The Fall of LBA Aegean Palace Societies

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The Fall of LBA Aegean Palace Societies

• ART/CNE 430
• 11/30/04

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Rise of Mycenae

• Pre-palatial/early palatial Mycenaean period
  16th-14th centuries BCE.
• What material culture shows us
• Shaft Graves in Mycenae, rich tholoi tombs in
  Messenia, Laconia, Attica and elsewhere, martial
  representations in art
• legitimation processes which ended eventually
  with the establishment of the highly bureaucratic
  palace kingdoms of the later 14th and 13th
  centuries

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Shaft Graves
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Mycenae Floruit

• 14th-13th c. BCE
• Heavily fortified (except Pylos) citadels with
  lower towns
• Extensive trade with NE/Aegean
• High culture pottery, fresco art, metal work,
  writing (Linear B)
• Redistributive economy, craft specialization
• Foreign slaves necessary for textile production,
  etc.

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Tiryns Acropolis Development
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Mycenaean Culture

• Common Mycenaean culture and social structure,
  imposed militarily.
• Greeks expanded influence into Asia Minor through
  trade, migration, gift exchange, raiding parties.
• Tiny elite at top of social pyramid supported by
  a huge subordinate population of lower classes
  and slaves (economic engine of society).
• Archaeological record confirms the mythological
  picture of Mycenaeans as having a heroic culture
  of war and violence.

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Characteristic Pottery
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LBA Aegean Destructions

• Aegean-wide destructions in the archaeological
  record. In the Argolid Mycenaean culture may
  have survived longer due to NE trade routes.
• Tiryns - suffered 2 destructions between
  1300-1200 fortifications built, destroyed by
  earthquake, rebuilt thereafter it was no longer
  functioning as a palace. Deserted after late
  1100s.
• Mycenae c. 1250 massive fortifications built
  1200 destruction by earthquake (?), abandoned by
  c. 1100.
• Sites (1190-1150) show large of people
  -refugees?

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LBA Aegean Destructions

• Attica
• Athens - destructions occur c. 1200 but the site
  is never abandoned.
• Messenia
• Pylos - LH3B - rooms are added to increase
  storage and perhaps to block access to interior
  parts of the palace (defense?) destroyed by
  burning in March, c. 1200, not immediately
  reoccupied. Why are there no gold objects or
  skeletons in the destruction level? Did people
  evacuate or were they enslaved? No evidence of
  battle.

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Results

• The accumulation of these single destructions led
  to a slow abandonment of sites, taking place over
  as much as 4 generations.
• After 1200, there is a massive drop in settlement
  sites around former Mycenaean centers like Pylos
  and Tiryns. Widespread population shifts and
  movements.
• Messenia experienced the worst of this
• Before 1200 150 known sites
• After 1200 14 known sites

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Problem in Interpretation

• Of all the major Mycenaean palaces, only Pylos
  was excavated using modern techniques.
• Evidence at Pylos, combined with that from
  elsewhere, helps a lot.
• The Argolid palaces seem to have been destroyed
  by massive earthquakes, but in many other parts
  of the Peloponnese, there are signs that people
  expected attacks from the sea
• Fortifications and walls are built along the
  coasts, Pylos tablets speak of watchers of the
  coast, show marshalling of rowers/troops.

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LBA Aegean Destructions

• Crete c. 1250-1200 burnings and destructions at
  Knossos, Kommos (with its mixed population,
  including Phoenicians), Chania.
• Hittite Empire capital at Boghaz Koy destroyed
  c. 1180.
• Egypt harassed by Sea Peoples c. 1300, suffered
  2 major attacks c. 1210 (Libyans Sea Peoples)
  and 1180 (Sea Peoples).

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LBA Aegean Destructions

• Troy
• VI of the lovely walls - has lots of Mycenaean
  pottery, which tells us that the city fell to its
  earthquake after 1300, probably closer to 1250 or
  later.
• VIIa - rebuilt after VI, contains only a few
  Mycenaean sherds which may have worked their way
  up from VI. Shanty town, large s of storage
  jars, destruction by fire and violence.

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Troy VI Plan (Blegen)
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Troy VI Eastern Fortification Wall
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Troy VIIa

• How long did it last, and why did it fall? The
  answers depend on pottery.
• Blegen declared that no LH3C he thought it c.
  1230-1200 pottery had been found in Troy VIIa.
• LH3C now considered 1190-85 or later. Several
  pieces of LH3C pottery have been found in Troy
  VIIa - scholars now think town was destroyed c.
  1180 (same time as Hittite capital city).
• New style of pottery appears in Troy VIIb1, which
  didnt become widespread in Greece until 1170-60.

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Troy VIIa Houses (Blegen)
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Troy VIIa (Blegen)
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Blegen Homer

• In addition to estimating LH3C too early, Blegen
  also miscalculated the duration of Troy VIIa. He
  may have been influenced by his desire to link
  the site with Homeric epic.
• From the thickness of deposits as well as the
  pottery, we can see that it lasted 30-50 years.
• Reinterpretation of the evidence not a shanty
  town under short-term siege, but a settlement
  that changed its architecture to one storey
  houses - pithoi were crammed in for space
  reasons, not siege.

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New Analyses of VI VIIa

• Rutter and others see the chief difference
  between the two cities is the use of space within
  the fortifications.
• VI - small of elite houses with the majority of
  the population living outside the walls. Korfmann
  defined town limits, excavated ditch with
  fortifications est. population 5-6,000.
• Mycenaean cult figurines on W side of wall.
  Shrine for resident Mycenaeans or a Myc. god in a
  Trojan shrine? Mycenaean cemetery (yards from
  shore) over 50 cremations with grave goods 5
  sealstones from Greek mainland (aristocrats?).

