Date BC |
Pottery period |
Cultural phase |
Selected events |
3200 3000 2800 2600 2400 |
Neolithic |
Neolithic |
Well-established settlement pattern; village on site of Knossos Labyrinth. |
EMI EMII |
Pre-Temple or Early Shrine Period |
Pirgos ware made. Vasiliki built; first occupation period at Fournou Korifi. Agios Onoufrios and Vasiliki ware made. Minoans trading with Syria; second occupation period at Fournou Korifi. Fournou Korifi destroyed by fire. Appearance of ‘pictographic’ script; earliest peak sanctuaries. Knossos Labyrinth and other early temples built. Kamares ware made. |
|
2200 2000 |
EMIII |
|
|
MMI |
|
||
1800 |
MMII |
Old Temple Period |
|
1600 |
MMIII |
New Temple |
Major earthquake destroys old temples; Zakro temple built; Phaistos and Knossos Labyrinth rebuilt; appearance of Linear A. |
|
LMI |
|
|
1400 |
LMII |
Late Temple Period |
Major Thera eruption destroys temples and towns; Knossos Labyrinth repaired; Linear B appears; 1380 Labyrinth abandoned; Myceneans now in control? |
1200 |
LMIII |
Post-Temple Period |
Trojan War? Mycenean domination of Aegean world. Many Minoan sites burnt; arrival of refugees from mainland Greece; Minoan refuge settlement at Karfi until about 1000 BC. |
Date BC |
Pottery period |
Cultural phase |
Selected events |
1100 |
|
|
Fall of Mycenean centres on Greek |
|
|
|
mainland, destroyed by invaders; fall of |
|
|
|
Hattusa, the Hittite capital. |
|
Subminoan |
|
|
1000 |
|
Postminoan |
|
EM = Early Minoan; MM = Middle Minoan; LM = Late Minoan.
There is fierce and continuing debate over the precise date of the catastrophic bronze age Thera eruption. The chronology in this book, at least as far as the Thera eruption sequence is concerned, accords with the chronology proposed by J, V. Luce in The End of Atlantis (London: Thames & Hudson, 1969): a series of premonitory earthquakes and eruptions beginning in about 1500 BC and culminating in a caldera eruption of exceptional ferocity in about 1470 BC.
In the summer of 1989, the Third International Congress on Thera and the Aegean World, held on Thera itself, brought forward new evidence that the catastrophic eruption occurred 160 years earlier, in about 1630 BC. A study of tree rings shows low-growth for the year 1628 BC in California, England, Ireland and Germany, arguably caused by a dust-veil thrown up by the Thera eruption. A Greenland ice-core shows a high acidity level in the year 1645 BC, give or take 20 years; the sulphur fall-out from a massive volcanic eruption could have produced this peak of acidity.
Nevertheless, at the time of writing, the case has not been made convincingly enough to justify altering the dates of Minoan - and Egyptian - chronology. Some archaeologists remain unconvinced by the very indirect nature of the evidence, which may not relate to Thera at all. We must keep an open mind on this difficult issue but, for the time being, the later dates for the Thera eruption sequence should be retained - not least because they leave undisturbed the well-established and trusted chronologies from ancient Egypt.