Paper abstract
Regional cult systems in the transitional period from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age: comparing the evidence from two different parts of Mainland Greece, the Argolid and Phokis
- Livieratou Antonia
The transitional period from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age, the so-called Dark Ages, is an era of major changes and transformation, treated in general as a hiatus in historical sequence standing in between the Mycenaean and the Early Greek world. Consequently, the studies on this period are usually concerned with questions of continuity or discontinuity in several aspects of life, religion being of course one of them. In this paper the subject of religious continuity/discontinuity will be approached through the comparison of the relevant evidence from two areas of different Mycenaean ‘identity’ and different evolution in the Iron Age: the Argolid, the core area of the Mycenaean world par excellence, which would later host one of the earliest poleis, and Phokis, an area most often identified as part of the Mycenaean periphery, as well as the home of the Phokian ethnos. The juxtaposition and comparison of the two regional cult systems and their evolution from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age is aimed to shed light on the multivariate effects of the palatial collapse on religion and the latter’s close connection with the changing political systems.
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