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8 - Early Iron Age Greece

from Part II - Early Mediterranean Economies and the Near East

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Ian Morris
Edited by
Walter Scheidel ,
Ian Morris  and
Richard P. Saller
Ian Morris
Affiliation:
Stanford University
Walter Scheidel
Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
Ian Morris
Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
Richard P. Saller
Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
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Summary

introduction

In this chapter I review the economic history of Early Iron Age Greece. Following Douglass North, I assume that “the task of economic history [is] to explain the structure and performance of economies through time,” by performance meaning “total output, output per capita, and the distribution of income of the society,” and by structure “those characteristics of a society which we believe to be the basic determinants of performance…political and economic institutions, technology, demography, and ideology.” There is currently little agreement over Early Iron Age economic structures, and no quantitative estimates of performance.

Archaeologists used to call the period 1200–700 bc the Dark Age; most now prefer the less judgmental Early Iron Age (EIA). The dominant narrative tells of the transition from palace to polis. Iron became common between 1100 and 900 bc, but by convention EIA archaeology begins around 1200, with the destruction of the Late Bronze Age (LBA) palaces. The period has existed as a scholarly construct since Schliemann’s excavations in the 1870s. Petrie’s 1890 synchronism between Mycenaean pottery and Egypt’s Nineteenth Dynasty fixed the fall of the palaces around 1200, defining a 500-year interval between Mycenae and the archaic age. Some historians end the EIA in 776, with the first Olympic Games, but most see a longer eighth-century transition, marked by population growth, state formation, colonization, and the return of literacy, representational art, and monumental architecture.

Keywords

economic performanceliving standardsDark AgeEarly Iron Age Greecepre-750 sanctuary evidence
Type
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The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World , pp. 211 - 241
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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