on the Acropolis, the settlement explodes over the whole city area during Archaic times, whereas the much larger city of Thespiae originates from several dispersed hamlets in Geometric times, fusing subsequently into a giant Archaic town
On Crete the same two forms of settlement have been argued from excavated and survey sites for the Early Iron Age: single-nucleation and dispersed house-cluster communities (Haggis 1999).
(p. 214a) Catling (in Cavanagh et al. 1996) confesses for Laconia to "the lack of knowledge we possess regarding all but the decorated wares from Dark Ages through Classical in that region", and an "ignorance _ virtually complete" of domestic wares
In contrast, Sutton for the Kea survey (Cherry and Davis 1991) seems to my mind overoptimistic about the reliability of our record for Geometric ceramics from field survey, claiming it is durable, easily recognizable, and long in use. This may be true in some regions, but for fine wares only. On the Berbati Survey (Wells and Runnels 1996) we note the fact confusing to the survey team that while there are more Archaic sites than Geometric, the amount of pottery recognized is in inverse proportion. While the team speculates with the idea of a lower level of human activity spread over a wider settled area (implausible, I think), they do confess to problems with recognizing Archaic material, and indeed admit that officially the whole survey area appears to go out of use in the sixth century BC, as they can't find any datable material to be certainly assigned to that century. On Crete the sixth century seems to be a problem phase for recognizing datable ceramics (Rizza 2008).
(p. 214b) In cultivated surface soils these pre-Classical wares easily lose surface paint and become assigned to the vaguely dated Archaic-Hellenistic or Geometric to Hellenistic classes
Dickinson (2006) agrees with our proposal (Bintliff et al. 1999), that in some periods of Greek archaeology, such as the Early Iron Age, coarse ware may be a major element in the assemblage, leading to problems of survival as well as recognizability in terms of chronology: "in some regions much of the coarse and even of the fine ware _ might be vulnerable to this effect" and "A combination of the vulnerability of the more poorly fired pottery to soil processes and the difficulty of recognizing the relatively rare pottery of better quality, for lack of really diagnostic types, might still make small farm sites effectively invisible" (Dickinson 2006: 97). These problems are clearly apparent in recent work at the site of Aigeira (Gauss 2009) where the attempt was made to map the Early Iron Age settlement. The author argues that the acropolis area had layers of this period destroyed by Archaic building activities, while on the Lower Saddle, where ceramics of the EIAge have been found, they are very rare, in poor condition, lacking comparanda often, and even those are of disputed date. Finally it remains unclear if the site was even continuously in use between the end of Mycenaean times and the LG-Archaic era.
(pp. 214-215a) On long-occupied sites where later periods produce more and wider spreads of surface pottery, chances are remote for finding such early fragments
Dickinson (2006: 98) also points out that sites with many later occupation phases found by survey usually just list the presence of Early Iron Age finds and do not attempt to estimate site size for that era.
(p. 215b) Site LSE1 has a sizable sherd collection (577) and the gridded collection revealed a large Classical farmstead, yet there was also sufficient Geometric-Archaic and Archaic to indicate earlier, smaller-scale occupation
The finds from those early periods at this site seem to be a mix of ritual and domestic - either it began as an early rural sanctuary which later became also a domestic settlement of some size (0.8 ha) in Classical-Hellenistic times, or a combined sanctuary and smaller settlement site from the start. One problem from many survey sites, noted earlier and also applicable to this example, is that the rare Geometric and Archaic fine ware pottery tends to be identified, while the more common domestic and coarse wares have been lost in the general "overlap dated" sherds of Archaic-Hellenistic or even Classical-Hellenistic pottery, and do not get taken into consideration. This is partly owing to lack of detailed knowledge of Geometric and Archaic domestic wares, and partly that much of this may not change greatly into Classical times and hence not be assigned to the early phases but to cross-phases such as Geometric-Hellenistic, or Archaic-Hellenistic.
