Mycenæan Greece

1. Mycenæan Greece Out of the mists of time…

3. The Helladic Period(Bronze Age) 3000-1100 B.C. • Early Helladic c. 3000-2000 Quiet Pastoralism • Meso-Helladic c. 2000-1600 Greek Conquest • Late Helladic c. 1600-1100 Palace Civilization: The Mycenaean Period

4. Early Helladic c. 3000-2000 • Greece inhabited by agricultural people. • Spoke non-Indo-European language. • Around 3000 technology for producing bronze arrived from Mesopotamia or Asia Minor. • Little else is known of these farmers except a few place names. • Archeology has found remnants of their villages from c. 2000 burned or suddenly abandoned. • What happened after perhaps 4-5 millennia of occupation?

5. Meso-Helladic Period c. 2000 - 1550 • New people emerge on the scene as conquerors, sometimes intermarrying. • Spoke an early form of Greek. • Society based on warfare, leaders were warrior-chiefs. • Opened trade with the Minoans, accelerated toward “civilization.” • Began to organize politically with material, scientific, and artistic progress.

6. Late Helladic (Mycenaean) Period1600-1100 • Trade brought about palace economies and a gradual urbanization. • About 1600 developing urban centers began to thrive as seen by: • Larger cities. • Ubiquitous art. • Productive agriculture. • Sumptuous tombs. • Increased wealth fueled the power of the Mycenaean warrior-chieftains.

7. The mysterious Mycenaeans • Mycenaeans were lost to history for almost 3000 years! • Before 1870 the great Greek civilizations that developed in the late Helladic Period were considered a Homeric fiction. • Amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann located Troy in Turkey in 1870 and Mycenae and Tiryns in 1874ff.

9. What were they like? • The picture we have is of a society built on a constant war footing. • They patterned their civilization after the Minoans but accommodated their own exaltation of war. • Art was influenced by Minoan art but pictures warfare and hunting rather than everyday mundane life.

10. What were they like? • They traveled widely as merchants. Offered olive oil and animal skins/leathers for jewelry, precious metals, etc. • Much of their commercial activity could be by force or guile: not above piracy.

11. Mycenae

12. How they were organized. • Mycenaean society was monarchical. The king was called a wanax, sort of a warrior-CEO. • Vast wealth accumulated through taxes and rapine was generally not shared with subjects. • Most wealth went to warfare, defense, jewels and expensive burials. • Palaces were fortified citadels with thick perimeter walls. • Mycenaeans showed up around the Mediterranean as raiders: raided Hittites, Egyptians, and of course, Troy. • Accumulated slaves from these raids.

13. What did they believe? • It’s difficult to know what their religion was. • Iliad does not necessarily reflect their pantheon. • They were polytheistic and syncretists. • At least worshipped a sky-god, Dyeus, who shows up in all Indo-European languages: Zeus, “deity” • Adopted Minoan deities, the female goddesses later situated on Olympus.

14. What burials show us. • Societies dominated by powerful rulers usually expend great wealth and labor to bury them. • At first, the powerful were buried in deep shaft graves into which the body and accouterments were lowered. • Later, to show even greater power, they were buried in tholos tombs, large beehive chambers cut into a hillside.

15. Tholos tombs

16. Homer’s Troy What we know…

17. Troy • Troy was built as a fortress on a ridge. • It was strategically located overlooking a fertile plain only a few miles from the Aegean and the Dardanelles. • Not a Neolithic site, it was first occupied about 3000. • From time to time there were catastrophes, but each time it was rebuilt without apparent change in the populace. • Archaeologists have identified five phases of the city down to 1800.

18. Troy and Greeks • Troy was a splendid city long before Mycenaeans rose in Greece. • Troy is unusual in that it has closer cultural connections to the west than to the east, even though the Hittite civilization was near at hand. • It remains mysterious though because no written documents have been found at Troy, and no other contemporary cultural chronicles refer to it!

19. Troy’s glory days • About 1800 came a sixth Troy (Troy VI) and it was very different from what came before. • Less treasure than before, but better technology in defenses, like complex fortification walls. • The big differences: lots of horses and close trade ties to Greece. • About 1300 it is flattened by an earthquake.

20. Troy rebuilt • Troy VIIa is the smaller rebuilt version of the city before the earthquake. • This would be the city of the Trojan War. • It was destroyed by invaders, but it is not definitive proof of the war, because there was a general collapse and widespread war throughout the ancient world around 1200, about the same time as Troy’s destruction.

