15.
The Dark Age of Greece
Irene S. Lemos
The term Dark Age is generally used to describe
the archaeological period which starts with the
collapse of the Mycenaean palatial system
(roughly 1200 ) and ends with the rise of the
Greek city-states (around 770 ).
The influential and comprehensive studies by
Snodgrass (The Dark Age of Greece) and Des-
borough (The Last Mycenaeans and their Successors
and The Greek Dark Ages) remain valuable for the
definition of the period. Both scholars justify their
use of the term Dark Age in terms of describing
the post-Mycenaean period as one which was
marked by destruction and abandonment of sites,
depopulation and a general fall in living stand-
ards. This gloomy picture of Greece was further
accompanied by the loss of certain skills in archi-
tecture and art and most importantly by the loss
of writing (Snodgrass, Dark Age of Greece, p. 2;
Desborough, Greek Dark Ages, pp. 1518). It was
also believed that during this period contacts with
areas outside Greece were severely interrupted
and even within the Aegean communication was
limited. The surviving communities appeared to
be isolated when compared to the international
spirit which characterised their Mycenaean pre-
decessors.
Since the publication of those studies, under-
standing of the Dark Age has been enhanced
by a number of important archaeological discov-
eries, and by more surveys of the period. First,
the chronological subdivisions within the period
are now better understood, especially for that part
of it which is still assigned to the Late Bronze Age.
Advances have also been made in defining cul-
turally the crucial period following the collapse of
the Mycenaean palatial system. This period, which
87
coincides with the last stage of the Late Bronze
Age, is called Late Helladic IIIC (c. from 1200 to
1100 ); it is followed by a short transitional
period, the Sub-Mycenaean period (c.11001025),
the end of which finds Greek communities prac-
tising newly introduced iron-working technology.
The Early Iron Age in Greece coincides with the
beginning of the so-called Protogeometric period
(c.1025900); both Protogeometric and the suc-
cessive Geometric styles are named after the char-
acteristic geometric motifs employed to decorate
the pottery produced in most Greek regions (see
also chapter 28). This is followed by the Early and
Middle Geometric stages, c. 900770 , which
cover the last stages of the so-called Dark Age.
The final Geometric stage (the Late Geometric
period) is believed to mark the beginning of the
recovery in the Greek world and thus is not
included in the Dark Age. By this time Greeks
had already adopted the alphabet for writing (see
also chapter 63).
The importance of Late Helladic IIIC (LH
IIIC) emerges from recent research which has
shown that this period was not as impoverished as
once thought. At the beginning of the period some
of the Mycenaean citadels appear still to be occu-
pied and to have served as the seats of local rulers
who replaced the Mycenaean wanaktes (rulers).
This is especially notable in the case of Tiryns,
where the Mycenaean megaron (central hall) was
probably remodelled on a smaller scale to meet the
needs of an administrative centre. The population
in the Lower Citadel also appears to have increased
during this period, indicating that refugees from
destroyed or abandoned sites might have found
safety at Tiryns.
88 Classics and the Classical World
Another important observation is that a num-
ber of sites which were either newly founded
(such as Perati in East Attica) or which were
insignificant under Mycenaean rule (such as Lef-
kandi in Euboea and Kynos in east Locris) now
appear to be more important. This becomes more
apparent during the middle part of this period
when a number of sites located along the coasts
and the islands of the Aegean show signs of a
short recovery. This is reflected in the deposi-
tion of grave oerings found in tombs (for exam-
ple in the tombs at Perati, and on the islands of
Naxos and Rhodes) and in the appearance of a
pictorial style of decoration on vases (Deger-
Jalkotzy, Aegean islands; Last Mycenaeans).
The repertoire of this pictorial style includes
monsters, such as grins and sphinxes
fantastical images which continue to be imported
from the Near East and also octopuses, birds and
most importantly scenes with warriors (Rutter,
Cultural novelties). The most celebrated exam-
ple of such scenes is the Warrior Krater from
Mycenae (French, Mycenae, pp. 13540), while
kraters found at Kynos in east Locris and
Lefkandi in Euboea, depicting scenes with war-
riors fighting on ships, are an innovation of the
period (Dakoronia, Representations of sea bat-
tles). The popularity of warriors iconography
indicates clearly their importance in the running
of the aairs of the surviving communities
(Deger-Jalkotzy, forthcoming).