(p. 215c) "Source-criticism" raises serious doubts about empty Dark Age landscapes
Anthony Snodgrass (pers. comm.), however, correctly points out that despite the plausibility of my arguments on an essentially "hidden landscape" for Protogeometric and Early Geometric-Middle Geometric settlements in Southern Greece, the evidence of the recorded finds of pottery still concentrates on the Late Geometric expansion or on material which spans the Geometric and Archaic eras: "Even though the findings of 30 years of surveys _ don't disprove the existence of genuinely Early Iron Age sites, they have done nothing whatsoever to strengthen the case for" the continuity model which I am presenting here.
(p. 215d) The theory that Early Iron Age societies "reverted" to pastoralism, or even nomadic pastoralism
Snodgrass (1987) provides a fuller and more nuanced presentation of the importance of pastoralism in the Early Iron Age, although he now doubts the thesis (pers. comm.) Although elites in epic poetry, believed to represent memories of the Early Iron Age, consumed much meat, this has always been a sign of extravagant wealth in European farming societies rather than evidence for the insignificance of cereal production. More significant in subsistence terms is probably the burial chest in terracotta for a female cremation from Early Geometric Athens (ninth century BC) on whose lid are modeled what are taken to be five large granaries. Coldstream (1991) describes this as a status symbol for a clan rich in land and grain. Sarah Wallace's (2010) important work on Cretan Iron Age to Archaic settlement patterns and the role of pastoralism has now appeared as a monograph.
(p. 217a) Kirsten sought to solve a problem posed by his older mentor, Philippson, namely, "why were Greek city-states so remarkably numerous?"
Philippson emphasized this problem as especially curious for the province of Thessaly, which was largely within the ethnos or tribal state political system rather than that of the polis form more typical of Southern Greece and the islands (Kirsten 1956), yet in Archaic-Classical times was dense with towns (cf. Auda et al. 1990).
(p. 217b) The scale of the typical city-state was that of the traditional larger Greek village of the Early Modern era
Curiously, another historical geographer, Wagstaff (1975), opposed a similar link between traditional villages and Classical cities, when it was made by the Greek architect and urban theorist Doxiadis. Whereas the comparison clearly will not work if we include every Early Modern rural settlement, regardless of size, the parallel between the class of large village and the Normalpolis is much closer and more informative than alternative comparisons to traditional Greek district towns.
(p. 217c) newly created city-states competed to absorb lesser communities into their territories
On Crete in Archaic-Classical times a similar process of polis and proto-polis absorption has been documented (Hatzimichael and Whitley, n. d.), where at least 49 city-states are documented during these eras. The leading states which compete against each other and to enclose smaller neighbors are Knossos, Gortyn, Lyktos, and Eleutherna.
(p. 217d) On Kea in Classical times, the island possesses a series of small poleis. Whether earlier stages of the Iron Age saw more numerous nucleations is unclear with the limited extent of intensive survey
For the smallest city on the island of Kea, Koressia, whose territory was the main focus of the Kea Survey, intensive survey recorded no rural sites larger than farms. Yet the larger scale of the other three poleis might allow for additional rural nucleations beyond the later town centers mapped.
(p. 218) The German Landeskunde (landscape lore) tradition (represented in Greece by early twentieth-century scholars such as Philippson, Kirsten, and Lehmann)
See Lehmann (1939), Philippson (1950-59), Kirsten (1956). This has recently been reformulated and elaborated in significant ways by Czech landscape archaeologists as Community Area theory (Neustupny 1991). See also Bintliff 2000.
