“Matte-painted” pottery now appears in mainland Greece, again with simple linear patterns on a light ground.

The traditional “long house,” often apsidal, is the preferred architectural form.

The level of cultural attainment seems low, and not much metal circulates at first: hallmarks of early colonial regimes.

The newcomers quickly develop connections with the islands and Crete; they import Cretan vases, and some local vases show mainland ships. (Minyan and Matte-painted pottery has been found in the nearer islands and even as far as Crete and the Anatolian coast.)

Burials grow from single interments to larger “family” chambers at Eleusis in Attica and on both coasts; ...

Eleusis, situated in the fertile plain of Thria about fourteen miles (twenty-three kilometers) west of Athens, opposite the island of Salamis, is independent until the seventh century BCE, when Athens annexes the city and makes the Eleusinian Mysteries a major Athenian religious festival.

The Spartans under Pausanias, the son of King Cleombrotus I, nephew of King Leonidas, and regent for the slain king's underage son, advance from the Peloponnese via the Isthmus and Eleusis; there had once been a question of making a stand at the Isthmus for the defense of the Peloponnese, but Salamis has made that unnecessary.

The strategic importance of Megara is immediately demonstrated by the appearance, for the first time in twelve years, of a Spartan army north of the Isthmus in Attica, under King Pleistoanax, who reaches Eleusis and the Thriasian plain.

Ictinus, who, together with Callikrates has designed the Parthenon, takes time off in 440 to work in Eleusis on the ongoing construction of the Telesterion, or Hall of Mysteries, a colossal hall for religious rites with a central light source in the roof.

Eleusis is again independent when the Thirty Tyrants are expelled from Athens after the Peloponnesian War and briefly occupy the city in 403 BCE, but Athenian hegemony is restored within two years.