The Korakou culture or Early Helladic II (in some schemes Early Helladic IIA) was an early phase of
Bronze Age Greece
Aegean civilization is a general term for the Bronze Age civilizations of Greece around the Aegean Sea. There are three distinct but communicating and interacting geographic regions covered by this term: Crete, the Cyclades and the Greek mainlan ...
, in the
Early Helladic
Helladic chronology is a relative dating system used in archaeology and art history. It complements the Minoan chronology scheme devised by Sir Arthur Evans for the categorisation of Bronze Age artefacts from the Minoan civilization within a his ...
period, lasting from around 2650 to c.2200 BC. In the
Helladic chronology it was preceded by the
Eutresis culture of c. 3200 – c. 2650 BC (also called Early Helladic I) and followed by the
Tiryns culture (2,200–2,000 BC) or Early Helladic III. In some parts of Greece a
Lefkandi
Lefkandi () is a coastal village on the island of Euboea, Greece. Archaeological finds attest to a settlement on the promontory locally known as Xeropolis, while several associated cemeteries have been identified nearby. The settlement site is loc ...
culture, or Early Helladic IIB, follows the Korakou; elsewhere the Korakou transitions directly into the Tiryns.
Remains of the culture have been excavated widely across south and central mainland Greece, in the
Peloponnese,
Attica
Attica ( el, Αττική, Ancient Greek ''Attikḗ'' or , or ), or the Attic Peninsula, is a historical region that encompasses the city of Athens, the capital of Greece and its countryside. It is a peninsula projecting into the Aegean Se ...
,
Euboea,
Boeotia
Boeotia ( ), sometimes Latinized as Boiotia or Beotia ( el, Βοιωτία; modern: ; ancient: ), formerly known as Cadmeis, is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Central Greece. Its capital is Livadeia, and it ...
,
Phocis, and
Locris
Locris (; el, label= Modern Greek, Λοκρίδα, Lokrída; grc, Λοκρίς, Lokrís) was a region of ancient Greece, the homeland of the Locrians, made up of three distinct districts.
Locrian tribe
The city of Locri in Calabria ( Italy) ...
. Examples of Korakou pottery have been found still more widely, as far as
Knossos in
Crete
Crete ( el, Κρήτη, translit=, Modern: , Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the 88th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cypru ...
,
Lefkas
Lefkada ( el, Λευκάδα, ''Lefkáda'', ), also known as Lefkas or Leukas ( Ancient Greek and Katharevousa: Λευκάς, ''Leukás'', modern pronunciation ''Lefkás'') and Leucadia, is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea on the west coast of G ...
in the west,
Thessaly, and on
Ios
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...
and
Keos in the
Cyclades.
Many coastal sites were fortified, and in several areas the period ends with a destruction by burning; some settlements are reoccupied by the Tiryns culture, while many remain unoccupied until the
Mycenean period
Mycenaean Greece (or the Mycenaean civilization) was the last phase of the Bronze Age in Ancient Greece, spanning the period from approximately 1750 to 1050 BC.. It represents the first advanced and distinctively Greek civilization in mainlan ...
.
The place name terms for all these cultures were proposed by
Colin Renfrew
Andrew Colin Renfrew, Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, (born 25 July 1937) is a British archaeologist, paleolinguist and Conservative peer noted for his work on radiocarbon dating, the prehistory of languages, archaeogenetics, neuroarchaeology, ...
in 1972 as a replacement for the "Early Helladic" periodizations; however, both have remained in use.
Remains
The two-storey fortified
House of the Tiles at
Lerna
In classical Greece, Lerna ( el, Λέρνη) was a region of springs and a former lake near the east coast of the Peloponnesus, south of Argos. Even though much of the area is marshy, Lerna is located on a geographically narrow point between moun ...
in the
Peloponnese was an untypically large structure, at about 25 x 12 metres, and is the best-known of the architectural remains. It was built of mud-brick over a stone
socle, with much use of wood, and clay for the floors and as
stucco for the walls. The ground floor had two "halls", two smaller rooms, and corridors along each side, with benches outside. The roof was covered with
terracotta tiles, with
schist ones along the eaves. Like many buildings of the culture, it seems to have been destroyed by fire at the end of the period, perhaps before it was finished. Fortunately for archaeology, it was then covered by a
tumulus which preserved it well.
The House of the Tiles is one of a group of large fortified buildings whose function has been much discussed. Their similar plans are now grouped under the term corridor house as the series of large "hall" rooms are linked by corridors. They typically have two storeys connected by an internal stairway. It remains unclear whether they were the residences of a local leader, or some kind of community asset, perhaps used for storing produce.
The period saw a great increase in the use of metal, mostly surviving in small items from graves. These are in copper and bronze, with daggers and
tweezers common, and jewellery includes pieces in gold. There are a few gold and silver vessels.
A good deal of broken pottery sherds have survived, which have been divided into two types of "fine" wares, mostly with a
ceramic slip
A slip is a clay slurry used to produce pottery and other ceramic wares. Liquified clay, in which there is no fixed ratio of water and clay, is called slip or clay slurry which is used either for joining leather-hard (semi-hardened) clay body (p ...
, often burnished, and some with painted decoration. There are also plainer "coarse" wares, some with simple impressed decoration. There are also animal figures in terracotta, some with their bellies split. Clay sealings are much more common than seals; many were found in the House of the Tiles. Seals have been found in stone, lead, and terracotta. Some clay ''
pithoi
Pithos (, grc-gre, πίθος, plural: ' ) is the Greek name of a large storage container. The term in English is applied to such containers used among the civilizations that bordered the Mediterranean Sea in the Neolithic, the Bronze Age and ...
'' urns and hearths are decorated by rolling
cylinder seals over them; intriguingly, the same seals appear to have been used at different sites.
There is no standard type of burial across the culture, with excavations so far revealing a number of types, varying by the location. Burials in pits,
cist
A cist ( or ; also kist ;
from grc-gre, κίστη, Middle Welsh ''Kist'' or Germanic ''Kiste'') is a small stone-built coffin-like box or ossuary used to hold the bodies of the dead. Examples can be found across Europe and in the Middle East ...
s, and ''pithos'' urns are found, as well as some cremated remains, group burials, and secondary burials where the remains were placed in their final location some time after death.
[Rutter]
Notes
{{reflist
References
*Rutter, Jeremy, "The Eutresis and Korakou Cultures of Early Helladic I-II"
brewinate January 2017
*Small, David B., ''Ancient Greece: Social Structure and Evolution'', 2019, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9780521895057, 0521895057
google books
Further reading
*
Renfrew, A.C., 1972, ''The Emergence of Civilisation: The Cyclades and the Aegean in The Third Millennium BC'', London.
Archaeology of Greece
Helladic civilization
Bronze Age cultures of Europe