(p. 219) One very obvious internal relocation within settlement chambers might be expected in the Early Iron Age, when defensible positions may have been favored as a result of chronic insecurity
Watrous (1980) describes from his survey of the upland Lassithi Plain in Eastern Crete how refuge settlements of the post-palatial and Early Iron Age periods were abandoned for more low-lying sites at the end of the Geometric era, generalizing this process to Central and Eastern Crete as a whole. Wallace (2003) has shown that in fact the maximum use of refuge sites was in the most troubled early post-palatial period of Late Minoan 3C, and already by the Protogeometric era, from the tenth century, more than half of these had been abandoned for more accessible locations. The resultant settlement pattern formed the basis for the later historic town and village networks. On the other hand, in some parts of Crete, and along both the Mainland and island sides of the Gulf of Euboea, a series of Early Iron Age coastal or island settlements seemed to present themselves to possible maritime raiders (Crielaard 1998, 2006, Dickinson 2006): it would seem these communities were strong enough to defend themselves and were presumably much involved with boats, perhaps indeed as pirates themselves in some cases (a theme common in Homer's epics and Classical memories of preceding societies).
(p. 220) Several well-known Dark Age settlements show discontinuous settlement histories (Lefkandi, Zagora)
One current focus of our own fieldwork in Boeotia, Central Greece, concerns a further example of relocation at the end of the "Dark Age." It seems possible that a "Dark Age" regional focus at mainland Oropus was abandoned for a new location on the adjacent island of Euboea, clearing the ground for a different Mainland regional center to emerge in Archaic times elsewhere in the same district at Tanagra.
However, it is precisely because Lefkandi and Zagora and other examples of Early Iron Age settlements were abandoned before historic times that they have formed the ideal excavation sites for revealing the nature of such communities, since they are lacking a massive overburden of Greco-
Roman settlement debris. The argument made earlier, that a much larger number of historic sites with just traces of Early Iron Age finds should nonetheless be seen as likely representing the continuity of local settlement, would suggest that the deserted Early Iron Age settlement is "the exception to the rule" of settlement chamber behavior.
Additionally, families of the middle, putatively "free" yeoman-peasant class, may have migrated to join other communities where the economic or social prospects looked more favorable. Thus in the Valley of the Muses, for example, although we have evidence for continuous activity through the Dark Ages, famously some of the early historic occupants arrived from a considerable distance during this period (such as the poet Hesiod's father from across the Aegean out of Asia Minor).
(p. 221a) Developments in Northern Greece
New projects in Albania and the borders of Greece to Albania are shedding light on the processes of local development and interaction with influences from the Southern Greek world in the Mycenaean, Early Iron Age, and finally Archaic eras (when Greek colonies from the South were founded on the coasts at Apollonia and Epidamnus) (Papadopoulos 2010). Long-distance contacts to obtain exotic items and valuable materials are clear throughout these periods, and include Italy, other areas of the North Balkans, and Southern Greece. Local status monuments and prominent individuals, including warrior males, are noted, although the details of local social relations and the dating and causation of the rise of fortified central places during Iron Age-Archaic times have yet to be explored. As noted earlier, there seems to be a tendency for scholars working in these regions to ascribe all manifestions of local social complexity to outside contacts, denying any possibility of internal developments.
(p. 221b) Through the Early Iron Age until Late Geometric times, the typical Mainland family home was a one-room curvilinear house
On the Cyclades and Crete rectilinear and flat-roofed forms prevailed, and this may reflect the different roofing systems there, using stone, clay, and brushwood compared to gabled wooden roofs on the Greek and Anatolian Mainland.
(p. 222a) Old Smyrna on the west coast of Turkey has a fortification wall with signs of concentrated settlement within it already by the ninth century BC
There is some debate on the early circuit wall around Old Smyrna. Lang (1996) thinks it might be more a retaining wall for the settlement, and Turkish scholars have suggested it is dated much too early for the archaeological evidence from the site (Snodgrass 1992). Moreover, we cannot be absolutely certain if the earliest settlement at Old Smyrna was a single focus plan such as Zagora (see below), or had more than one focus, such as the dispersed yet townlike communities at Athens and elsewhere. Snodgrass, as we noted earlier, has contrasted these two trajectories of Late Geometric-Archaic city origins as the expanding nucleus and the merger of multiple-foci models.