21. Does Troy VIIa suggest a war? • The citadel was rebuilt after the earthquake, and boxy three-level houses were packed into it. • Indications are that inhabitants were desperate for storage space and used every available nook. • It is the only excavation of Troy in which skeletal remains are found, suggesting failure to remove dead. • Mycenean pottery that was in evidence was “antique,” a drop in presence of imported pottery. • Later Greeks dated the war as late as 1184 and as early as 1334. This city was burned during that time.

22. What happened to the Mycenaeans? • Palace culture disappeared by 1100. • Greek legend held that they were overrun by other Greek-speakers from the north, the Dorians. • More likely is a variety of causes, including regional economic collapse which drove people from cities into the country. The Mycenean form of monarchy also collapsed. • Greeks stopped writing—no need to, without palaces. • The era following Mycenaean collapse was termed the Dark Age.

23. Theories of what happened • Invasion from outside the Aegean region? • Climatic change? • Economic factors? • Societal upheaval from within the region? • Changes in the way wars were fought? (horse-drawn battle cars gave way to light mobile infantry that employed the javelin)

24. The mystery continues • What kind of an upheaval could have accounted for the complete destruction of the palace civilization? • Why did they never rebuild these palaces? • Why were some of the richest agricultural areas of Greece, especially in the Peloponnese depopulated? • What happened to them? Did they die of disease or famine? Did they migrate? If so, where? • No theory addresses all of the questions about the collapse of Mycenean palace civilization. We now know Mycenean palace civilization slowly died out over 150 years following destruction of the palaces.

25. The “Dark Age” 1200-700 A period of decline, then renaissance

26. General destruction of the civilization: Great 12th Century Crisis • Palaces and citadels were destroyed, never to return. • The pyramidal society built around the palaces was disrupted though poorer society continued. • The grand tholos tombs disappeared: back to cist graves—graves with stone chests—and cremation with ashes preserved in chamber tombs. • Metalwork: Naue II, a superior type of sword, and fibulae pins in the shape of violin bows appear. • Writing disappeared…for a time.

27. A mysterious world • “Mysterious” because few written documents have been found from this era. Writing before the archaic era was primarily for keeping books. • Greek historians of a later era like Herodotus (495-425), Thucydides (460-395), Polybius (201-120), and Diodorus (90-20) never imagined the world recently uncovered by archaeology. • Like Europe’s so-called “dark age,” this world was really the early stages of a Greek culture that preserved local character rather than regional uniformity.

28. Clues: what do you think happened? • Fewer luxury items due to hard times for upper classes. Fewer stone buildings. No rare gems or novel imports. What are found are often “antiques.” • Carving and wall-painting slowly die out • Burial hoards are skimpy and use urns, reflect practical items. • Pottery is no-nonsense: no pictures of regal animals or people, though sometimes “toon” depictions, BUT quality improves with faster wheels and circular designs appear. (Protogeometric)

29. Protogeometric pottery

30. What about iron? • Iron pins replace buttons on clothing. • Iron completely replaces bronze in cutlery and weaponry. • Iron everyday items appear in burial finds. • Iron is harder and maintains its sharpness. • Iron ore was found in Greece.

31. What we know about the dark age • Groundwork was laid for the future socially, politically, culturally, and materially. • Iron, produced from more readily from Greek natural resources moved from luxury item to the preferred and most advanced metal. • Impoverished communities that survived the societal upheaval moved away from monarchical, centralized bureaucracies. • Greeks moved from inhumation to cremation.

32. Making the Aegean a “Greek Lake” • Peninsular Greeks establish colonies in western Asia Minor and offshore islands. • Many of these are existing cities somehow “overwhelmed” by Greek men. • Phrygia (cap. Gordia) in central Asia minor became a major trading partner and was the Greek connection to the trade of the east.

33. Evolution of a new society • After the destruction of palace economies, kingship was weakened so that by the end of the dark age most monarchies replaced by aristocracies. • Many towns and villages abandoned, but Athens and Corinth hang on. • Most Greeks are part of tribal groups that grew into larger political units by about 800. • Marketplaces grew and village communities began to gather as defensive units based on a single city.

34. Local life • Chief (basileuV) and/or village presbyters (presbuteroi) judge from a fund of customary laws. • Household (oikoV) is the basic societal unit. Includes patrilineal extended family, all slaves, and poor free employees. • Villages are bedroom communities for surrounding farmsteads (klhroi). • Related villages form the demos (demoV), or province/region. The leading town was the (poliV).