The re-emergence of political complexity

Whitley, Anthony ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9645-0505 2019. The re-emergence of political complexity. Lemos, Irene and Kotsonas, Antonis, eds. A Companion to the Archaeology of Early Greece and the Mediterranean, Companions to the Ancient World, John Wiley, pp. 161-186. (10.1002/9781118769966.ch7)

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Abstract

This chapter is concerned with the fall and rise of states in the Greek-speaking Mediterranean between 1400 and 600 BC. The fall of the Mycenaean palace states is followed by a period whose political structures remain obscure, the Early Iron Age (EIA) or Dark Age between 1200 and 800 BC. During the 1960s and much of the 1970s the Museum of Anthropology in the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor was the principal generator of testable hypotheses concerning the rise and fall of complex societies in both the New World and the Old. Indeed, much of the work of anthropological archaeologists in this period can be seen as a giant, comparative research project looking at similarities and differences between the rise of complex political formations in Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica. Impoverished EIA communities are normally politically simple, with little need for any kind of political authority beyond the extended kin group.

Item Type:	Book Section
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > History, Archaeology and Religion
Subjects:	C Auxiliary Sciences of History > CC Archaeology
Additional Information:	Chapter 2.3
Publisher:	John Wiley
ISBN:	9781118770191
Last Modified:	15 Oct 2025 10:53
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/120656

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