A Wholly Inadequate But Nonetheless Reasonably Useful Chronology of the Aegean Bronze Age

* Arrival of northern invaders indicated by burning of settlements and arrival of grey "Minyan Ware" pottery. Probable movement of Greek speakers into Greece and Hittites into Anatolia, but no disruption on Crete.
** Sites on Crete burned, damage (sacking?) at Knossos c. 1400. No evidence of invasion on Greek mainland.
*** Bronze Age sites on Crete and mainland Greece abandoned ("Dorian invasion"?) .
**** Cycladic chronology is roughly the same as Minoan/Helladic, but more complex than I indicate here

The fly in the ointment: some of the traditional dates are based on the assumption that the disruption in the LM I/II transition was at least in part caused by damage from the eruption of Thera. But if the new eruption date of 1628 or thereabouts is correct (for a nice summary of the evidence and a history of the controversy, see "Overview and Assessment of the Evidence for the Date of the Eruption of Thera"), some reinterpretation will be in order. Recent news indicates that this rethinking is already taking place; see "Olive Branch Solves a Bronze Age Mystery."

Table adapted freely and loosely from information gleaned from the following: Jeremy Rutter, Prehistoric Archaeology of the Aegean; Mark Garrison, "Aegean Neolithic and Bronze Age Chronology" (no longer online); Sturt Manning's "Approximate general chronology of Egyptian civilisation" (no longer online); and Greta Ham, Concise Chronology of Cretan Bronze Age (no longer online). The Thera Foundation provides a nice overview of the discussion in its article, The Eruption of Thera: Date and Implications. See also Updated Chronology for the Early Bronze Age (not very pretty, but accurate as of 1992).

schedule l Bronze Age Aegean
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