The polis has long been conceived as the most advanced form of Greek political society. Yet recent research into how early Greeks used the term highlights discrepancies with modern views of the autonomous city state. Communities called polis existed within wider political structures of various kinds. So what were the different forms of association experienced by Early Iron Age and Archaic Greeks? What impact did they have on the way in which individuals and groups thought of themselves and others, and what role did they play in the formation of federal states? Catherine Morgan addresses these questions by exploring the archaeological, literary and epigraphical records of central Greece and the northern Peloponnese. What emerges is an understanding of the connections between polis identity and other forms and tiers of association, refuting our traditional view of early Greek "ethnic" groups (ethne) as simple systems based on primitive tribal ties.