Late Helladic to Middle Geometric Aegean and Contemporary Cypriot Chronologies: A Radiocarbon View from the Levant

The article proposes a radiocarbon-based dating scheme for the entire Aegean ceramic sequence, from the Late Helladic IIIB2 to the Middle Geometric II, with implications for the Late Cypriot IIC to Cypro-Geometric III ceramic phases. It accomplishes this by exercising “chronology by proxy”—that is, turning to radiocarbon-dated strata in the Levant that produced Aegean, Aegean-related, and corresponding Cypriot pottery items that represent most of the Late Helladic IIIB—Middle Geometric sequence. The article describes these contexts in the Levant and the above-mentioned items found in them, and then reports the results of a radiocarbon Bayesian model for their dating. The dates presented here support, with a few adjustments, the Conventional Aegean Chronology (Low Chronology in Levantine terms), in line with a recent radiocarbon dating of the Sub-Mycenaean/Early Proto-Geometric transition according to samples from Greece, as well as other models for the Iron Age in the Levant.