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Mycenaean is the name given to the period of Greek history between the arrival of the Greeks in the Aegean area in about 1600 BC and about 1100 BC, the date usually asigned to the Dorian invasion, although some historians doubt that any such invasion took place. The Mycenaean period is named for the archaeological site at Mycenae, which was one of the main centres of this era. Other important Mycenaean sites were Tiryns, Pylos, Athens and Thebes.

Mycenaean civilization was dominated by the warrior aristocracy. Around 1400 BC, the Mycenaeans conquered Crete, centre of the Minoan civilization, adapting the Minoan script (now called Linear A) to write their own form of GreekThe Greek language ( /Elini'k{/) is an Indo-European language which has existed from around the 14th century BC in the Cretan inscriptions called Linear B. Mycenaean Greek of this period is distinguished from later Classical or Ancient Greek of the 8th ce. This script was known as Linear BLinear B is the script that was used for writing Mycenaean, an early form of the Greek language. It occurrs primarily on tablets dated from the 14th and 13th centuries BC. The script was derived from an earlier script ( Linear A) used for writing the Mino. The epic poems attributed to HomerFor other uses, see Homer (disambiguation). Homer ( Greek Ὅμηρος Hómēros was a legendary (or perhaps mythical) early Greek poet traditionally credited with authorship of the major Greek epics Iliad a, the IliadThe Iliad is, alongside The Odyssey one of the two major Greek epic poems traditionally attributed to Homer, a blind Ionian poet. The Iliad and the Odyssey were considered by Greeks of the classical age and after as the most important works in Ancient Gre and the OdysseyFor the cable TV channel formerly called Odyssey, see the Hallmark Channel. The Odyssey is the second of the two great Greek epic poems ascribed to Homer, the first being the Iliad''. The book follows the events of the voyage of Odysseus, king of Ithaca,, preserve some later Greek memories of the Mycenaean period.

Around 1100 BC, the Mycenaean civilisation collapsed. Numerous cities were sacked and the region entered what later Greeks saw as a dark age. During this period Greece experienced decreasing populationFor the use of the word population in statistics, see statistical population. In the most common sense of the word, a population is the collection of people—or organisms of a particular species—living in a given geographic area. Populations are studied in and the Greeks lost their literacy. Historians have traditionally blamed this decline on an invasion by another Greek people, the Dorians, although the historical validity of this theory is now doubted.

The Mycenaeans buried their dead in tholoi or " beehive tombs", which were large circular burial vaults. The Mycenaeans often buried daggers, or some form of military equipment, with the deceased. The nobility was frequently buried with gold masks, tiaras, armour, and jeweled weapons. Mycenaeans were buried in a sitting position and some of the nobility underwent mummification.