Despite, however, the apparent presence and
protection oered by a society of warriors, many
of the LH IIIC settlements were destroyed or
abandoned at the end of the period. Some of them
were abandoned for good, but most only for a
short period of time. For example, Koukounaries
on Paros and Emporio on Chios are both aban-
doned after the end of the Late Bronze Age but
then reoccupied late in the Iron Age. Other sites
such as Kastri at Palaikastro and Chania in Crete
appear to be abandoned for good. Perati in Attica
was also abandoned, while Athens, Lefkandi and
Argos survived, even if, according to the present
archaeological picture, living standards seem to
have deteriorated (Popham, Collapse of Aegean
civilization). In fact, if we want to find a period to
which the term Dark Age could apply, then this
short period at the end of the Late Bronze Age
and the beginning of the Sub-Mycenaean period
is probably the best candidate.
The following stage is called the Sub-
Mycenaean period by experts, in order to sug-
gest that the pottery produced during this period
is made and decorated in a debased version of
Mycenaean style. But pottery apart, the Sub-
Mycenaean phase introduces a number of new
features which will become more prominent at
the beginning of the Iron Age. In addition, schol-
ars have rightly commented that it is not only
the new features which made the dierence in the
archaeological picture of the period but also the
complete rejection of important Mycenaean ones
(Desborough, Greek Dark Ages, pp. 6479). One
of the most important changes taking place is
in burial practices: in some of the core areas of
Mycenaean culture, such as the Argolid, central
Greece, Euboea and the Cyclades, single
burials in cist tombs and pits completely replaced
the Mycenaean rite of multiple burials in cham-
ber tombs. Multiple burials in tholoi or chamber
tombs, however, continued in Thessaly, Phokis,
Messenia and Crete. Desborough suggested that
such a change in burial rites could only have
happened with the arrival of new people, most
probably from areas where cist tombs were in use
such as Epirus (Greek Dark Ages, pp. 10611).
Others put more emphasis on the changing social
and political conditions, which required a more
economical way of burying the dead (Mee and
Cavanagh, Mycenaean tombs, pp. 4564). Snod-
grass saw in these changes a revival of similar
practices in the Middle Helladic period which
preceded the Mycenaean era (Greek Dark Ages,
pp. 17784). Whatever the reasons for such a
change, the fact remains that in the areas where
the rite of single burials appears, there was no
return to previous Mycenaean practices. At the
same time most regions, including Crete, adopt
more extensively the practice of cremation which,
although it first appeared in the previous (LH
IIIC) period, became gradually more common
during this period and the ensuing Early Iron Age
(Lemos, Protogeometric Aegean, pp. 1846).
Therefore, the Sub-Mycenaean period should
be seen merely as a short transitional period from
the last stages of the Late Bronze Age to the
beginning of the Early Iron Age. The main sites
 15. The Dark Age of Greece
of this period that have produced settlement
deposits or cemeteries continued to be important
centres in the Early Iron Age. It is in such import-
ant sites, such as Athens, Knossos, Lefkandi,
Argos and Tiryns, that the first iron weapons
appear in the burials of elite groups during the
early stages of the Protogeometric period, mark-
ing the beginning of the Early Iron Age in Greece.
Snodgrass and others have argued that the new
technology arrived from Cyprus, an island which
maintained close links with Greece through-
out the period (Snodgrass, Dark Age of Greece,
pp. 22831; Pickles and Peltenburg, Metallurgy,
pp. 67100).
It is unfortunate that most of the archaeological
evidence for Early Iron Age Greece comes from
cemeteries rather than settlements. It is indeed only
from burial practices that attempts have been
made to understand the social structures and devel-
opments of these early Greek communities (Morris,
Burial and Ancient Society). From study of the
mortuary evidence from major sites, scholars have
proposed that diversity is a major characteristic of
Early Iron Age societies. Such diversity is clearly
reflected in the variety of burial rites practised in
Greece during this period (Whitley, Social diver-
sity, pp. 34165; Lemos, forthcoming). There are,
however, a number of common practices. For exam-
ple, it is clear that elite members are buried with the
status of warriors; such burials occur mostly in
Athens, Knossos and Lefkandi. Care is also taken
to dierentiate gender and age. Another helpful
observation is that in most sites, burials are organ-
ised in separate plots, indicating that each one of
them may have belonged to a specific kin group or,
as Coldstream suggested, that each one of them
may have been the family seat of a genos or elite
descent group (Coldstream, Rich lady of the
Areiopagus). Such plots can be found, for example,
in the Kerameikos in Athens, in the cemetery of
Toumba at Lefkandi, and in several burial plots in
the area around the palace of Knossos, where a
number of cemeteries have been located, such as
Fortetsa, Tekke and the North Cemetery.
