Archaeology and the Rise of the Greek State

Abstract

Classical archaeology is something generically different from archaeology. It is almost as if the resemblances of names, like that between history and natural history, resulted from the survival of an obsolete usage. It is time that this was changed. There is first the exceptionally thorough coverage through field-work of certain parts of the ancient Mediterranean: how many areas are there, up to sixty miles by thirty, which have more than 650 established ancient sites, as Messenia has? Secondly, there is the possibility of recognising the handiwork of a single artist in a series of works: by this means, some precision can be given to the chronology of Greek pottery in the eighth century BC; and it is this, more surprisingly, which enables two crucial episodes 800 years earlier still, the burials in the shaft-graves at Mycenae and the volcanic eruption of Thera, to be shown to be contemporary.

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