Note on Lesbos, Lemnos, and Aegean Islands
in response to a query on Lesbos
Goddess worship did flourish on Lesbos, and just as much on the other islands, as far as i know. The islands had a certain degree of geographical protection (isolation isn't the right word) that enabled them to preserve longer the old traditions. Crete being a dramatic example, in stark contrast to the other societies undergoing Bronze Age warfare, at least until it fell to that itself.
Very old veneration of Hera on Samos. Artemis on Delos (where she preceded Apollo, in both myth and archaeology). Going back further, the Cycladic goddesses, and the bee-goddesses from Rhodes that Bendis just posted. I'll go into the iconography of these islands which were so close to Asia Minor in a later chapter, many of them very close to Artemis Ephesia.
While Lesbos became associated with woman-loving-women because of Sappho, a nearby island of Lemnos became associated with female rebellion. The Greeks told detestable stories about Lemnian women, for taking leading role in public life and offending Aphrodite (by rejecting the subordination of Greek wives). They claimed that the goddess punished the women of Lemnos with a foul body smell. They are said to have killed their husbands for abducting Thracian women (now Bulgaria) as forced wives. There is another island which i'll have to look up where abducted women refused to speak to their "husbands." And then the matrilineage which persisted on some of the islands into the 20th century.