When was Early Greece?

This article investigates the boundaries of the chronological-cultural unit of ‘Early Greece’, a phrase widely used in scholarship but which has little taxonomic meaning. I argue that the phrase, and the values that it encodes, continues to exist in a traditional evolutionary framework of cultural development within the Greek world. Through a bibliographical case study, I further demonstrate that there are different chronological understandings of ‘Early Greece’ within different subdisciplines, with material-based scholarship applying it predominantly to the Early Iron Age and text-based scholarship predominantly to the Archaic period. Following this, the article connects ‘Early Greece’ with protohistory, particularly through the lens of Homer references, and explores the ways in which the positionality of ‘Early Greece’ emphasizes the authority of textual sources over material ones and continues to articulate an under-defined vision of Greece centred on the fifth century BCE.

Duke Scholars

Author Catharine E Judson Classical Studies