Insights into the complexity of the burial rites
of the period were spectacularly revealed with the
discovery of a male and a female burial under a
building at Toumba, in Lefkandi. This discovery
left no doubts about the complexity of the funeral
89
rites of the period and of the society which prac-
tised them. The building itself, apsidal in plan,
as was the norm for the period, is of monumental
dimensions (50 m 10 m 164 ft 32.8 ft);
under the floor, in the central room of the
building, elaborate rites were oered to a male
who was cremated and buried with his iron
weapons. Next to him was found the burial of a
woman, heavily adorned with gold jewellery. In
another shaft next to them four horses were
buried. Subsequent to these burials, other indi-
viduals continued to be buried in front of the
building, indicating that they belong to the same
kin group (Figure 15.1). The main characteris-
tic in the Toumba cemetery is the rich
oerings given to the dead. Apart from the local
and imported pottery and the metal ornaments
which were the usual oering for the time, exotic
goods imported from the Near East and Egypt
were also oered (see also chapter 12). The pres-
ence of exotic goods clearly indicates that contacts
with the Eastern Mediterranean were well estab-
lished, while the discovery of Euboean pottery in
the East suggests that Euboeans might have also
played a part in this exchange (Lemos, Protogeo-
metric Aegean, pp. 1618, 2023).
Conspicuous consumption was also a feature of
the burials at Knossos, a site with contacts with the
East, especially with Cyprus. Crete also produced
evidence of Phoenician presence at the site of
Kommos on the south coast, where around 800 ,
a small stone temple was constructed which housed
a structure made of three stelai (stone slabs) on a
base, resembling similar cult arrangements found
later in the Punic world. Cypriot and Near Eastern
imports are also found in the cemetery at Eleu-
therna in Western Crete (Coldstream, Geometric
Greece, pp. 99102, 3815).
Athens and Argos also catch up with the oer-
ing of imported goods during the Early and
Middle Geometric periods. In Athens, one excep-
tional woman was buried in the area of Areopagus
with imported faience beads and ivory ornaments.
In addition to the local fine pottery and elabor-
ate jewellery, she was given a clay chest represent-
ing model granaries. This last oering might have
symbolically signified the wealth of her family
in arable land (Coldstream, Rich lady of the
Areiopagus; Geometric Greece, pp. 5561).
90 Classics and the Classical World

Fig. 15.1 The Protogeometric building and the cemetery at Toumba Lefkandi (after Mervyn Popham and Irene S. Lemos,
Lefkandi III: The Toumba Cemetery, London: British School at Athens, 1996).

Athens is also responsible for developments
in the Geometric style of pottery. The style finds
its first expression in the Attic workshops which
profoundly influenced the production of pot-
tery in other centres. Euboea, Thessaly and the
Cyclades, however, although keen to import Attic
products, stubbornly continued to produce a Sub-
Protogeometric style of pottery. It is not until later
that these areas joined Athens and the Argolid
in the production of the Late Geometric style of
pottery.
Recent archaeological discoveries also suggest
that the emergence of sanctuaries cannot any
longer be considered to be a post- Dark Age
phenomenon. Excavations at Kalapodi in Phokis
and Poseidi in Chalcidice, and research at Isthmia
and Olympia, show that these sanctuaries were
receiving oerings during this period (Morgan,
Isthmia VIII; Lemos, Protogeometric Aegean,
pp. 2214). In addition, the study of the architec-
tural remains of the period indicated to Mazarakis
Ainian that rituals associated with cults were
taking place inside or outside the chieftains
houses (see also chapter 4). He further suggested
that in those settlements where such evidence
existed, cult activities connected with the chief-
tains dwelling were gradually moved to a city
temple (Mazarakis Ainian, From Rulers Dwellings
to Temples).
The study of the so-called Dark Age has been
advanced by archaeological discoveries and re-
search (see also chapters 2 and 3). Compared with
what came before it, and what came after, this
period can no longer be considered dark, only
dierent. It is clear that a number of features
which in the past were thought to post-date the
Dark Age had already appeared during its course.
