Chronological Phases

When the interregional culture of the Early Bronze Age in the Aegean collapsed, a period on the mainland of Greece followed that archaeologists term Middle Helladic (MH; Ch. 1, p. 3; Fig. 1.1). During much of this time the countryside was largely depopulated and there is very little evidence of trade and craft production. Because of the paucity of settlements discovered through excavation, only a few places have good stratified deposits: Lerna (level V), Kolonna on the island of Aegina (City VII-X), and Pefkakia in Thessaly.

Scholars during much of the twentieth century ce argued for a break between the Early and Middle Bronze Ages, theorizing in particular the arrival of Indo-European speaking peoples at this time. Research in the past thirty years, though, shows that despite destruction and abandonment of some settlements after EH II and EH III, the transition between these periods shows many signs of continuity (Ch. 2, pp. 36-7). Furthermore, the succeeding transition between EH III and MH I seems to have been less abrupt than previously thought, with evidence of continuity in some of the ceramics and lithic traditions at Lerna (Ch. 2, p. 41). Likewise, it was thought through the 1970s that the shaft graves at Mycenae announced a dramatic cultural change beginning in LH I (with some scholars even arguing that Indo-European Greek speakers arrived at this time), but this view no longer prevails. We often cannot distinguish MH III from LH I, and frequently refer to assemblages as MH III/LH I, because the society that was developing into what we commonly refer to as Mycenaean civilization had deep roots in the indigenous Middle Helladic cultural forms (Ch. 1, p. 3).