Sparta
Sparta(see map: Greece and the Aegean world)
1. Prehistory
Sparta (‘the sown land’?) lies c.56 km. (35 mi.) south of Tegea, and 48 km. (30 mi.) north of Gytheum, at the heart of the fertile alluvial valley of the Eurotas in the district of Laconia (SW Peloponnese). Very few prehistoric remains are known from the site of historical Sparta, but there was a substantial neolithic community not far south, and a major late bronze age settlement about 3 km. north-east (the ‘Menelaion’ site at Therapne). The circumstances of the settlement of Sparta town are enveloped in the fog of myth and legend: the ‘Return of the Heraclids’ (the descendants of Heracles), as the ancients put it, and the ‘Dorian Invasion’, in modern parlance (see Macedonia). Archaeology as currently understood suggests a cultural break with the bronze age and...[The entire page is 2042 words long]
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