One of the most important is that communication
within and outside Greece had already revived,
stimulating an improvement in living conditions,
which brought with it changes in the social
structures of early Greek communities. The
understanding of these social structures can at
present be observed only in the diversity and
complexity of burial practices. The discovery of
more settlements dating to this period
will oer further insights as to the degree of their
sophistication.
One of the most important innovations of this
period, however, is the introduction of a superior
 15. The Dark Age of Greece
technology: iron-working (see also chapter 28).
Its application at a number of sites demonstrates
that Greek communities were ready to experiment
with it, and that they did so successfully. At the
same time, it appears that most Greeks took an
important decision to reject for good the failed
palatial system, which had proved to be unsuitable
for their requirements, and to start looking for
more suitable solutions in the form of smaller but
more flexible political units. It is at least misleading
not to recognise that, during the so-called Dark
Age, archaeology reveals the rise of the processes
which led towards the formation of the city-states.
Further reading
J. N. Coldstream, The rich lady of the Areiopagus
and her contemporaries, Hesperia 64 (1995), 391403.
J. N. Coldstream, Geometric Greece (2nd edn), London:
Routledge, 2003.
F. Dakoronia, Representations of sea battles on
Mycenaean sherds from Kynos, Tropis 5 (1993),
11928.
S. Deger-Jalkotzy, The Aegean islands and the break-
down of the Mycenaean palaces around 1200 , in
V. Karageorghis and N. Stampolidis (eds), Eastern
Mediterranean Cyprus, Dodecanese, Crete 16th6th cent.
BC, Athens: University of Crete and A. G. Leventis
Foundation, 1998, pp. 10520.
S. Deger-Jalkotzy, The last Mycenaeans and their suc-
cessors updated, in S. Gitin, A. Mazar and E. Stern
(eds), Mediterranean Peoples in Transition, Thirteenth
to Early Tenth Centuries BCE, in Honor of Professor
Trude Dothan, Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1998,
pp. 11428.
S. Deger-Jalkotzy, Late Mycenaean warrior tombs, in
S. Deger-Jalkotzy and I. S. Lemos (eds), Ancient
Greece from the Mycenaean Palaces to the Age of
Homer: Proceedings of the 3rd Leventis Conference from
Wanax to Basileus, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2006.
V. R. d A. Desborough, The Last Mycenaeans and their
91
Successors: An Archaeological Survey c.1200c.1000
, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964.
V. R. d A. Desborough, The Greek Dark Ages, London:
Ernest Benn, 1972.
E. French, Mycenae: Agamemnons Capital, Stroud:
Tempus, 2002.
I. S. Lemos, The Protogeometric Aegean: The
Archaeology of the Late Eleventh and Tenth Centuries
BC, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
I. S. Lemos, Athens and Lefkandi: a tale of two sites, in
S. Deger-Jalkotzy and I. S. Lemos (eds), Ancient
Greece from the Mycenaean Palaces to the Age of Homer.
A. Mazarakis Ainian, From Rulers Dwellings to
Temples: Architecture, Religion and Society in Early
Iron Age Greece (1100700 BC) (SIMA CXXI),
Jonsered: Paul Astrms Frlag, 1997.
C. B. Mee and W. G. Cavanagh, Mycenaean tombs as
evidence for social and political organisation, Oxford
Journal of Archaeology 3 (1984), 4564.
C. Morgan, Isthmia VIII: The Late Bronze Age
Settlement and the Early Iron Age Sanctuary,
Princeton, NJ: American School of Classical Studies
at Athens and Princeton University Press, 1999.
I. Morris, Burial and Ancient Society: The Rise of the
Greek City-State, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987.
S. Pickles and E. Peltenburg, Metallurgy, society and
the bronze/iron transition in the east Mediterranean
and the Near East, Reports of the Department of
Antiquities, Cyprus (1998), 67100.
M. Popham, The collapse of Aegean civilization at the
end of the Late Bronze Age, in B. Cunlie (ed.), The
Oxford Illustrated Prehistory of Europe, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 277303.
J. Rutter, Cultural novelties in the post-palatial
Aegean, in W. A. Ward and M. S. Joukowsky (eds),
The Crisis Years: The 12th century BC, Dubuque:
Kendall/Hunt, 1992, pp. 6178.
A. Snodgrass, The Dark Age of Greece, Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1971.
J. Whitley, Social diversity in Dark Age Greece,
ABSA 86 (1991), 34165.