(p. 222b) Athens is remarkable in achieving dominance over the large region of Attica before recorded history begins (ca. 700 BC), and perhaps as early as 900 BC
As noted earlier, hence the recurrent and coherent legends which the Athenians preserved later, and which appear to document the military absorption by Athens of formerly autonomous proto-poleis elsewhere in Attica (Bintliff 1994). The argument that this only refers to a Mycenaean state formation process seems to most but not all scholars less convincing than a Dark Age unification campaign.
(p. 223) Corinth: like other "townlike" settlements such as Athens, initially village-hamlets lie dispersed around a large undefended area, while the lofty citadel of the Acrocorinth above the town provided refuge
These clusters include settlement concentrations around two important springs, the hill on which the well-known Archaic Apollo temple will later be built, and elsewhere (Lang 1996).
(p. 224a) The standard room plus porch, or megaron form, is replaced by multi-roomed houses often placed around a courtyard, inaugurating that more elaborate definition of social and economic space which is usually associated with the formation of the citizen family-based city-state
Morris (2000) links the rise of more elaborate enclosed family houses with the growth of wealth in Late Geometric Greece, symbolizing a more materialistic and assertive society that is now appearing from below the aristocratic elite. This for him provides critical evidence for rising social pressures from the "middling" class with their new desire or mentality to create a more inclusive society, culminating in the widespread formation of community-centered city-states.
(p. 224b) The shift to iron as the dominant metal for tools and weapons is generally a feature of the Protogeometric era
Snodgrass (1989) analyzed a series of Early Iron Age cemeteries and found that in the period 1100700 BC between 92 and 99 percent of weapons and tools were of iron rather than bronze.
(p. 225a) Levels of import and export from the Aegean only recover Mycenaean standards by Archaic times
Dickinson (2006) cautions us from overemphasizing Early Iron Age commerce and gift exchange with Eastern Mediterranean partners. Although gifts in burials at the North Cemetery at Knossos are cited as a major source of proof for continued foreign contacts in the era 950-700 BC, their scale is tiny, and apart from pottery imported from Attica they represent the equivalent of one or two imports per generation. Nonetheless the fact that these tend to appear in the same graves points to just a few privileged families associated with overseas contacts. Waldbaum has dismissed Protogeometric and Geometric ceramics exported from the Aegean to the Levant as follows: "finds are as yet too scarce to postulate more than the most casual contact, perhaps via Cyprus or Tyre rather than Greece itself" (1994: 61).
(p. 225b) Levels of trade and craft production take off in Late Geometric, probably the result of internal growth in demand and security, linked to the expansion of town life, but also to greater intervention from Oriental trading-partners
Corinth, a key merchant city in the Archaic and Classical era, was slow to develop a commercial role during the Protogeometric and Geometric eras, in comparison to Athens, Euboea, and Crete (Morgan 1988). Until the Archaic era, the natural orientation of its trade along the Gulf of Corinth and thence further west remained far less significant a factor in contrast to its links eastward out of the Aegean.
(p. 225c) The ceramic sequence
Moignard (2006) provides an excellent introduction to the nature and development of Greek ceramics in the proto-historic to Hellenistic eras. Susan Langdon (2008) has provided an in-depth study of the art of Greece for the Early Iron Age (1100-700 BC).
(p. 225d) Subdivisions of the Early Iron Age (Protogeometric, Early Geometric, Middle Geometric, Late Geometric)
It is now normal to consider the traditional phase between Late Helladic 3C and Protogeometric, Submycenaean, as in reality merely a local variant of late Late Helladic 3C, notably in Attica (Dickinson 2006). D'Agata (2008) notes that we still rely for the Early Iron Age on ceramic style changes for chronology and phasing, and this can be a problem as grave finds are far commoner than settlements, and may not contain the full range of contemporary pottery forms. However, scholars like D'Agata attempt to extract social meaning from the transformations in design and image that the period 1200-700 BC provides from its ceramics.
(p. 225e) Geometric designs on Aegean ceramics probably possessed a symbolic charge hitherto beyond our understanding
This is rather reminiscent of the way in which our own predecessors at the start of the twentieth century AD, used to Victorian-era painting, were to react to the Paris Modernists who developed abstract art.