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Social Change

• VIIa - movement of population to within the
  walls, probably due to external threat.
• Evidence for social change, not siege. But what
  caused this change? Sea Peoples? Roving,
  displaced Mycenaean raiders?

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Fall of Troy?

• Were the Trojan elite all killed in the
  earthquake?
• Or did Mycenaeans attack while the city was
  recovering from the quake?
• Did they kill the royal family in their sack of
  the city? Think back to Anderson and his
  discussion of the fall of the House of Priam (the
  other branch of the family migrated to Italy).
• In Ilioupersis traditions we find a concern for
  social and family continuity and discontinuity.

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Ilioupersis in Art - Death of the Priamids
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The Real Ilioupersis?

• Archaeological record
• citadel covered by thick, black carbonized debris
• Skeletal remains showing death by human violence
• Presence of Mycenaean weapons in the final phase
  of Troy VI (arrowheads, knives, bronze axes).
• The pottery evidence dates the fall of Troy VI to
  1260ish, after which few Mycenaean imports.
• Textual record hostilities between the Hittites
  and the kingdom of Ahhiyawa. Linear B documents
  show Greeks with Asian slaves. Lifetime of
  Alaksandus of Wilusa.

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Homers City?

• Wood thinks VI was it - that Mycenaeans attacked
  and sacked it c. 1280, the time of Muwatallis
  reign. He bases this (revised) opinion on new
  translations of Hittite tablets - but some of
  these are undated, and Hittite geography is still
  hazy.
• Rutter and others think Troy VIIa is the most
  likely candidate for Priams city.

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Sea Raiders

• The sea raiders mentioned in Egyptian texts and
  depicted in frescoes were distinct groups from
  different cultures, banding together to launch
  major attacks on kingdoms.
• Groups mentioned Libyans, Philistines, the
  Aqaiwasha, Tursha, Sheklesh.
• Were there displaced Mycenaeans among them?
• Some were no doubt migrants, others, pirates.

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Destabilization

• Final period of the LBA was a time of
  instability, movement, destruction.
• Factors leading to migration/depopulation
• natural disasters
• climate change (drought, famine?)
• Causing (?) destruction by human agency (pirates,
  raiders, etc.)

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LBA Destructions

• Most scholars now believe that the collapse of
  Greek palatial societies at the end of the LBA
  occurred because of a complex interaction of many
  factors.

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Explanatory Model

• Collapse of the Maya
• Central political organization collapses (loss of
  high culture art, architecture, etc.)
• Ruling elite vanishes, new ones arise (as we see
  in Troy VI - VIIa?)
• Centralized redistributive economy collapses
• Major settlements deserted, widepread
  depopulation
• Romanticizing vanished world as heroic

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The History of Homeric Epic

• Sherratt proposes a scheme to integrate textual
  and archaeological evidence for the relationship
  between Homeric epic and history.
• Epic poetry - arises from and is maintained by
  elites seeking to define themselves and to
  legitimate their social and political power.

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Heroic Societies

• 2 essential characteristics
• 1) they embody the ideals and lifestyles of only
  a certain particularly self-conscious,
  self-aggrandizing sector of society, in which not
  only the efficacy of its actions but the shaping
  of its distinguished and distinctive behavior is
  central to its self-image and self-justification.
  

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Heroic Societies

• 2) their active self-definition, through such
  devices as epic poetry, ostentatious burial and
  representational art, is most likely to have
  greatest importance in periods of social
  political fluidity and change when new family or
  social groups emerge jostling for power and eager
  to establish their credentials, and when
  legitimation and self-propaganda of individuals
  or small groups become particularly crucial
  issues.

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Sherratts Model

• 2 periods when conditions of social or political
  fluidity and the need for legitimation are best
  seen in the archaeological record
• 16th-14th centuries Shaft Grave period at
  Mycenae, lots of interest in artistic reps. of
  war.
• Four centuries after the collapse of the
  Mycenaean palace culture, when social fluidity
  returns (8th c.). Maritime trade, cremation
• Later 8th c. - same time as the establishment of
  the polis, emergence of something new. Renewed
  emphasis on military and funeral ideals in art,
  rise of panhellenic sanctuaries, rise of hero
  cults.

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Mycenaean Warrior Krater
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Epic Poetry

• 16th-14th c. initial creation of bardic
  tradition, core of Homeric epic, perhaps inspired
  by a destruction of Troy c. 1400. Recurring siege
  motif in both literature and art was an important
  theme for the elite.
• 14th - 12th c. maintenance of epic tradition in
  service of the status quo - stressing continuity
  with the past.
• Post-palatial 12th-9th c. new creation and
  active formation of Homeric epic.

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Mycenae, Grave Circle A
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Pylos Lyre Player (Megaron)
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Representations of War (Pylos)
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Sherratts Stages Expressed Via Armor In Epic
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Mycenaean Armor
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Homeric Epic as We Have It

• The absence of anything referable to the
  material culture of 7th or 6th c. Greece makes it
  clear that the epic traditions last role as an
  active instrument for heroic self-definition was
  over. As in the palatial period of the 14th -13th
  centuries, it had taken on a conservative
  function . . . Now, however, the added dimension
  of pan-Hellenic possession gave it a new
  permanent stability which was no longer capable
  of further transformation.

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Rise of Mycenaean Hero Cult
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Troy - Tomb of Achilles
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Troy - Tomb of Ajax
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Hero of Corinth
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Terracotta representing the discovery of a
Mycenaean Tholos Tomb, Arkhanes, Crete (800 BCE)
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Mycenaean Grave Circle A Classical pottery for
the hero
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Archaic Offerings at Mycenaean Tholos Tomb
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Archaic Imitations of the Past (6th century
Corinthian)