Separating Fact from Fiction in the Ionian Migration

Abstract

The Ionian cities of Asia Minor have been the subject of much discussion, particularly in regard to their foundation. Traditional accounts of this foundation posit a large-scale migration from the Greek mainland led by Athenian colonists. This article reviews the historical, archaeological, and linguistic evidence for the origins of the Ionian cities, and offers a new analysis of the substantial body of later literary material written in Greek and Latin. This new analysis of the literary material brings the origin of the cities into sharper focus in terms of both the complex patterns of mobility and local settlement that contributed to their physical origins, and the equally complex sociopolitical concerns that shaped the origins of their Ionian identity.

Tradition and Innovation in Aegean Iron Technologies: A View From Early Iron Age Ionia

“…In Ionia, a prolonged application of approaches focused on explaining EIA innovations as outcomes of migrations from the Aegean and mainland Greece, in combination with the tendency to retroject certain phenomena, such as dialect distribution of the Archaic period and ethnic affiliations born shortly after, has ultimately led to a number of deep-set assumptions about the nature of contact and exchange as well as the dynamics of the movement of people at the end of the LBA and during the EIA (Vaessen 2015; Mac Sweeney 2017; Kotsonas and Mokrišová 2020). Specifically, western Anatolia has traditionally been described as a border zone, or an interface, between more dominant and archaeologically more recognizable neighbours – the Mycenaeans and the Hittites in the LBA and the Greeks and the Lydians in the EIA.…”

“…This is in part connected to an unusual feature of the region, which suffered a less pronounced impact of the LBA collapse than many other areas. Many Ionian BA settlements, such as Liman Tepe/Klazomenai and Ephesos, continued to be occupied, while some might have had short breaks in occupation, even coupled with a period of changing political allegiances, such as Miletos (Kerschner 2006; Lemos 2007; Ersoy 2007; Niemeier 2007; Mac Sweeney 2017; Kotsonas and Mokrišová 2020). While the material evidence that can shed light on the transitional LBA to EIA period is increasing, much of the archaeological material remains obscured by taphonomic processes and environmental and landscape changes (e.g., Brückner et al 2017).…”

A desolate landscape? Mobility and interaction in the chora of Klazomenai during the Early Iron Age

“…71). Although there was a lower density of sites in Ionia than in other regions, allowing the territories of the emerging poleis to grow larger than has been observed in other regions of the Greek world (Hill 2016;, it is hardly a surprise that border disputes and violent encounters occurred frequently in Ionia during the Iron Age and, especially, the Archaic period (Mac Sweeney 2013;. Around Klazomenai, this situation is, in the first place, exemplified by the emergence of a defensive network comprising border forts, a fortified settlement at Yarentepe and a refuge site at Yemişliboğaz (49) on the fringes of Klazomenai's territory at the beginning of the Archaic period (Koparal 2009;.…”

“…In recent years, however, interest in Ionia has witnessed a revival, mainly thanks to new movements in postcolonial theory, which have shifted attention to alleged marginal areas and peripheral zones (Vaessen 2018). In the wake of this movement, new studies have increasingly highlighted that Iron Age Ionia was much more diverse than previously thought and worthy of being investigated on its own terms (Greaves 2010;Mac Sweeney 2013;Vaessen 2014;Hill 2016;Koparal 2017;Koparal et al 2017).…”

Re-thinking communities: Collective identity and social experience in Iron-Age western Anatolia

“…In historical narratives, however, Ionia was not considered to have always been Greek. Rather, its Greekness was explained by mass migrations from Athens and other areas of the mainland that effectively transplanted a Greek identity onto new shores in the early 1st millennium BCE—the Iron Age (see Mac Sweeney, 2017). The idea of a single, mass migration of Ionians to west Anatolia is no longer accepted, but the notion of some type of scattered Greek ‘arrival’ during the Iron Age, and the dichotomy between Greeks and non-Greeks in the region, still underlies much Ionian scholarship (e.g.…”