(p. 225f) Protogeometric-Geometric ceramics: traditionally such pots were seen as benefiting from improved technology, a multiple brush attached to a compass, and a shift from a slow to a fast potter's wheel. But there seems no change in the potter's wheel and the compass already appears in final Mycenaean times
Even the use of the multiple rather than single brush has been challenged for Protogeometric art (Hall 1997), although experiments have reproduced the right effects with a multiple brush (Dickinson 2006).
(pp. 225-226a) Athens was just one of several networks exporting ceramics or whose style was influential on a wider scale. Euboea and North-Central Greece form a rival sphere, perhaps linked to the metals trade
For earlier discussion of the Euboean-North Central Aegean ceramic network and the intra - and extra-Aegean metals trade see Snodgrass 1994, but more critically Papadopoulos 1996. The latter is generally skeptical of the overemphasis on Euboean merchants, suggesting that other Early Iron Age Aegean groups were involved with exchanges, while the leading role may have been in any case played by Levantine ships coming to the Aegean and not vice versa until the Late Geometric period (Papadopoulos 1997, contra Popham and Lemos 1995, for example). The ninth-century Phoenician-style temple at the port of Kommos on Crete may be further evidence of this rather one-sided relationship (Morris 2000, Shaw 2006). D'Agata (2008) sees the innovative hub for ceramics of the PG-G era in Athens as due to a close association between potters and the rising wealth of its elite families, for whom they may have taken commissions or even been slaves.
(p. 226b) Crete shows a precocious Eastern or "Orientalist" influence in its pottery, which seems to follow on its early links in prestige exchange and metalwork with the Levant
This "special relationship" of Crete to the Levant, compared with other parts of the Aegean, is considered by some as a good reason to suggest that the transference of the Phoenician alphabet to Greece may have occurred there. While much of the Aegean followed the Athenian lead in developing the Geometric ceramic style from the ninth to the eighth centuries, Crete diverged and combined Oriental inspiration with a revival of Minoan decorative elements, perhaps derived from rediscovered Bronze Age burial wares (D'Agata 2008). Figured designs are a significant feature.
(p. 226c) During the collapse of palace civilizations, regional kingship disappeared, and power fragmented into a myriad of district chiefdoms
Greek legends include kings in the pre-Classical era, and although it is possible that some of the local chieftain class may have achieved paramount leadership over larger communities and their satellites, so far we have no archaeological evidence to support this. The evidence of status differences in the burial data seems more compatible with a class of competing chiefs, the basileis. Specific legends such as the claim of the historical Neleid aristocratic clan at Athens to descend from Pylos where they owned the (Mycenaean) title "wanax," might of course be genuine dynastic memory, or merely a false claim to heroic ancestry (Sarkady 1975). In this connection, Coldstream (1991) notes that there are no fewer than nine surviving Late Geometric pots from Athens showing a figure with four legs, which could be a reference to the legend of the Pylian hero Nestor defeating the monster twins, and hence in some fashion these vessels might be associated with the claims of this same Athenian elite claim to Mycenaean royal ancestry.
On Crete D'Agata (2008) and Hatzimichael and Whitley (n. d.) see evidence for the same general shift between palatial hierarchical statuses in Mycenaean times to smaller-scale societies run by local lesser elites in LH3C-LM3C and the subsequent periods of Protogeometric-Geometric or on Crete "Orientalizing." The importance of elite feasting and the close attachment likely to high-quality ceramic producers is stressed, with objects provided for dining and as burial gifts or markers. In the final LH-LM era familiar scenes of hunting and fighting, or maritime images, continued from the palatial repertory, but in the PG-EG/MG era abstract designs took over on the Mainland, while Crete retained more figured ceramics with related themes to earlier periods. The famous granary model from a rich female burial in ninth BC Athens nonetheless reminds us of the importance of elite clans controlling agricultural surpluses.
