<P> Lefkandi on the island of Euboea was a prosperous settlement in the Late Bronze Age, possibly to be identified with old Eretria . It recovered quickly from the collapse of Mycenaean culture, and in 1981 excavators of a burial ground found the largest 10th - century building yet known from Greece . Sometimes called "the heroon", this long narrow building, 50 metres by 10 metres, or about 150 feet by 30 feet, contained two burial shafts . In one were placed four horses and the other contained a cremated male buried with his iron weapons and an inhumed woman, heavily adorned with gold jewellery . The man's bones were placed in a bronze jar from Cyprus, with hunting scenes on the cast rim . The woman was clad with gold coils in her hair, rings, gold breast plates, an heirloom necklace (an elaborate Cypriot or Near Eastern necklace made some 200--300 years before her burial) and an ivory - handled dagger at her head . The horses appeared to have been sacrificed, some appearing to have iron bits in their mouths . No evidence survives to show whether the building was erected to house the burial, or whether the "hero" or local chieftain in the grave was cremated and then buried in his grand house; whichever is true, the house was soon demolished and the debris used to form a roughly circular mound over the wall stumps . </P> <P> Within the next few years and down to about 820 BC, rich members of the community were cremated and buried close to the eastern end of the building, in much the same way as Christians might seek to be buried close to a saint's grave; the presence of imported objects, notable throughout more than eighty further burials, contrast with other nearby cemeteries at Lefkandi and attest to a lasting elite tradition . </P> <P> The archaeological record of many sites demonstrates that the economic recovery of Greece was well advanced by the beginning of the 8th century BC . Both cemeteries such as the Kerameikos in Athens or Lefkandi and sanctuaries such as Olympia, recently founded Delphi or the Heraion of Samos, first of the colossal free - standing temples, are richly provided with offerings, including items from the Near East, from Egypt and from Italy made of exotic materials such as amber or ivory . Also, exports of Greek pottery demonstrate contact with the Levant coast at such sites as Al Mina and with the region of the Villanovan culture to the north of Rome . The decoration of pottery becomes more and more elaborate and includes figured scenes that parallel the stories of Homeric Epic . Iron tools and weapons become better in quality, while renewed Mediterranean trade must have brought new supplies of copper and tin to make a wide range of elaborate bronze objects, such as tripod stands like those offered as prizes in the funeral games celebrated by Achilles for Patroclus . Other coastal regions of Greece besides Euboea were once again full participants in the commercial and cultural exchanges of the eastern and central Mediterranean, while communities developed which were governed by an elite group of aristocrats rather than by the single basileus or chieftain of earlier periods . </P> <P> By the mid - to late - 8th century BC, a new alphabet system was adopted from the Phoenicians by a Greek with first - hand experience of it . The Greeks adapted the Phoenician writing system, notably introducing characters for vowel sounds and thereby creating the first truly alphabetic (as opposed to abjad) writing system . The new alphabet quickly spread throughout the Mediterranean and was used to write not only the Greek language, but also Phrygian and other languages in the eastern Mediterranean . As Greece sent out colonies west towards Sicily and Italy (Pithekoussae, Cumae), the influence of their new alphabet extended further . The ceramic Euboean artifact inscribed with a few lines written in the Greek alphabet referring to "Nestor's cup", discovered in a grave at Pithekoussae (Ischia) dates from c. 730 BC; it seems to be the oldest written reference to the Iliad . The Etruscans benefited from the innovation: Old Italic variants spread throughout Italy from the 8th century . Other variants of the alphabet appear on the Lemnos Stele and in the alphabets of Asia Minor . The previous Linear scripts were not completely abandoned: the Cypriot syllabary, descended from Linear A, remained in use on Cyprus in Arcadocypriot Greek and Eteocypriot inscriptions until the Hellenistic era . </P>

What happened after the dark ages in greece
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