A new study by historian Hans Beck of the University of Münster suggests that Sparta did not rise in an empty or passive landscape. Long before the classical city became synonymous with discipline, war, and austerity, the Eurotas Valley was already shaped by an older Lakedaimonian world. Its memory appears to have been anchored in a Mycenaean palace, a long-lived sanctuary, and ritual traditions that survived the collapse of Bronze Age power.

The study, published in The Annual of the British School at Athens, turns attention away from Sparta itself and toward two places south of the later city: the Mycenaean palace at Aghios Vasileios near Xirokambi and the Sanctuary of Apollo Amyklaios at Amykles.

Together, they complicate the old picture. Sparta may not have replaced Lakedaimonia. It may have grown out of it.

A Mycenaean palace before Sparta

One of the strongest clues comes from Linear B, the script used by Mycenaean palace administrations in the Late Bronze Age. Tablets from Thebes mention forms of the word “Lakedaimonian,” showing that the name or identity was already known in the Mycenaean world, long before classical Sparta emerged.

That is important because later Greek history often treats Spartans and Lakedaimonians almost as the same people. Beck’s study suggests something less tidy. The Lakedaimonians were not a fixed nation in the modern sense. They were a community shaped by shared places, ceremonies, obligations, and memories.

Aghios Vasileios now gives that older identity a possible center.

Located about 12 kilometers south of modern Sparta, the site has yielded monumental Mycenaean buildings, a large court, fresco fragments, bronze swords, and more than 200 Linear B archival components. One clay nodule bears the sign group wa-na-ko-to, connected with the Mycenaean wanax, or king.

This was not a small hilltop settlement. Aghios Vasileios appears to have been one of the major palatial centers of Mycenaean Greece. Its records refer to livestock, oil, wool, textiles, aromatic substances, animal products, and other goods. The palace was not only a royal residence. It was an administrative and economic engine for the wider Eurotas Valley.

For Beck, the implication is striking: the ruler of this early Lakedaimonian world may finally have a plausible home.

Amyklai kept the old memory alive

The palace system collapsed around the transition from the 13th to the 12th century BCE. Across the Greek world, palaces fell, archives burned, and old political structures disappeared. Aghios Vasileios seems to have been destroyed or abandoned.

But a few kilometers to the north, Amyklai continued.

The hill of Aghia Kyriaki at Amykles had already been an important ritual site in the Late Bronze Age. Archaeological finds include figurines, rhytons, drinking vessels, and evidence of feasting. During the palace period, the sanctuary may have served as a ceremonial outpost linked to Aghios Vasileios.

After the palace disappeared, the sanctuary did not vanish with it. Pottery and votive offerings show that people continued to gather there through the Submycenaean, Protogeometric, and Geometric periods. The objects changed over time, but the sacred place remained active.

Drinking vessels, bronze pins, spearheads, iron swords, spindle whorls, and other offerings point to feasting, textile dedication, elite display, and ritual performance. In a valley where royal power had collapsed, Amyklai preserved something harder to destroy: shared memory.

Not a clean conquest story

The older model imagined the arrival of Dorian Spartans as a sharp conquest of Laconia. Beck does not remove conflict or migration from the picture. But the archaeology at Amyklai does not support a simple story of violent replacement.

There is no clear break in ritual life at the sanctuary. Practices continued. Offerings evolved gradually. The hill remained sacred.

That points to a slower and more complex process. Early Spartans may have entered a region already shaped by Lakedaimonian traditions, then gradually absorbed those traditions into their own political order. Instead of erasing the older community, they adopted its sacred places and gave them a Spartan frame.

Amyklai became the meeting ground.

The Hyakinthia, one of the most important festivals in Laconia, brought together Spartans and wider Lakedaimonian communities through processions, sacrifices, music, athletic contests, feasting, singing, and dance. Ancient testimony suggests that local songs from different places formed part of the festival. This was not simply a Spartan performance. It carried the memory of a broader region.

For Spartans, the journey to Amyklai meant moving beyond the city. For people of the Eurotas Valley, the sanctuary was older than Sparta itself.

Apollo above an older hero

By the sixth century BCE, Amyklai had become one of the great sacred landmarks of Laconia. A colossal bronze-sheathed image of Apollo Amyklaios stood on the hilltop, armed with helmet, spear, and bow.

Beneath it was another layer of meaning: the tomb or altar of Hyakinthos, a local hero whose name appears to preserve very ancient traditions. The pairing of Apollo and Hyakinthos joined an Olympian god with a much deeper local past.

That image captures the larger story. Sparta did not appear out of nowhere. It rose in a landscape already marked by palaces, sanctuaries, rituals, and inherited names.

Before Sparta became the symbol of the warrior state, Laconia already had its own memory. The Spartans did not simply conquer that world. They stepped into it, reshaped it, and made it part of their own origin story.

Beck, H. (2026). PLACES OF BELONGING: ARCHAEOHISTORICAL ENCOUNTERS WITH THE LAKEDAIMONIANS AT THE MYCENAEAN PALACE OF AGHIOS VASILEIOS AND THE SANCTUARY OF APOLLO AT AMYKLES. The Annual of the British School at Athens, 1–27. doi:10.1017/S0068245426100343

Cover Image Credit: Aerial view of the Aghios Vasileios hilltop from the west. Photograph by V. Georgiadis, from Wiersma et al. Reference Wiersma, 2022, 124. © Corien Wiersma, Aghios Vasileios Survey Project (printed with permission). Credit: Beck, H., 2026