Greek Migrations to Aegean Anatolia in the Early Dark Age*

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GREEK MIGRATIONS TO AEGEAN ANATOLIA IN THE EARLY DARK AGE*

Jacques Vanschoonwinkel

The Greek tradition has preserved the memory of Greeks settling along the Aegean coast of Anatolia under the names of the Aeolian, Ionian and Dorian migrations. These movements of population took place during the legendary generations after the Trojan War and ended up in Lesbos and the Asiatic Aeolis, Ionia and southern Caria—territories that are characterised by the use of the Aeolic, Ionic and Doric dialects. After a short exposé of the written evi- dence, this chapter is dedicated to its critical analysis and to the study of the earliest indications relating to the ﬁrst arrival of Greek settlers in Asia Minor (Fig. 1). The transition from the 10th to the 9th century B.C., which is generally considered to be the end of the Protogeometric period in Attica, constitutes the chronological end of the chapter, but these migrations in fact constitute a phenomenon of long duration that continued during the ﬁrst centuries of the 1st millennium B.C.

Legendary Traditions Relating to the Aeolian, Ionian and Dorian Migrations

The legendary corpus concerning Ionian migration is very vast,1 but only three authors—Herodotus, Strabo and Pausanias—dedicate a detailed narrative to it. According to Herodotus (1. 145–147; see also 7. 94–95), the Ionians came from Achaea where they used to occupy twelve cities, from which they were driven out by the Achaeans. However, the true Ionians are the descendants only of the colonists from Athens who celebrate the Apatouria, since in Ionia there are people diﬀerent from the Ionians. The Ionians of Asia elected as

* Translated by Nevena Georgieva. 1 For a complete presentation of the ancient texts, see Sakellariou 1958, 21–37; Huxley 1966, 26–9; Emlyn-Jones 1980, 10–1. 116 jacques vanschoonwinkel

Fig. 1. Map of Aegean Asia Minor.