Territory and state formation in the Archaic Peloponnese

During the Archaic period (C800-500), a key foundational era of Greek history, several paradigm shifts within society resulted in the ‘Rise of the Polis’, the development of this key institution of Greek life and culture. The last thirty years have seen dramatic changes in our understanding of the emergence of complex societies, new and more critical approaches to textual sources, and a broadening of archaeological research in Greece, particularly in the countryside, alongside the ever-increasing body of excavated material from early poleis. However, the nature and origins of the polis remains one of the most discussed and debated issues in the study of ancient Greece. This on-going lack of consensus stems partly from the under-utilisation of many of these advances. My research presented here aims to remedy this by focussing on data gathered from numerous surface survey projects and combining it with text and excavated material, in the context of new critical approaches to the past. Through synthesising and analysing this survey material, a resource currently under-used and largely overlooked in the study of Archaic Greece, this study casts new light on the vital changes in the chora, the territory of the polis; on the border areas between poleis, and on broad trends in social change and social organisation in the Archaic period. My research shows that the closer incorporation of survey material into the study and understanding of Archaic history is not only possible, it is vitally important for advancing the relationship between text, material culture and historical archaeology, thus opening up broad, innovative and exciting possibilities for future research.