The final disintegration of Mycenaean civilization, marked in certain areas by the survival of Mycenaean settlements until their total or partial desertion, and in central mainland Greece by the introduction of new factors which, even though in some aspects based on the old, maybe said to constitute the beginning of the Dark Age. The period from about the middle of the eleventh century to the end of the tenth is marked by a time of settling down and resumption of peaceful communication. The period is named Protogeometric because much of Greece and the Aegean is dominated by pottery of this style. The island of Crete, in spite of its very close connexions with the Mycenaean world, exhibits individual characteristics which place it, in other ways, outside the Mycenaean koine. The Cretans enjoyed an advantage apparently denied to the rest of the Greek world, except the Dodecanese, until the final years of the tenth century: their contacts with Cyprus.