Linguistics and Archaeologytwelfth century B.C. than were Dorians and lonians in the sev-
enth century B.C. 12 Altogether, the new linguistic argument
indicates that "the historical Greek dialects are so akin that no
more than a few centuries are allowed for their differentia-
tion." 33 It is, in short, quite incredible that the process of dif-
ferentiation into dialects—a process that operated to great ef-
fect in the four centuries between the end of the Bronze Age
and the composition of the Homeric epics—could have begun
a thousand years before 1200 B.C. One is therefore not sur-
prised to find that among students of the Greek dialects there
is—as Wyatt noted in his short and trenchant article on the
subject—a tendency to favor 1600 B.C. as the date for the
Indo-Europeanization of Greece.M
If linguistic arguments weigh heavily against the early dates
for "the coming of the Greeks," what is the archaeological sup-
port for an early date? Minyan pottery, the original support for
the thesis that the Greeks arrived in Greece ca. 1900 B.C., at
the beginning of the Middle Helladic period, is no longer per-
ceived as a break in the ceramic evolution on the mainland.
Instead, it is now generally acknowledged to have been a de-
velopment from, and a proliferation of, the gray ware that Cas-
key found in EH III levels at Lerna, and that has turned up in
- J. Chadwick, "Aegean History 1500—1200 BC," Studii C/assice
ii (1969): yff.; A. Bartonek, "The Place of the Dorians in the Late Hel-
ladic World," in Bronze Age Migrations, ed. Grassland and Birchall, 308-
- Sp. Marinates, "The First Mycenaeans in Greece," in Bronze Age
Migrations, ed. Crossland and Birchall, 109. Marinates was not entirely in
sympathy with the new arguments and rather curiously cautioned that
"only when linguistic arguments do not contradict the archaeological evi-
dence may they be adduced as a welcome help towards the solution of the
problem." - Wyatt, "The Indo-Europeanization of Greece," 95-96. His
statement that "linguists" tend to favor the lower date, however, needs
some qualification: although the tendency can be observed among special-
ists in Greek linguistics, most comparatists of the Indo-European languages
do not seem to share in it.