Abstract
The paper attempts to summarize the evidence for the Final Middle and the Early Late Helladic periods on the northern Peloponnese, touching upon Korinthia but concentrating mainly on the Achaia and northern Elis. With pottery being the chronologically most sensitive and best published element of the relevant archaeological evidence, the paper will concentrate especially on the definition of the local ceramic sequence as opposed to the newly arriving Mycenaean style.
The funerary evidence, as well as the scarce architectural evidence, will also be discussed. All of the mentioned will be evaluated through the lens of the Central Greek evidence and it will be demonstrated how very much similar any social and cultural processes in both areas must have been, at least in this period.
In doing so, it will be attempted to place the local development in a broader context and to illustrate how clearly different from the rest of the peninsula the Northwestern Peloponnese was, with Korinthia being more interlinked with the rising new power center at Mycenae but still keeping some distinctiveness. The spread of Mycenaean elements towards the Northwestern Peloponnese and the Central Greece will be juxtaposed and the meaning behind it discussed.