Citadel to City-State

"Citadel to City-State serves as an excellent summarization of our present knowledge of the not-so-dark Dark Age as well as an admirable prologue to the understanding of the subsequent Archaeic and Classical periods." —David Rupp, Phoenix

The Dark Age of Greece is one of the least understood periods of Greek history. A terra incognita between the Mycenaean civilization of Late Bronze Age Greece and the flowering of Classical Greece, the Dark Age was, until the last few decades, largely neglected. Now new archaeological methods and the discovery of new evidence have made it possible to develop a more comprehensive view of the entire period. Citadel to City-State explores each century from 1200 to 700 B.C.E. through an individual site—Mycenae, Nichoria, Athens, Lefkandi, Corinth, and Ascra—that illustrates the major features of each period. This is a remarkable account of the historical detective work that is beginning to shed light on Dark Age Greece.

Carol G. Thomas is Professor of Ancient Greek History at the University of Washington. Her books include Decoding Ancient History: A Toolkit of the Historian as Detective (with D. Wick); Myth Becomes History; Progress into the Past, 2nd Edition (with William A. McDonald); and Paths from Ancient Greece. She is two-time president of the Association of Ancient Historians.

Craig Conant is a long-time student of ancient Greek history and works as a records manager for the Environmental Protection Agency in Seattle, Washington.