Most available information on the Middle Helladic settlements and cemeteries derive from the Argolid, the region in which the most extensive research has been carried out. Given that the Argolid became one of the most significant centres of Mycenaean civilization during the Late Bronze Age, the gradual and harmonic transition from the Middle Helladic to the Mycenaean culture is apparent in the evolution of its settlements. The position of the Argolid on the east coast of the Peloponnese was probably the factor that contributed so that the Mycenaean world received the fertile influence of the Cyclades and Crete. The Minoan influence is more obvious in the south Peloponnese and particularly in Messenia where imports and regional imitations of Cretan artisan workshops are more frequent.

Aegina presents the peculiarities of an insular community. However, it plays a very important role in exchange of Middle Helladic centres. That is why Aegina is examined within the framework of Middle Helladic culture. The products of its pottery workshops were greatly demanded and diffused via a well organized trade network. The settlement of Aegina which appears conservative in settlement tradition, presents strong Cycladic and Minoan influence while it has provided examples of a very advanced social evolution.

Boeotia and Phocis are also considered as the most important centres of Middle Helladic culture which preserved their

regional peculiarities during the largest part of the Middle Bronze Age, especially in pottery production. These distinctions from the centres of the Peloponnese decreased toward the end of the Middle Helladic period to end in a common cultural basis with the Argolid in the beginnings of the Mycenaean period. Attica presents many common elements with Boeotia but the influence from the Peloponnese and Aegina are even stronger.

The Middle Helladic settlements of the inland of Thessaly, such as Argissa, present intense regional traits and an autonomous evolution, different from the one of south Greece. Nevertheless, settlements on the coast of the Pagasitikos, as Pefkakia, had a parallel evolution and close contacts with the more south regions while they also preserve their regional traits in artisanship production. The largest part of Macedonia is out of the limits of Middle Helladic culture. The Middle Bronze Age finds from Macedonia differ at a great extent from those of south Greece. As a result they cannot be classified in the Middle Helladic culture. However, sites on the coast of Chalkidike, such as Agios Mamas and Molyvopyrgos, maintained probably close contact with the regions of central Greece, as the imported ceramics from the south reveal.