The first Dorians c.1050–775
To return to Lakonia and darkness from the confused light of the outside world, we find just one iron artefact securely dated to the PG period. Its preserved length is 32 cm., but it is so poorly preserved that its identification as a spearhead is no more than plausible. It was found at Stena with the two PG pots already discussed, so we should probably infer that we have here a male burial. In fact, this is almost the only burial of the period known from Lakonia, but both the burial rite and the form of grave are unrecorded. The only other possibly PG iron artefact from Lakonia is a sword from Amyklai assigned to this period on typological grounds. The material at least conforms to that of the majority of PG swords. The bronze artefacts from the PG stratum at Amyklai are perhaps marginally more informative. There were two small spearheads, but their material and size suggest they never saw the front line. Certainly too they are remarkably primitive in technique, and Snodgrass’s date of c.800 (1971, 245 and fig. 88) may be appreciably too low. There were also several ringlets of rolled sheet bronze, some with a midrib, others decorated with repoussé dots. A few at least may have been used to hold locks of hair dedicated on the occasion of a perilous undertaking such as a long journey, war or a rite de passage. The magical significance of hair is well attested in ancient as in modern Greece (and elsewhere), and the Spartans’ interest in capillary matters was notorious. Finally, some strips of sheet bronze have been interpreted as the legs of simple tripod-cauldrons which, as we know from Homer and archaeology, served as a symbol and store of wealth and were regarded as particularly acceptable dedications to Zeus and his son Apollo. The impression of isolation and relative cultural deprivation conveyed by the pottery is thus amply corroborated by the metal-work. Referring to the spearheads, Snodgrass (1971, 246) has remarked that ‘the bronzes would have looked very old-fashioned even at the earliest possible date suggested by their associations; and this…suggests such a period of restricted and somewhat primitive metallurgy, with partial dependence on Bronze Age heirlooms, as we have inferred elsewhere.’ It is, I think, not irrelevant that the areas with comparably backward metallurgy include Achaia and Kephallenia, both within the ambit of the ‘West Greek’ PG pottery group. We may sum up the historical implications of the archaeological evidence as follows. First, the Amyklai ‘stratigraphy’ and the stylistic analysis of Lakonian PG pottery demonstrate a sharp cultural break between Mycenaean and PG Lakonia and strongly suggest an influx of newcomers, immediately from ‘West Greece’, some time in the tenth century. On the other hand, if taken at face value the pottery evidence would also indicate that, following the apogee of prosperity in the thirteenth century and the exponential decline of population in the twelfth and early eleventh, Lakonia was actually uninhabited between c.1050 and 950. For reasons to be given below I do not believe that the pottery should be so taken in this regard. Undoubtedly, though, the small number of sites known to have been occupied in PG times 79