ABSTRACT
Note: e map of Greek eastward migrations aer the Bronze Age is based primarily on Classical Greek literary sources and linguistic data. ere is ongoing debate about the nature, chronology and extent of these migrations. Most scholars now regard Greek settlement in Asia Minor and the Aegean islands, aer the Bronze Age as well as during it, as an incremental process involving a number of population movements over many years, indeed centuries. For a concise summary of scholarly discussions relating to the Greek migrations, see Greaves (OHAA: 508-9). Aeolis is the Classical designation for the Aegean coastal region of north-western Asia Minor, extending from the Hellespont to the south of the Hermus river. e name was derived from a Greek population called the Aeolians, who supposedly in the last two centuries of M2 migrated eastwards from their homelands which lay in the regions later called Boeotia and essaly on the Greek mainland; they settled rst on the island of Lesbos before occupying the coastal part of the Troad and the region to its south. Strictly, ‘Aeolis’ and ‘Aeolian’ are purely ethno-linguistic terms. ey reect neither a political nor a clearly denable geographical entity. However, the southern Aeolian settlements may have formed a league which had a religious centre in the temple of Apollo at Grynium. Cyme was the most important city in the southern Aeolian region, and perhaps the chief city of the league. (For both cities, see the map on p. 202.) Ionia is the Classical name for the central Aegean coastal region of Anatolia extending between the bays of Izmir (Smyrna) and Bargylia (see map on p. 202) and including the oshore islands Chios and Samos. It too was allegedly settled in late M2 by refugee colonists, called Ionians, from the Greek mainland following the collapse of the major centres of Late Bronze Age civilization. e region contained twelve major cities, which had begun to develop by early M1 and probably by C9 established among themselves a league called the Panionium, reecting the emergence of a unied cultural Ionian identity in the region. e league met at the foot of Mount Mycale, in the territory of Priene. Dorians Classical tradition has created a view of the Dorians as latecomers to the Greek world, entering it shortly before the end of the Late Bronze Age (eighty years aer the fall of Troy according to ucydides), and occupying primarily the Peloponnese. ey are regarded (by some) as one of the immediate causes of the destruction of the Mycenaean palace civilization. Henceforth they spread to other parts of the Greek-speaking world. ey were allegedly the most aggressive and warlike of all Greek groups. e Homeric scholar Margalit Finkelberg comments that the tradition of the late emergence of the Dorians in southern Greece is strongly supported by the dialect map of this region. However, she notes that the widespread term ‘Dorian invasion’ relates to miscellaneous population movements from the periphery to the centre of the Mycenaean world at the end of the Bronze Age. e archaeological record has so far provided no evidence that the so-called Dorians were a distinctive group of late-comers to Bronze Age Greece or the possessors of a distinctive culture within the Greek world, beyond the existence of ‘Doric’ as one of the main dialects of the Greek-speaking peoples.