(p. 226d) The centrality of kinship and wealth inheritance in the close-knit elite clans of the Protogeometric-Middle Geometric centuries
Much debate has centered on the origin of internal social divisions within the Classical city-states such as the genos and phyle (Snodgrass 1980, Bintliff 1994, Hall 1997). Ancient historians generally agree that it is very hard to trace these kin-groups and pseudo kin-groups before the rise of the mature city-state, and hence have largely come to believe that they were artificial divisions of the early polis, to enable its growing size to be managed through smaller formal associations (particularly in relation to the organization of units for the citizen army). But all this sits very uneasily with our current archaeological models of Early Iron Age society. If society before the creation of the city-state and other forms of state was largely based on a small set of intermarrying elite households, each dependent on a retinue of their middle-class followers and lower-class serf dependents, then we surely have a social formation. It is argued that this social group was replicated in each significant nucleated settlement, while in the rarer, larger, townlike communities multiple examples of such competing clans living at some distance from each other would be reconstructed. The existence of these conical social groups is seen as the very organizing principle of the settlement itself. At the least the aristocratic genos-clan should be traced back into these cross-class subgroups of society. Such a case was already proposed by Humphreys (1978) where she contrasted the Dark Age to Early Archaic society as one where aristocrats used their intermarried clans (the genos) as the basis for power, run out of their households, with the later Archaic to Classical societies where the effects of urbanization, hoplite citizenship, social mobility, and new value placed on achieved wealth displaced politics from the house (oikos) to the public spaces and institutions of the city-state where power was shared between the upper and middle classes. Homeric relations between elite families in Homer are met with the new mentality already in Hesiod who relies on neighbors for help in times of need or mutual advantage.
(p. 226e) Early Iron Age elite graves in Greece and Cyprus are marked by weapons, drinking, and dining-equipment including cauldrons and roasting-spits: "Eminent warriors and feasters" (Criellard 1998:189)
Morris (1999) finds broad parallels between Early Iron Age elite burial status symbols or "personas" and those found in contemporary emergent elite societies of the Western Mediterranean and Continental Europe in the ninth to eighth centuries BC. He notes similarities in: the custom of male cremations in bronze urns, the gifts of weapons and sometimes bronze tripods, Near Eastern or Mediterranean imports and heirlooms, elaborate vases, and burial under tumuli. He follows Gordon Childe in seeing this as a linked effect of rising regional populations, the rise of iron-using communities, a takeoff in exchange systems after disruptions in the later Bronze Age, and the appearance of a broader elite society with warrior "heroic" values and wide cultural networks. D'Agata (2008) sees the warrior elite as the basis for the new society which emerged from the ruins of palatial society on the Mainland and Crete by 1000 BC, tied with the dominance of individual against previous communal burial and grave gifts emphasizing personal status rather than a place in a palatial stepped hierarchy of offices.
(p. 226f) The model fails to account for how elite-peasant dependency arises in the first place and is then maintained
This "Prestige Goods Economy" model has long been popular in archaeological theory, and derives from the social anthropology of Early Modern Third World societies. Elites in such "peripheral" societies obtain exotic items from more complex societies, and are then enabled to pass on some of these objects to lesser elite members in order to win their support. However, the scenario entails so many problems that the model has come under sustained critique (cf. Bintliff 1984 critiquing Frankenstein and Rowlands 1978). Is the possession of an exotic item of value sufficient for a greater or lesser chief to control his dependents, and if so how? More plausible is the argument that foreign wealth items symbolized the existing power of a leader. Furthermore, in the context of Early Iron Age exchanges out of the Aegean, foreign traders probably gave such items as presents to seal relations with local leaders, as diplomatic gifts, or in return for more tangible agricultural and mineral staples for export.
(p. 227a) When Homer produced the definitive version, perhaps around 700 BC, of a series of overlapping epic poems _
The date of the Homeric compilation of the epic poems the Iliad and Odyssey is a much contested issue among philologists, as is whether Homer was one or several persons.
