Dark Age of Greece

The "Dark Age" of ancient Greece lasted from about 1150 to 700 B. C. It is known as the "Dark Age" not so much for being an era of "cultural decline as for the archaeological obscurity" of it. There is not much archaeological remains to give histories or archaeologists an idea of what life was like during these centuries of ancient Greece. From the little that can be learned from archaeological discoveries and the Homeric poems of the period, it is evident that it the "splendid Mycenaean civilization" which had existed in Greece came to an end. The reasons for this are not known, however.

The Greek civilization was a civilization originating in the Mediterranean which was one of the most advanced civilizations of the time. Once it declined, the following was lost:

• The art of writing was lost in Greece
• The skilled art and architectural works
• The prosperous towns of the Greek peninsula
• The craftwork made from gold, silver, and ivory
• Other luxury goods and weapons which have been unearthed from Mycenaean tomb sites in Greece from the time before the Dark Age

The Dark Age, particularly its early centuries, was a period of instability and warfare throughout Greece and between Greece and its Asian American neighbors. All of the fine arts practiced in Mycenaean Greece were lost. For instance, the pottery of the years from about 1125 to 1050 B. C. is called Submycenaean for its sharp contrast with the: skilled and handsome pottery of the Mycenaean period. Submycenaean pottery has been called a "style of exhaustion." The potters did not try anything new, but simply replicated shapes and decorations handed down form their parents and grandparents. Their clay was usually poorly prepared. But besides the obvious stagnation in the arts, the population of Greece "dropped precipitously." In the region known as Attica, the number of settlements went down by fifty percent. The drastic reduction in population and settlements is attributed to migrations, violence, and invasions.