Cultural Groups of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age in North West Greece
Cultural Groups of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age in North West Greece

Summary/Abstract: Greece, to the west of the Pindus range, is even more rugged and mountainous than the rest of the country and its steep, narrow valleys contrast with the wide valleys and plains of Thessaly or lowland Macedonia. At first sight it is a remote, perhaps even backward area. Archaeologically it is unpromising with the tree cover and rapid erosion obscuring and obliterating the traces of ancient settlements. Nevertheless in historic times Epirus has been prosperous and powerful, under Pyrrhus or Ali Pasha, for example, and a similar phenomenon cannot be ruled out for the prehistoric period. My aim, in the field-work for my doctoral disertation, the results of which are summarised in part in the present paper, was to collect together all the material evidence for Bronze Age activity in this region and to compose, as far as possible, a coherent picture of cultures and events. Some of my results were predictable: several different cultural groups can be identified in the region between the Gulf of Corinth and the modern frontier with Albania while Mycenaean expansion can be traced here as in other parts of the Aegean. [...]

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