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GATE 02 · GREEK COLONIES AND MEDIATION

Greek Aegean

Ullastret and Emporion: Iberians and Greeks in contact

Ullastret was an Iberian city that traded with Emporion, a Greek colony.

Museum documentation · free public access, no account required.

DECLARED VISUAL RECONSTRUCTION · AI-GENERATED IMAGE · TRACEKEEPERS

Generated reconstruction · Declared visual hypothesis

Declared visual reconstruction; not a photograph of the original nor documentary evidence.

Representative image of the door from the Iberian world towards the Greek Aegean
DECLARED VISUAL RECONSTRUCTION · AI-GENERATED IMAGE · TRACEKEEPERS

Generated reconstruction · Declared visual hypothesis

Declared visual reconstruction; not a photograph of the original nor documentary evidence.

Why this doorway leads to another museum

The Greek colony of Emporion, linked to the Phocaean network of Massalia from the beginning of the 6th century BCE, connected the northeastern Iberian Peninsula with Greek circuits of wine, pottery, coinage and images; the exchange reached other regions through intermediaries.

In the Emporion area, Greek and indigenous spaces coexisted with shifting alliances, dependencies and cultural translations. Imports did not circulate intact: their use and meaning depended on each receiving community.

Ullastret was an Iberian city of the Indigetes, also called Indiketas, in the present-day Empordà. Its walls, houses, temples and cisterns, reservoirs for collecting water, show an urban community. It maintained an important trade with Emporion, the Greek colony of present-day Empúries. This relationship explains the Greek influence on Ullastret.

Period of the connection: From c. 575 BCE; peak between the 6th–4th centuries BCE

BEFORE YOU ENTER

An introduction to Greeks

Find your place in time, explore the changes and choose where to go next.

When
From the Minoan phase ≈3100 BCE · EUROPE AND AEGEAN
Where
Crete, mainland Greece, Aegean islands and Mediterranean-connected communities
What this collection brings together
Aegean cultures, city-states and kingdoms of different periods

This route brings together distinct societies that lived around the Aegean: Minoan Crete, the Mycenaean kingdoms and, centuries later, the Greek city-states. The palaces of Knossos and Mycenae do not belong to the same moment as Periclean Athens. Between them there were population changes, crises and new ways of organising common life.

History does not end in Athens either. Greek communities extended along Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts; Alexander's conquests and the Hellenistic kingdoms opened another stage of contacts. Following a tablet, a vessel, a statue or a coin allows understanding what changed and what was conserved. Sharing language, gods or customs did not mean living under a single government.

PLACE MATTERS

Territory and connections

The Minoan and Mycenaean centres, the Greek cities and the Hellenistic kingdoms had different areas. A map of Alexander's expansion does not serve to situate the world of Knossos nor all the Greek cities.

A HISTORY OF CHANGE

The main periods

Dates are approximate. Periods help us navigate the past, but their boundaries were not always the same in every region.

  1. ca. 3100–1900 BCE

    Prepalatial Crete

    Prepalatial Cretan villages, tombs and workshops are connected by the Aegean; this phase cannot yet be called a Minoan state.

  2. ca. 1900–1700 BCE

    First Minoan palaces

    Knossos, Phaistos and other centres organise storage and ritual; no unique capital demonstrated for all of Crete exists.

  3. ca. 1700–1450 BCE

    Neopalatial network

    Cretan material influence reaches Aegean islands and coasts; the map shows a maritime network, not a thalassocracy with proven frontiers.

  4. ca. 1450–1200 BCE

    Mycenaean administration

    Mainland Greek-speaking centres and Knossos use Linear B; Mycenaean influence and control do not turn Minoans and Mycenaeans into a single identity.

Continue the story: 4 more periods

  1. c. 1200–800 BCE

    Postpalatial world

    Palatial archives disappear and populations reorganise settlements and networks; there is no human or cultural vacuum.

  2. ca. 800–480 BCE

    Archaic poleis and colonisation

    Greek communities founded settlements across the Mediterranean and the Black Sea; each polis was autonomous and the routes did not form a national territory.

  3. ca. 480–323 BCE

    Leagues, wars and Macedonia

    Athens, Sparta, Thebes and Macedonia articulated successive spheres; none represented all Greek communities.

  4. 323–30 BCE

    Hellenistic kingdoms

    Alexander’s successors ruled distinct territories; Greek language and culture circulated without creating a single Hellenic state.

BEYOND THE DATES

How people lived and saw the world

From palaces to cities and kingdoms

Minoan and Mycenaean centres combined power, storage and administration. Much later, Greek cities had different governments: Athenian democracy was one of them, with political participation reserved for male citizens. After Alexander, his successors established large kingdoms, while some cities sought autonomy through alliances. There is no single form of government that explains the entire trajectory.

What happened in the houses

Cooking, storing food, spinning and weaving were necessary tasks even where there were great palaces and temples. Images of classical Greece show domestic labour, visits to springs and participation in celebrations. Social position, gender and place conditioned this life: an Athenian scene does not equally describe a family from Crete, Sparta or a Hellenistic city.

Building, making and keeping accounts

Aegean artisans worked clay, stone and metals. The Mycenaeans raised fortifications and drainage systems, and their scribes recorded goods on Linear B tablets, a script that represents ancient Greek. Centuries later, temples combined planning, masonry and decoration. Comparing these works helps understand the knowledge and labour they required, beyond their monumental appearance.

