Mycenaean

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Mycenaean Homeric Society

• ART/CNE 430
• 11/9/04

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Mycenaean Society

• Homer is clear and consistent that Agamemnon of
  Mycenae was the most powerful king in Greece,
  with some sort of authority over the other
  independent kings of the mainland, Crete, and
  some islands, a territory that represented one
  cultural world.
• Wood asks a vital question Is this view correct?

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Archaeological Evidence

• The 14th and early 13th c. BCE were the most
  prosperous and populous age on the mainland.
• The major palaces archaeologically are those that
  Homer specifies all linked in material culture
  (pottery, art, architecture, language in Linear B
  documents and the organizational/bureaucratic
  method).

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13th c. Mycenae

• Wood argues that it is built for war.
• He uses Hittite and Egyptian analogies of lesser
  kingdoms bound by treaties or oaths under a
  Great King.
• The citadel stands at the meeting-place of the
  road system, which indicates the centralized
  power of Mycenae links it with subject or
  lesser city-states on the Argive Plain.

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Road System
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Citadel of Mycenae
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Imperial Characteristics

• The rulers at Mycenae spent vast amounts of
  wealth on architecture, superfluous ornament,
  elaborate defenses.

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Treasury of Atreus- great public monument
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Treasury of Atreus Interior
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Lion Gate Symbol of Dynasty
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Shaft Graves Object of Conspicuous Display Cult
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Megaron Compares well with Hittite Palace at
Hattusas
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Evidence of Mycenaean Aggression

• On Linear B tablets lists of Asian slave women
  and imported objects from all over the
  Mediterranean luxury items.
• Prehistoric arms race? The massive
  fortifications to protect the Argive Plain. Do
  these citadels house one extended family, or
  indicate frequent wars between states?
• Wood examines Greek legend, such as the
  traditional hatred between Thebes Orchomenos.

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Heroic Kingship

• Wood looks at evidence from Homer, Linear B, and
  Dark Age European cultures to discover what kind
  of kingship existed.
• Homer and Dark Age European analogies give us
  heroic kingship influenced by the epic genre
  kingship geared to war with aristocratic martial
  ideals.
• Hittite treaties from the 14-13th c. tell us a
  lot about the legal obligations of associated and
  subordinate states.

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Mycenaean Social Structure Seen in the Linear B
Tablets

• A king (wanax anax)
• Warriors (hequetai hepetas, hetairoi)
• Slaves/Serfs (doeroi, doerai douloi, doulai)
• Priests/Priestesses
• Local Administrative Officers (quasileus
  basileus, koreter, prokoreter)
• Local Councils (? geronsia gerousia)

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Mycenaean Kingdoms

• Those sites with Linear B documents seem to have
  been independent kingdoms. For example, Pylos
  rules its provinces with no mention of any
  overlord.

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How did Mycenae Rise?

• Greek speakers seem to have arrived in Greece
  around 1900 BC.
• Evidence Lerna in the Argolid.
• Settled in EBA (2500-2200 BCE)
• Buildings show a strong sense of social
  organization, facing an open court or a graveled
  street.

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Map of Significant MBA-LBA Sites
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EBA Lerna

• In the center of the site is a monumental
  structure, building BG. It lies under the later
  House of the Tiles, and is similar to it.
• Thick mud-brick walls formed corridors running
  the length of the building, framing large central
  rooms corridor house.
• Roof schist plaques.
• Smaller houses cluster around.
• Fortification wall with towers on the southern
  side.

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Lerna - Building BG
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Ceremonial Hearth w/Labrys in BG
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Lerna, EHII Pottery
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Lerna

• This building and overall site burned down
  violently.
• Inhabitants rebuilt erected a greater building
  in the town square, the Houses of the Tiles, over
  BG. It is 12 x 29 meters, and faces the
  shoreline.
• Has entrances on all sides, with access to
  corridors. Staircases at the north and south led
  to at least one upper floor.
• Stone foundation, hard clay floor, 1 meter thick
  mudbrick walls roofed with terracotta schist
  tiles. Stuccoed walls.

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House of the Tiles
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House of the Tiles Reconstructed
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Lerna

• Fortification walls went out of use by the last
  phase of the House of the Tiles. (Maybe threats
  were no longer present or maybe the wall was not
  for defense, but for some other reason.)
• Shortly after rebuilding, a huge fire left a
  black and orange deposit over the central part of
  the site (c. 2200).

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Lerna

• 60 chunks of clay, stamped by seals, survive
  (baked by the fire). Their backs have the
  impressions of sacks, boxes, etc. These suggest
  their method of sealing goods.
• Was the House of Tiles a focus for the control of
  commodities by a centralized political power?
• The ruined site was left undisturbed for several
  generations. The end of EBA2 on the mainland
  shows destructions followed by loss of culture.

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Clay Seal Impressions
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Arrival of the Greeks?

• In EBA3, we see a new culture in possession of
  Lerna (2200-2000).
• The House of Tile debris is heaped over the
  center and graded down into a shield-shaped
  tumulus marked off by a perimeter of stones.
  These people felt some strong emotion connected
  with this building, the architecture of which
  they never matched.

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House of Tiles as Tumulus
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EBA3 Lerna

• The new people kept the destroyed House of the
  Tiles as a monument, a useless mound in the
  center of their settlement, domed 4 meters above
  street level.
• They built small irregular buildings houses had
  1-2 rooms, some with apsidal ends.
• Little evidence for foreign contact (trade).

