The Coming of the Greekspoint of departure. For almost a generation there was a rough
consensus among scholars, based on Blegen's studies, that the
Greeks had arrived in Greece at the beginning of the Middle
Helladic period. Dissension eventually arose among archaeol-
ogists. There are only a few mainland Greek sites at which the
stratigraphy for the late third and early second millennia is
complete; and at what is probably the most important of these
few sites, the evidence did not square with the prevailing the-
ory. At this site a destruction level was found not at the inter-
face between Early and Middle Helladic, but between EH II and
EH in. Furthermore, an early form of Minyan Ware was here
shown to have been in use during EH in, the final phase of the
Early Helladic period. Such were the results of the excavations
that John Caskey began in 1952 at Lerna, in the Argolid, a
town that may well have been the most important Early Hel-
ladic center in all of Greece. The findings at Lerna indicated
that a moderately sophisticated society, with monumental ar-
chitecture, had evolved in the Argolid from ca. 3000 to ca.
2100 B.C. At that point, however, Lerna was destroyed, and
the subsequent EH in period was comparatively poor and un-
accomplished. And in the postdestruction levels at Lerna, Cas-
key's excavations unearthed what has been called "Proto-Min-
yan" pottery, gray and wheelmade. 3
Upon investigation, a handful of other sites in the Argolid,
Attica, and even southern Laconia also seemed to have been
destroyed ca. 2100 B.C., at the transition from EH II to EH in.
And although in general the evidence on the EH in period is
scanty, a careful review of what there is showed that in most
respects MH was closely tied to EH in. 4 Further, although in-
- This is almost the earliest wheelmade pottery known from the
Greek mainland. At Kritsana, in the Chalcidice, specimens from the late
third millenium have also been found. Cf. Caskey, CAH i, 2: 775 and 786. - For a good review of the nonceramic evidence, see R. J. Howell,
"The Origins of the Middle Helladic Culture," in Bronze Age Migrations in
the Aegean: Archaeological and Linguistic Problems in Greek Prehistory, ed.
18