(p. 227b) Homer's epic poems seem to have been growing in scale and detail from the Middle Bronze Age into Homer's own time (the final Geometric-earliest Archaic era), but much of the action is describing the poet's own society
There is an immense literature around the Homeric epics, and almost as much controversy regarding the nature and date of authorship and which parts of the epics relate to which period of history and prehistory. Archaeologists are aware of this literary library, but what seems to us to be an amalgamation of eras rolled into two developing oral poems create problems in using such material to answer archaeological questions. I have selectively inserted possible links to these epics in this chapter where this can be justified. For a fuller treatment the reader is referred to Morris and Powell (1997).
(p. 227c) Odysseus and his son secretly remove weaponry and armor hanging in the dining-hall, doubtless placed for his own followers, then massacre the defenseless suitors
This orgy of inter-elite violence is rounded off by Odysseus hanging any servant girls who had fraternized with the unwelcome guests. To us the excessive violence between the elites in Homer is a fundamental feature of elite mentality in his epics. Morris (2000) describes them as touchy, trigger-happy heroes, whose violence against the strong and the weak does not receive criticism. Thucydides surely reflects a genuine folk memory when he notes in the Classical era that "old lifestyles" of weapon-carrying and piracy survived to his day in more backward parts of Greece (Dickinson 2006).
We have already noted the occurrence of "warrior graves" as a distinctive feature of Early Iron Age cemeteries, based on weapons found in the tomb. These are widespread, yet accompany only a minority of the dead. If we accept that the entire upper class wore weapons at formal occasions, then as van Wees (1998) suggests, weapon graves are more symbolic, since the remainder of the graves are believed to be of the middle-class armed supporters of the aristocratic basileus. Perhaps the Odysseus story does explain this too, since it implies that the chief supplied weapons to his retinue from his own armory.
(p. 227d) Highly painted storage vessels (Dipylon vases) stood at elite graves over the cremation burial-pit, kraters for men, amphorae for women
As we observed earlier, that such monuments were appropriate to both males and females makes it clear that elite kin-group membership and the associated inherited wealth were important values in aristocratic society, regardless of gender, an aspect familiar from the Homeric tale of Odysseus' abandoned wife, Penelope, and her multiple suitors. One Dipylon vase for example, at 1.5 m high, ca.760 BC, shows the deceased as clearly female, which the vase shape also confirms following convention (Fullerton 2000). Incidentally the term "Dipylon vase" originates from the location of this part of the Athenian Kerameikos cemetery close to the Dipylon Gate in the later city wall, and some believe this series of vases stems from a single workshop of the "Dipylon Master" (D'Agata 2008). This author sees these funerary vases as evidence both of the birth of the subsequent Black - and Red-figure vases of Archaic times and also of display competition between elite clans.
(p. 227e) The aristocratic deceased lies on a high bier, while a great crowd of mourners processes round the pot's profile (rows of war-chariots, lines of wailing men and women)
The horses buried with the elite pair at Protogeometric Lefkandi could be for a chariot, but it is generally believed that probably by now, and certainly by Late Geometric and Archaic times when the chariot reappears in elite vases, this vehicle survived only for ceremonial purposes, rather than as a normal means of elite transport in peace or war (Dickinson 2006).
(p. 227f) The probable development by the Late Geometric era, if not much earlier, of the elite feast or drinking-party, later called the symposium
Against an early date for the symposium (argued by Murray 1990) is the fact that its characteristic reclining dining is unknown in Homer's poems, compiled at the end of the Late Geometric era, and only appears on vase paintings at the end of the seventh century BC or mature Archaic period (Dickinson 2006). It is usually believed to have been copied from Near Eastern elite feasting, perhaps via the non-Greek states of Western Anatolia such as Lydia, or precociously Eastern-influenced ("Orientalizing") Crete. That Early Iron Age elites held feasts for their peers and retinues is, however, very likely and the use and design of large prestige cooking vessels, bronze cauldrons, were probably a continuous custom from Mycenaean times (Dickinson 2006). Hatzimichael and Whitley (n. d.) argue that elite feasting can be traced on Crete from LM3C onward and marked the emergence of a protooligarchy of local elites.
