Dorian Greeks (c.1100-c.1000 BC)
For a long time it was thought a Dorian invasion caused the collapse of Mycenaean civilisation, but now many believe that it was famine or some other natural disaster, combined with attacks by the Sea Peoples and internal warfare among Mycenaean kingdoms that brought the civilisation down.
The Dorians appear to have originated in northern Greece, i.e. Epirus and southwest Macedonia. About 1100 BC they swept southwards and filled the vacuum left by the collapse of the Mycenaean civilisation. The Dorians settled especially in Elis, Laconia, Argos, Corinth, Sicyon, Epidaurus and Aegina, and crossed the seas to occupy Crete (Is), Melos (Is), Thera (Is) and the southern coast of Asia Minor.
Culturally, the Dorians were inferior to the Mycenaeans; their only major technical innovation was the iron slashing sword. Greece was plunged into a dark age. Writing was lost, bureaucracy crumbled, commerce disappeared and large building works ceased. Population declined and reverted to pastoralism. Greece became a country of villages.
As our knowledge of the Dark Age is so dependent upon archaeological data the period is usually referred to by its pottery sequence. The beginning of the period is marked by the making of an impoverished Sub-Mycenaean pottery (c.1100-c.1050 BC). By 1050 BC life in the peninsula seems to have settled down and pottery production improved. Protogeometric pottery (c.1050-c.900 BC) is characterised by wheel-made wares decorated with geometric designs. During the Geometric (c.900-c.720 BC) these designs grew more elaborate and towards the end of the period stylized animals started to be used. In the Late Geometric (c.750-c.720 BC) figural scenes again appear on pottery found in the Dipylon Gate cemetery at Athens in the works of the ‘Dipylon Master’.
An important development resulting from the breaking of contacts with the outside world was that with sources of copper and tin cut off, iron ore, available in Greece but never properly exploited, was smelted and iron eventually replaced bronze for weapons and everyday implements as it already had done further east.
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