---
node: greek_dark_ages
type: period
slug: greek_dark_ages
title: "Greek Dark Ages"
lead: "The Greek Dark Ages (c. 1100–c. 800 BC) were the centuries after the Mycenaean collapse, when palaces, writing, and much long-distance trade disappeared. Archaeology now shows more continuity than the name implies, and many scholars prefer the term Early Iron Age."
published: 2026-07-10
updated: 2026-07-10
---

## Overview

In the centuries after the Mycenaean collapse, c. 1100–c. 800 BC, the palaces were gone, writing in Linear B was lost, population and settlements shrank, and monumental building and much long-distance trade ceased. Yet the label is increasingly qualified: finds such as the rich tenth-century building at Lefkandi reveal more continuity and outside contact than the old picture of total darkness, and scholars now often prefer the term Early Iron Age.

## Key developments

Peoples were on the move: later tradition tells of an Ionian migration to the Aegean islands and the Anatolian coast. Iron replaced bronze as the everyday metal. Oral poetry flourished — the tradition that would culminate in Homer — and as chiefdoms gave way to settled communities, the basic social structures of the later polis were taking shape.

## End and transition

The period ends around 800 BC with recovery: population growth, renewed trade with the east, and the adaptation of the Phoenician alphabet to write Greek — among the first scripts to record full vowels.