Copper and Bronze, 3000 BC–1500 BC

The development of prehistoric societies has always been viewed from one of two perspectives: a diffusionist approach, now largely out of fashion, which attributes the arrival of new styles and techniques to migration and trade; or an emphasis on the factors within a society that fostered change and growth. Alongside the tendency to look for internal explanations of change, interest in the ethnic identity of settlers has faded. Partly this reflects an awareness that easy identification of ‘race’ with language and culture bears no relation to circumstances on the ground: ethnic groups merge, languages are borrowed, important cultural traits such as burial practices mutate without the arrival of newcomers. Equally, it would be an error to see all social change as the result of internal developments merely enhanced by the effects of growing trade: the lightly populated shores and islands of the prehistoric Mediterranean provided broad spaces within which those in search of food, exiled warlords or pilgrims to pagan shrines could create new settlements far from home. If there were earlier settlers, the newcomers intermarried with them as often as they chased them away or exterminated them, and the language of one or the other group became dominant for reasons that are now beyond explanation. The Cyclades became the home of a rich and lively culture, beginning in the early Bronze Age (roughly 3000 BC onwards). The main islands were by now all populated; villages such as Phylakopi on Melos were thriving; on several islands small villages developed out of an original core of a couple of small homesteads. The obsidian quarries were still visited, and copper was available in the western Cyclades, whence it reached Crete; Cycladic products continued to flow outwards, though in quite precise directions: to the southern Aegean, but not, for some reason, northwards, suggesting that the opening of the seas was still partial and dependent on what other regions could offer the Cycladic islanders. The islanders appear to have imported little into their villages; very few eastern products have been found on excavated sites on the Cyclades.