Argolis, Lakonien, Messenien

The Argolid, Lakonia and Messenia, three regions of the Peloponnese, belonged to the heartlands of the Mycenaean civilisation of the Greek Bronze Age. The palaces of Mycenae, Tiryns and Pylos controlled the political, economic and cultural development of the areas. Consequently, the collapse of the Myenaean palace system around 1200 B.C. marked a dramatic turning point in the history of early Greece. What followed has become known as the ‚Dark Ages‘, which came to an end only 500 years later with the rise of the Greek city-states and the age of Homer. In that period the palace states of the Late Bronze Age were transformed into the Dorian centres of power in the Peloponnese of historical times. This book presents a survey of the latest results of the archaeological exploration of the Argolid, Lakonia and Messenia. Special attention is paid to the settlement patterns emerging after the end of the Mycenaean palaces and leading to the rise of the Greek city-states of Argos und Sparta. The archaeological account is complemented by a historical evalutaion of the written evidence coming from the beginning of the ‚Dark Ages‘. Documents consist of the Mycenaean texts of the Linear B tablets and of the much later literary sources beginning with Homer. An interesting aspect of this study is its interdisciplinary approach, which offers new perspectives on the old and controversial question of the so-called ‚Dorian Invasion‘.