The Dorian Invasion Reviewed in the Light of Some New Evidence

The Dorian invasion, as an episode in Greek history, exhibits few complexities. Ancient tradition is unanimous upon the fact that the invasion was at once a more or less definite event or series of events in time and a clear turning-point in historical development. Modern historians of ancient Greece have largely twisted the comparatively clear tradition of antiquity into a variety of theories, and the whole question in their hands remains a problem which from their point of view is still sub iudice . Archaeological research on the other hand, as is not infrequently the case, serves to amplify and explain the ancient traditions in a more satisfactory way. No very clear attempt has as yet been made by archaeologists to establish the facts of the Dorian invasion or to track down the historical Dorians. But the results of recent research in the Peloponnese on sites where tradition places the Dorians in fullest force points to a culture at these sites which, appearing about the eleventh century B.C, has all the characteristics of the culture of an invader, and differs radically and completely from what we know to have been mainland culture during the millennium preceding the eleventh century B.C. The purpose of this paper is to review the archaeological evidence concerning the Dorians in the light both of the literary tradition and of some new archaeological discoveries

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Eleventh · Literature · Mainland · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classics · History · Linguistics and language evolution