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Lerna EBAIII Pottery
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MBA Lerna (same time as the great age of Minoan
palaces)

• Shows no distinctive planning in the settlement.
• Narrow, 3 roomed apsidal houses or rectangular
  houses megarons - tripartite houses with long
  halls.
• Characteristic pottery Minyan ware. Has only a
  few shapes, characteristic thick stemmed goblets,
  2 handled bowls sharply profiled by use of fast
  potters wheel. Hard, fine fabric, glossy surface
  with a soapy feel. Color grey or yellow.

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Minyan Ware
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Lerna - MBA Pottery
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1700-1600 Sudden flowering of Mycenaean
Civilization

• Shaft Graves Built by the Perseids?
• Last 50 years of the MBA, reused by one family
  for 100-150 years, 3-4 burials per tomb.
• Evidence for stratified, hierarchical social
  structure, with sudden rise in wealth and imports.

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LBA Transformation to Imperial Mycenae

• The appearance of monumental buildings like the
  Treasury of Atreus - arrival of the Atreids?
• Wood tries to estimate the likely size of
  armies/raiding parties from Linear B documents
  and information from Ugarit, concludes that
  warfare was not large-scale.
• Mycenaeans expanded into the eastern Aegean by
  way of raiding for booty, as well as for
  practical purposes of obtaining slave labor for
  economic purposes.

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Miletos

• Wood postulates that Miletos served as an
  important point of direct contact between the
  Mycenaeans and the cities of Anatolia/ the Near
  East.
• Points out that the Linear B documents refer to
  captive women from Asia, using the same word as
  Homer uses (Iliad 20.193).

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(No Transcript)
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Classical Theatre over Mycenaean Harbor
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Troy

• The literary tradition reports two sacks of Troy
• City of Laomedon sacked by Herakles.
• City of Priam sacked by Greeks.

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Archaeological Evidence

• Blegen found 2 LBA destructions in the
  archaeological record
• Troy VI (beg. MBA - LBA, fell c. 1300) this
  beautifully walled city fell to earthquake in the
  1st half of the 13th c. Surviving pottery sherds
  from 1400-1250 700-800 pots, nearly 3/4 of all
  Mycenaean imports to Troy (still only 2 of all
  pottery at this level). Other Mycenaean luxury
  items were imported as well - gaming boards,
  ivory boxes, beads, pins. In return, the Trojans
  traded textiles, local grey Minyan ware, fish,
  horses.

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Troy VI, NE Fortification Wall
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Troy VI, East Fortification Wall
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Troy VI, Skull, Middle-aged Male
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2nd Destruction

• Troy VIIa (fell c. 1260) miserable siege city
  this level had lots of Mycenaean pottery, which
  Blegen interpreted as showing direct relations
  between Troy and Mycenae.

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Homer and the Polis
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Mycenaean/Homeric Society

• What is the relationship between Mycenaean and
  Homeric societies?
• Raaflaub sets out the issues of 3 related
  problems
• The Homeric Question formation of the epics,
  oral-poetics, extent of writing, etc.
• The Trojan War Question origin of the myth and
  its historicity
• The Historicity of Homeric Society Question.

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Dichotomies

• Archaeological evidence reveals the economic,
  social, and political structures of Aegean Bronze
  Age societies.
• Problem the centralized, hierarchical system we
  see in Linear B tablets looks a lot like
  contemporary Near Eastern civs, but not much like
  what we see in Homer.

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Extreme Positions

• Moses Finley deep, complete, and permanent
  break after the fall of the Mycenaean palace
  culture and Homers time.
• Emily Vermeule There was no break between the
  Mycenaean and Homeric worlds, only change. The
  degree of change is arguable.

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Raaflaub

• We do see a clear break in culture, dialects,
  settlement patterns after the fall of the
  palaces.
• The general impression remains one of a
  massively reduced population living in small and
  scattered villages, in simple conditions and in
  relative isolation.

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Main Features of Homeric Society

• polis (city-state) - a community of persons, of
  place or territory, of cults, customs, laws,
  capable of self-administration (with institutions
  and meeting places). Public Sphere.
• Homer has lots of them in fact, epic action
  takes place primarily around four Troy, the
  temporary polis of the Greek camp, Scheria
  (Phaeacians), and Ithaka.

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Main Features of Homeric Society

• oikos largely autonomous households, exemplified
  by Odysseus on Ithaka.
• A large version of a farmhouse, with land for
  gardens, orchards, agricultural fields near town
  herds of animals (cattle, goats, pigs, sheep) in
  the country managed by herders (like Eumaios).
• Private sphere.

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Heroic Culture

• Heroes focused on family/oikos but also took
  seriously service to and responsibility for the
  polis.
• The community is a shelter for the family, they
  are interlinked.
• Basileis competitive group of equals who jockey
  for status based on family, personal
  accomplishment, and reputation (kleos, time)

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Other Groups

• The People (demos)
• Craftsmen
• Merchants/Traders
• Slaves

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The (Farming) Elites and Trade

• In Homeric epic, we dont hear much re trade (a
  lower-class activity).
• Economic exchange of goods among elites via
  raiding or guest-friendship.

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Raaflaubs Conclusion late 9th -8th centuries

• Contra Finley.
• Raaflaub puts Homeric society in the early
  polis.
• Emphasizes the importance of the community in
  the individuals life, actions, and thinking.
  Except for the poor and the landless, all
  citizens have a communal function in army and
  assembly. There are loose but well-established
  communal structures assembly and council . . .
  There is a capacity for communal accomplishment .
  . . And a sense of communal responsibility and
  solidarity.