Origins of the Question"Indo-European invasions" is still widely accepted today. In
the first volume of the Cambridge History of Iran, published in
1985, I. M. Diakonoff imagines that when the Indo-Iranians
came to India and Iran "the main tribal mass, at first all of it,
later the majority, moved along on foot with its cattle, proba-
bly accompanied by heavy carts. Pastoral tribes ... in time
exhaust the steppe within the region they inhabit and are thus
continually compelled to resettle in new places." 15 Moving on
from one temporary settlement to another, Diakonoff con-
cludes, the Indo-Iranian pastoralists gradually worked their
way toward their eventual homelands, keeping to routes that
provided "passage and food for cattle and human masses mov-
ing on foot."
A massive folk migration, such as those described above,
would of course leave an archaeological trail. In particular, ar-
chaeologists at the beginning of our century supposed that a
procession of populations across the continents was reflected in
the vagaries of pottery styles. An archaeologically secured date
for the arrival of the Greek nation in Greece was furnished by
English and American excavators in the 19205; after a close
study and classification of pottery, they concluded that the first
Greeks (whether these were lonians or "Achaeans" was not
clear) had come to Greece ca. 1900 B.C. Since this date has
until recently enjoyed almost canonical status, it will be
worthwhile to see how it was established. We might begin
with Sir Arthur Evans, who subdivided the spectacular prehis-
tory of Crete into a neolithic period and three periods of Bronze
Age history: Early, Middle, and Late Minoan, which roughly
corresponded to Egypt's Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms.
For each of his prehistoric periods, Evans identified character-
istic pottery types. A parallel scheme for the Greek mainland
was worked out by Alan Wace and Carl Blegen in 1918.l6 Bor-
- I. M. Diakonoff in Cambridge History of Iran (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge Univ. Press, 1985), 2: 49. - A. Wace and C. Blegen, "The Pre-Mycenaean Pottery of the
Mainland," BSA 22 (1916-1918), 175-89.
II