At the same time the "archaeological dark age" has other evidence going for it.It doesn't. There's no evidence for the existence of the Greek dark age -- hence the term, "dark age". No artifacts, and most importantly, no strata at all. Structures from classic times were built immediately atop Mycenaean structures.
Unless this latest thesis jibes with the volcanic record I'm not ready to buy off on it.That makes no sense at all. There isn't any correspondence between world history and the eruption of some Icelandic volcano. An ash layer in the Greenland ice cores was originally saddled on as evidence for the fictional mid-2nd millennium BC eruption of Thera, but was found to match a volcano in Alaska (instead of nearby Iceland). Greenland has been at the fringe of world history for some reason. :')
Greek civilization has to date back further else the Celtic tribes along the rivers leading to the Black Sea would not have been distinguishable from the Greeks in the region...And that has bupkis to do with the Trojan War. The Celtic incursion into Greek lands and Anatolia came later than the Trojan War and is well dated.
So, maybe not 1400 BCE, but certainly earlier than 900 BCE.The Trojan War years correspond to the 25th "Ethiopian" Dynasty of Egypt, so yeah, later than 900 BC. The Phrygians had entered Anatolia, and were allied with Troy, but the Phrygian kingdom only lasted a few generations, then was destroyed by a new wave of various invaders from Asia. That wave also ended the Mycenaean or Heroic Age of Greece.
That pushes the Trojan war back further.
Regarding the timing of Icelandic Volcanic eruptions and events elsewhere in Europe, we have Hekla being in the TOP TEN worldwide, which is not usually a big deal since most folks are able to get out of the way quite readily.
On the other hand all the Icelandic volcanoes spew fluorides ~ and that is a really special problem since a modest amount can kill people like Black Flag scragging ants, and Iceland has 130 volcanoes. One piece at Wiki said that "over the past 500 years, Iceland's volcanoes have erupted a third of the total global lava output."
While looking through the list of the largest eruptions to see if there were lists of the minor eruptions (with lots of fluoriodes) I encountered an analysis that says SANTORINI is overdue for another trick. The various timelines prepared for it suggest it had what amounts to a 200 year long period of recurring eruptions, so whatever the Greeks were doing elsewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean, or even in Bulgaria, they had a real trip.
Just sitting there perking away with a minor eruption here, a minor eruption there, a lava flow, a spewing of fluorides hither and yon, and doing it over and over and over, we end up not needing for any particular eruption to do vast damage.
The most recent major event in Iceland that's probably related to serious disruption in Europe was a modest outburst of Hekla and the others some time in the 500s. That combined with a major blast hypothesized for Krakatoa, or Rabaul in 535 could very well have precipitated the European Dark Ages PLUS the apparent disappearance of the people known as the Picts.
No one imagines these volcanoes weren't blowing their tops in earlier ages and killing people worldwide.
Admittedly I've been away from the literature for some time, but I recall a hiatus between the final examples of LH III and the subsequent Protogeometric pottery that indicted a general Aegean economic collapse. (A ten year war could certainly have that effect.) Has this period contracted from a couple generations to a seamless transition?