Bronze Age Chronologies

This is a comparative chronology of the Bronze Age indicating where different scholars have published variant timelines.

Scholars’ mapping of chronological periods — such as the various Early, Middle and Late Helladic phases — to absolute dates varies with evidence and personal leaning. There is, however, broad consensus, as the following chart shows. It compares the published chronologies from various recent sources:

• Feuer, Bryan, Mycenaean Civilization: An Annotated Bibliography (2002) McFarland & Co., Jefferson, North Carolina.
• Shelmerdine, Cynthia W, Review of Aegean Prehistory VI: The Palatial Bronze Age of the Southern and Central Greek Mainland (1997), American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 101, pp.537-585.
• Shelmerdine, Cynthia W (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Aegean Bronze Age (2008) Cambridge University Press.

You can find these and other relevant works in the Age of Bronze bibliography.

‘High’ and ‘Low’ represent the high and low chronologies relative to the eruption of Thera (Santorini) relative to the event’s radiocarbon dating (high) or synchronism with Egyptian and Near Eastern sources (low).

Where ranges are given for a specific transition, these are marked ‘Upper’ and ‘Lower’.

Note Apologies are offered to readers with colour visualisation issues: I will update the chart im due course