Second Thoughts on ‘Mycenaean’ Pottery in Ithaca

Abstract

When I wrote my report on the excavation of Polis, Ithaca, the leader of the expedition had suggested that in Ithaca, Early Bronze Age pottery had persisted till the closing phases of the Late Bronze Age, which meant that Ithaca was a backward little place well away from the broad stream of contemporary culture. I thought it possible that there was another lag after the Late Bronze Age, and I called certain vases ‘Mycenaean,’ taking fabric to be the determining factor. My paper was written in 1932, but not published till 1942, and long before then I was sure that we were both wrong. Mr. Heurtley wished to account for the presence of fifty Mycenaean sherds in an Early Bronze Age Settlement at Pilikata. It is true that no Middle Bronze Age settlement has yet been found in Ithaca. That may be our bad fortune, or the island may have been uninhabited in the centuries before 1500 B.C., as it was in the sixteenth century A.D. It seems simpler to admit disturbance by any later diggers of foundations or seekers of wells, than to postulate an iron curtain between Ithaca and both its nearest neighbours, Kephallenia and Leukas, in the Middle Bronze Age. After all, Early, Middle, and Late Bronze Age sherds were found together in Area VI at Pilikata, and no house plans have resulted; some disturbance seems inevitable.