Cynthia W. Shelmerdine

The Early Bronze Age in Greece

Introduction The chronological span of this chapter is the late fourth, the third, and the early second millennium bce , i.e., the Final Neolithic, Early Helladic, and early Middle Helladic periods. The Early Helladic period was approximately 1000-1100 years in length, as long as the Middle and Late Helladic periods combined (Fig. 1.1). During the Early Bronze Age on the Greek mainland, small-scale complex societies emerged in a number of regions. This experiment in complexity held promise, but sweeping changes brought it to an end during the later part of the EH period. These changes have been connected with the “Coming of the Greeks” (that is, Indo-European speakers) as precursors to Mycenaeans of the later Bronze Age. This chapter surveys the archaeological data and interpretations of that data from the Greek mainland for the period spanning from the end of the Neolithic to the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age, including the problem of the “Coming of the Greeks” (below, pp. 38-41). Study of the EH period began with Carl Blegen’s excavation at Korakou, near Corinth, in 1916-1918. The well-stratified remains allowed him to isolate ceramics of the various periods of the Bronze Age and, along with Alan Wace working at Mycenae, to devise a classification of the ceramics of the pre-Mycenaean period, the Early and Middle Bronze Ages. The excavation of several important sites with EH remains, such as Tiryns, Asea, and Zygouries, contributed additional information, especially about architecture. The picture of the EH period changed fundamentally, however, with the excavation of Lerna in the 1950s.

Economy and Administration

Introduction Mainland Greece in the Early Mycenaean period (LH I-II) was home to a number of political centers competing for resources, power, and territorial control (Ch. 10, pp. 242- 51). By the beginning of LH III the most successful developed into full-fledged states, political structures administered from central places of power. These central places are marked archaeologically by the monumental buildings we call palaces (Fig. 11.1; Ch. 11, pp. 261-4), and in most cases by administrative records inscribed on clay tablets in an early form of Greek. Recent scholars prefer “state” or the even more neutral “ polity ” (politically organized society) to the older term “kingdom,” to avoid possibly misleading presumptions about internal political organization. Palace-centered states were not universal in Mycenaean Greece; regions such as Achaea and Laconia apparently never developed a monumental center like Mycenae or Pylos. These areas may have continued to operate at the level of the Early Mycenaean village-centered societies, outside the control of any particular center; and indeed they benefited from the collapse of the palatial administrations ca. 1190 bce , at the end of LH IIIB (Ch. 15, pp. 395, 397-9, 405-6). We do know something about a number of Late Mycenaean states, however, particularly those controlled from Mycenae and Tiryns in the Argolid, Thebes in Boeotia, Pylos in Messenia, and Knossos on Crete.

Minoan Crete and the Aegean Islands

Introduction The nature of Minoan involvement in the Aegean islands is an intrinsically fascinating question for a prehistorian of Greece, one that has been debated since the very beginning of our field. It also constitutes an excellent case study of broader interest in world archaeology. What causes promote the cultural assimilation of one group by another? How do the opposing forces of socio-economic domination and resistance manifest themselves in material culture? For at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, the communities of the Cyclades and of other islands of the Aegean Sea were so radically altered by contact with the Minoan civilization that scarcely an aspect of life in them was left unaffected. As for the field of Aegean prehistory in general, fundamental research questions that concern Minoan Crete and the Aegean islands have often been framed in response to testimonia preserved in Greek texts of the historical period. Literary sources are thus an aspect of the problem that deserves attention before we consider archaeological data. In the following section, therefore, we will first review the ancient written tradition. Then we will examine the actual archaeological evidence, as it has been uncovered at several representative and well known sites in Greece and western Turkey. Finally we will turn to the reasons that Cretans may have been attracted to the Cycladic and Dodecanesian islands, and to their impact on these areas.

Mycenaean Art and Architecture

Introduction The culture of the Mycenaean Greeks can best be accessed through the tangible record they have left of their life and death in the four centuries from their emergence as a power at the end of the Middle Helladic period to the destruction of their palaces at the end of Late Helladic IIIB. Schliemann’s first great archaeological discoveries at Mycenae in 1876 named both the civilization and the age of its supremacy. The great amount of gold in the deeply buried shaft graves immediately captured the world’s attention, particularly the gold face masks. In one of these Schliemann thought he had looked upon the face of Agamemnon. Archaeologists now know that the early date of the graves precludes such an identification and we no longer equate these finds with things mentioned in Greek legends and the epics of Homer. We realize that oral tradition and subsequent literature have many components, only some of which may carry memories or preserve details of the Mycenaean world - after all, the time span between the shaft graves and the Parthenon exceeds a thousand years. The decipherment of the Linear B texts as Greek in 1952 (Ch. 1, pp. 11–12) opened another window into the culture but, because of their limited subject matter, we are left without discussion of some of the most important aspects one would wish to know about a society. So the material remains provided by archaeological endeavors since 1876 are the primary source for our understanding of Mycenaean culture.

