Linguistics and Archaeologystatistical argument can in fact be said to favor the latest of the
three dates, since all four of the sites with legible stratigraphy
at the juncture of MH and LH I show a destruction level at that
point. 38
When the material culture of a place is not much different
after a destruction than it was before, the destruction is more
reasonably attributed to a local conflict or disaster than to an
invasion from afar. On this criterion, there is almost nothing
to suggest that ca. 1900 B.C. the Greeks entered Greece from
a distant Indo-European homeland. Along with Minyan Ware,
other features of Middle Helladic material life seem to continue
EH in traditions. The EH ill settlements were without excep-
tion also occupied in the MH period. The architecture of the
two periods is very similar, as are the artifacts of metal, stone
and bone. Finally, the burial customs of the MH period seem
to continue those of the EH in period. In brief, it is difficult to
find anything "alien" in the material record of Middle Helladic
Greece. 39
The cultural innovations at the beginning of EH ill, on the
other hand, are significant; and coming on the heels of destruc-
tion, they make it not unlikely that the Argolid was invaded
ca. 2100 B.C. Contrary to Caskey's initial expectations, how-
ever, the invasion of 2 too B.C. has not yet manifested any links
to lands that could conceivably be designated as the Indo-Eu-
ropean homeland. Since scholars had so long assumed that
when one finds Minyan Ware one has found Greeks, Caskey
reasonably concluded that the presence of Proto-Minyan Ware
meant that Proto-Greeks were present in Lerna during the EH
in period. It now seems that Proto-Minyan Ware was an inven-
tion of Early Helladic potters, specifically of potters in central
Greece. 40 There may well have been an invasion of the Argolid
- The point is made by van Royen and Isaac, ibid., 45.
- Cf. Howell, "The Origins of Middle Helladic Culture," 73-79.
- Rutter, "Fine Gray-Burnished Pottery," presents the argument
in detail. He concludes (p. 349) that the EH in Gray Ware originated as "a
formal and technological synthesis of Anatolianizing and central Greek ele-
ments which occurred in central Greece" during the EH II period.
43