Places and festivals for meeting the gods

In Minoan Crete there was ritual activity in palaces, caves and summits. In the later Greek world, temples, altars and sanctuaries formed part of cities and countryside. Festivals at places such as Olympia or Delphi brought together visitors from different communities. Offerings allow recognition of petitions and thanks; accounts of gods and heroes help understand images, but do not substitute the history of each place.

The sea united ports, people and ideas

Goods travelled across the Aegean long before classical Greece. Mycenaean vessels appear in places distant from their workshops. In later periods, Greek settlements in Italy, Sicily, Asia Minor and other coasts expanded the networks. Encounters with local populations involved exchanges and also conflicts. Finding a Greek vase does not suffice to affirm that the place was governed by Greeks.

Music and theatre before an audience

Music accompanied festivals, weddings, funerals and banquets. Images of instruments, inscriptions and some fragments of notation allow its study. In Athens, theatrical performances were linked to Dionysian celebrations: tragedies and comedies presented stories and problems before a gathered community. In the Hellenistic world, audiences, commissions and forms of representing people also changed.

PEOPLE AND TESTIMONIES

Meet the people

The records distinguish historical figures, representations and reconstructions. They explain their context, the available sources and their connections with other people.

LOOK CLOSER

Objects and places to start with

A selection from the destination museum. Open each record to explore its documentation and images.

WHAT REMAINS

Its legacy and ongoing research

Theatre, images of gods and heroes and many ways of building and representing the body transformed when passing to other societies. Rome was one of its great receivers. Continuity was not a changeless copy: artists, rulers and spectators gave them new uses.

CHOOSE YOUR NEXT STOP

Inside this museum

Sources for this introduction

Each theme links to its documentation. The full bibliography also brings together sources for the chronology, the people and the connection between the museums.

View all sources and references →

Evidence and interpretation

Documented historical connection: The Greek colony of Emporion, linked to the Phocaean network of Massalia from the beginning of the 6th century BCE, connected the northeastern Iberian Peninsula with Greek circuits of wine, pottery, coinage and images; the exchange reached other regions through intermediaries. Curatorial caution: The door leads to a museum that covers Minoan, Mycenaean and Greek phases, but the documented Iberian contact corresponds mainly to the Archaic and Classical Greek world. It does not prove direct relations with Minoan or Mycenaean palaces. Ullastret is an Iberian city with Greek influence; the Greek foundation corresponds to Emporion.

Catalogue facts

Continent
Europe
Destination museum
Museum of the Minoan, Mycenaean and Greek Aegean
Reason for the connection
The Greek colony of Emporion, linked to the Phocaean network of Massalia from the beginning of the 6th century BCE, connected the northeastern Iberian Peninsula with Greek circuits of wine, pottery, coinage and images; the exchange reached other regions through intermediaries.
Contact period
From c. 575 BCE; peak between the 6th–4th centuries BCE
Caution
The door leads to a museum that covers Minoan, Mycenaean and Greek phases, but the documented Iberian contact corresponds mainly to the Archaic and Classical Greek world. It does not prove direct relations with Minoan or Mycenaean palaces. Ullastret is an Iberian city with Greek influence; the Greek foundation corresponds to Emporion.

A closer look

About 2 min to read · 3 sections. Further reading and sources · free access. Editorial review recorded: .

An intermediary with an Iberian name

A Greek letter on lead found in Empúries mentions twice a character whose name is preserved incompletely as Basped[. Joan Ferrer considers it more likely to be an Iberian name than the old Phoenician proposal. The character participates as an intermediary in maritime business, in a document that includes wine among the traded products. Another Greek lead tablet, that of Pech Maho, records Iberian names among the witnesses of payments. The inscriptions thus allow us to recognise specific functions within the exchange: transporting, negotiating and certifying operations, as well as receiving goods.

Ullastret: a city of the Indigetes

Puig de Sant Andreu preserves walls, streets, houses and temples of a city that organised the territory of the Indigetes, also called Indiketas. Agriculture, livestock and the exploitation of mines and quarries sustained its activities. Its trade with Empúries allowed it to sell local products and receive goods from other regions. The cisterns, reservoirs cut into the rock to collect water, show solutions comparable to those of the Greek colony. These contacts explain the Greek influence on an Iberian community.

Emporion: where the Greek foundation is

The Greeks founded Emporion in the 6th century BCE. The first nucleus was called Palaià Polis, old city. This origin corresponds to Emporion, in present-day Empúries. When comparing its remains with those of Ullastret, it is appropriate to separate the arrival of Greek colonists at Emporion from the trade and adoption of some Greek practices in an Iberian city.

Location and territory

Physical world map with routes of human evolutionPresent-day world coastline from Natural Earth in an equirectangular projection. The overlaid markers let you explore each milestone.Map base: Natural Earth 1:110m · public domain · present-day reference coastline

REGIONAL AREA

Crete, Aegean and mainland Greece; the museum begins in the Minoan phaseCrete, Aegean and mainland Greece; the museum begins in the Minoan phase. The footprint marks the orientative centre of the scope, not a boundary nor an exact point.

Cultural connections

Enter the Museum of the Minoan, Mycenaean and Greek Aegean and continue this connection →

Sources and references

Expand this connection in the Museum of the Minoan, Mycenaean and Greek Aegean

YOUR NEXT VISIT

Explore Greeks

The same collection, two ways to explore. Choose the experience that suits you.

Enter the 3D museumWalk through its rooms and explore at your own pace.Free accountExplore the web collectionBrowse the collection, its images and historical sources.Free to read · no account needed

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