Decline, Destruction, Aftermath

Instability and Decline At the end of LH IIIB2 - conventionally dated to ca. 1190 bce - the Mycenaean palatial period came to a dramatic end. The palaces were destroyed and the palace system collapsed, never to be rebuilt. The causes of the catastrophes have long been the subject of controversial scholarly discourse, and consensus is not in the offing. One thing, however, has become increasingly clear: the breakdown of the palace system was the result of a process that had started considerably earlier. It is generally assumed that the decline of the Mycenaean states was triggered by a first series of destructions at the end of LH IIIB1. At Mycenae several palace-related buildings outside of the citadel were destroyed and abandoned. At Tiryns the structures on the knoll below the palace (the Lower Citadel) were destroyed, and the palace of Thebes was also damaged. Nor were nonpalatial communities spared. Earthquakes have been blamed for the destructions at Mycenae and Tiryns. At other sites causes cannot be defined with certainty. Whatever caused these earlier catastrophes, they seem to have brought to an end the heyday of the Mycenaean palace civilization. The archaeological record of the last decades of the thirteenth century bce (LH IIIB2) reflects instability and decline. Mycenae and Tiryns were damaged by further destruction, and the great citadel of Gla in Boeotia was burnt down and deserted, whereas other settlements were gradually abandoned. The Aegean islands also seem to have undergone a period of insecurity and change.

Background, Sources, and Methods

Background The scope of this book is the Aegean Bronze Age: the history and material cultures of Crete, the Greek mainland, and the Aegean islands during the period when bronze had replaced stone as the dominant material for tools and weapons, and had not yet been supplanted by iron. The period began around 3100/3000 bce and continued until about 1070 bce ; during its course different groups of people rose from basic subsistence to cultural prominence, interacted with each other and with civilizations around the Mediterranean basin, and subsided again beyond our reach. Serious study of the Aegean Bronze Age began over 120 years ago, fueled by several early projects, including exploration by the French on Santorini, the British at Phylakopi on Melos, and Heinrich Schliemann at Troy, Mycenae, and Tiryns. Schliemann was motivated by a fascination with mythical accounts of the Trojan War, and Sir Arthur Evans, the excavator of Knossos, by curiosity about the signs, in an unknown script, incised into lumps of clay found on Crete. None of these pioneers could have imagined the quantities of sites and artifacts that would subsequently be found, the proliferation of new techniques for everything from excavation itself to scientific dating and provenience studies, or the textual information revealed by the decipherment of the Mycenaean script. Early investigators of the Bronze Age tried to characterize and contrast the material culture of different ethnic groups, with special attention to aspects that could be mapped onto a Homeric vision of the Greek past (Ch. 5, pp. 105–6).

Minoan Culture: Religion, Burial Customs, and Administration

Religion and Cult Practice In the modern world, Western societies tend to separate religion and ritual from other aspects of society in a way that ancient or “primitive” societies did not. In ancient cultures religion was an integral part of daily life, including the treatment of the deceased after death. For a heavily agrarian society, cult practice centered on daily and seasonal activities and on human involvement with a perceived supernatural world. Although it is difficult to reconstruct belief systems without documentary evidence (below, pp. 173-82), the archaeological record preserves much evidence for ritual equipment and activities. What makes Minoan society interesting, as well as difficult for us to understand, is the apparent overlap between religion, society, and politics. Some of these issues have been addressed in detail, but no consensus has emerged among scholars - an impossibility, perhaps, in any discussion of religion! We assume that the foundations of Neopalatial religion were laid in the Protopalatial period, and probably much earlier, in the form of cults at caves (some at quite remote locations), at sanctuaries on mountain peaks throughout the island where offerings were made of terracotta human and animal figures, and at communal tombs, often deliberately situated to provide easy access from the homes of the living (Ch. 4, p. 93).