(p. 228a) The supposed chief's house at Zagora had 16 pithos emplacements, mostly for vessels of this dimension
According to Ebbinghaus (2005) an average relief pithos held enough olive oil for a household's needs for a year, or enough wine for the head of a household, but for the grain requirement of a family in one year four to six would be needed.
(p. 228b) Such "created" links to "local heroes" may also have been instituted by the emergent city-state communities themselves, as they built up their sense of regional identity through claimed ties to the legendary past of their territories
Nearly one-third of the Mycenaean tombs dug by Blegen at Prosymna in the Plain of Argos had gifts deposited in them during Geometric-Archaic times (Antonaccio 1994), which might indeed suggest a more widespread identification with one's community's remote ancestors.
(p. 228c) This is also evidenced by cities erecting shrines over Bronze Age centers of power
The city of Argos' rebuilding of the Heraion sanctuary across the Argos Plain from itself may have used the Cyclopaean walling style to imitate known Bronze Age defenses at Mycenae and Tiryns, at a site of Mycenaean origin it wished to appropriate to itself. At Mycenae and Tiryns temples were built over the Great Megara of the Mycenaean royalty by the citizens of the small city-states that occupied their sites, and a shrine was placed on the highest point of the Mycenaean center of the Menelaion above Sparta by that rising state (Hall 1997).
We can suppose that large buildings such as the Early Iron Age Lefkandi or Emborio houses, were the focus of elite-controlled banqueting, as well as a repository of prestigious items obtained by the upper class.
We need to note, once more, that the Lefkandi house might have been the original chieftain's residence, but some scholars suggest the actual structure excavated was a replica built to be destroyed as part of the burial ceremonies.
(p. 229a) At several famous Classical sanctuary sites ritual deposits including votives appear in limited quantities from the Protogeometric period onward, while sacrificial altars are gradually monumentalized
At Olympia the earliest sacrificial ash deposits from recent excavations are tenth and possibly even eleventh century BC in date, but the deposition of figurines of divinities or worshippers may not go back so far, and they become common dedications on the Mainland as part of the explosion of sanctuary gifts only in the Late Geometric era (Snodgrass 1980, Dickinson 2006). It has been argued that the later "Panhellenic" or interstate sanctuaries, large and small, had only regional importance as foci of elite display and control until the Late Geometric era, with the rise of the city-states and communal governments (cf. Morgan 1996, Dickinson 2006).
Crete is an exception regarding figurine continuity from the Bronze Age, and indeed there is considerable continuity of dedications at sacred caves, peak sanctuaries, and spring sites from the palatial eras into the Archaic period (Hatzimichael and Whitley, n. d.). Prent (2009) interestingly suggests that whereas in LM3C the Cretan bench sanctuaries in settlements retained goddess figurines of palatial type, the form is transformed in the subsequent centuries into an adorant as if its meaning had been lost in newly emerging societies of the mature post-palatial era, and overlaid by concepts of female form seen on Oriental imports to the island. Prent (2003) also discusses the widespread creation of cult foci at Minoan palatial foci in the Early Iron Age on Crete, only sometime after the final Bronze Age abandonments and destructions. The finds indicate aristocratic warrior groups who are using the "heroic" past and its standing walls as a focus for their status as a leading caste. In contrast stand new shrines which are used by the common folk, not in former power centers, full of simple pottery dedications. Intriguingly, as noted by Coldstream, such recycling of heroic associations in Central Crete was largely carried out by Dorian-speaking newcomers from the Mainland who appear on all the archaeological, historical, and linguistic evidence to have arrived in the eleventh century to dominate the region. However, one might add that bolstering claims to dominance by a Greek-speaking elite through Minoan ruins might have been assisted by earlier versions of the Homeric legends in which Crete appears as part of the Mycenaean heroic world (as indeed it may have been in the supposed Mycenaean occupation phase).
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