The period that runs from the fall of the palaces until the end of the Bronze Age around 1050 bc is still, overall, a troubled one that is marked, on the mainland as in the islands of the Aegean, by multiple destructions. These have allowed for the differentiation of several phases, thanks to changes in pottery. The longest period, Late Helladic (LH) IIIC, is most often subdivided into three phases (Early, Middle, Late). The first, very short phase corresponds to the immediate aftermath of the destruction. The second, LH IIIC Middle, characterised by new ceramic styles (P. Mountjoy, in Deger-Jalkotzy and Zavadil 2007, 221–42), looks like a short-lived ‘renaissance’; at Mycenae and Tiryns, it has even been divided into two subphases (LH IIIC Middle developed and LH IIIC Middle advanced). The third sees a rapid decline in the previous styles.