The Korakou culture or Early Helladic II (in some schemes Early Helladic IIA) was an early phase of Bronze Age Greece, in the Early Helladic period, lasting from around 2650 to c. 2200 BC. In the Helladic chronology it was preceded by the Eutresis culture of c. 3200 – c. 2650 BC (also called Early Helladic I) and followed by the Tiryns culture (2,200–2,000 BC) or Early Helladic III. In some parts of Greece a Lefkandi culture, or Early Helladic IIB, follows the Korakou; elsewhere the Korakou transitions directly into the Tiryns.[1]
Remains of the culture have been excavated widely across south and central mainland Greece, in the Peloponnese, Attica, Euboea, Boeotia, Phocis, and Locris. Examples of Korakou pottery have been found still more widely, as far as Knossos in Crete, Lefkas in the west, Thessaly, and on Ios and Keos in the Cyclades.[2]
Many coastal sites were fortified, and in several areas the period ends with a destruction by burning; some settlements are reoccupied by the Tiryns culture, while many remain unoccupied until the Mycenean period.[3]
The place name terms for all these cultures were proposed by Colin Renfrew in 1972 as a replacement for the "Early Helladic" periodizations; however, both have remained in use.[4]
- ^ Rutter
- ^ Rutter; Small, 32–33
- ^ Rutter
- ^ Rutter, "Resistance to Renfrew's system of site labels for distinct cultural assemblages has consistently been quite strong since the mid-1970's, with the result that both his site-based terminology and the older EH I-II-III labels are in concurrent use as descriptors for the various EBA cultures of the central and southern Greek Mainland."