The purpose of this article is to set out the history of scholarship on the graves of the Athenian Kerameikos and, from there, to review critically the two most recent offerings on the subject by Morris (1987) and Whitley (1991). Both of these works focus on the Athenian Early Iron Age, the earlier part of which is generally referred to as the 'Dark Age', and both are concerned with changes in the structure and symbolism observed in the archaeological record and how these changes relate to the rise of the Greek polis. The review concentrates on a number of key issues, particularly method, chronology and the artificial construction of a 'Dark Age'. The latter is more fully addressed in the final section of this paper.