Late Bronze Age Greece Research Articles

THE TABLET-MAKERS OF PYLOS: AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION INTO THE PRODUCTION OF LINEAR B TABLETS

The Linear B administrative texts of Late Bronze Age Greece were written on clay tablets, whose production therefore formed the first stage in the process of document creation, though it generally remains unclear whether the tablets’ writers were also their makers. This study combines experimental archaeology with autopsy of the tablets from Pylos in order to investigate the methods by which the Linear B tablets were created at this site. It thereby sheds light not only on the physical processes involved in shaping the clay, but also on the decisions involved on the part of the tablet-makers, and hence on the relationship between the ‘making’ and ‘writing’ stages of the process of creating the Linear B documents.

Joanne M.A. Murphy (ed.), Death in Late Bronze Age Greece: Variations on a Theme.

Joanne M.A. Murphy (ed.), Death in Late Bronze Age Greece: Variations on a Theme. pp. 360. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19092-606-9, hardcover £68.

:Labouring with Large Stones: A Study into the Investment and Impact of Construction Projects on Mycenaean Communities in Late Bronze Age Greece

:<i>Labouring with Large Stones: A Study into the Investment and Impact of Construction Projects on Mycenaean Communities in Late Bronze Age Greece</i>

Using Gaussian mixture model clustering to explore morphology and standardized production of ceramic vessels: A case study of pottery from Late Bronze Age Greece

This paper examines vessel morphology and degrees of standardization of ceramic vessels using Gaussian mixture model cluster analysis (GMMC). GMMC is an unsupervised data mining technique that identifies natural groups in a dataset. This project first tests whether GMMC can classify certain shape categories correctly according to human assigned Furumark Shape (FS) pot types using basic vessel dimensions. We then propose that vessels can be considered standardized if they were grouped into the cluster of their own shape category (or pot type). Vessel data are derived from the Late Bronze Age Petsas House ceramic workshop, located in the settlement of Mycenae in southern Greece. The sample comes from a sealed well deposit found within the workshop. GMMC identified three clusters within a group of 488 pots that correspond to three known vessel types with a high degree of sensitivity and specificity so that clustered shapes mostly align with shape categories, and each shape can be defined as standardized. The maximization of information enabled by GMMC and the ability to analyze multiple interrelated variables can thus indicate cognitive approaches to vessel production, such as the perception of vessel shape by potters, and socio-economic factors relating to use by consumers.

Revisiting 1177 BCE and the Late Bronze Age Collapse

Revisiting 1177 BCE and the Late Bronze Age Collapse

Joanne M. A. Murphy (Ed.): Death in Late Bronze Age Greece. Variations on a Theme.

Der GNOMON pflegt als kritische Zeitschrift für die gesamte Altertumswissenschaft die Verbindung zwischen den verschiedenen Disziplinen der Altertumswissenschaft. Er nimmt dadurch eine Sonderstellung unter den Rezensionsorganen ein und bietet die Möglichkeit, sich über wichtige Forschungen und Publikationen auch in den Nachbarbereichen des eigenen Faches zu orientieren. Die Rezensionen im GNOMON wenden sich an ein internationales Publikum, das aus allen Teilgebieten der Altertumswissenschaft kommt. Die Publikationssprachen im GNOMON sind: Deutsch, Englisch, Französisch, Italienisch und Lateinisch.

Socioenvironmental change as a process: Changing foodways as adaptation to climate change in South Greece from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age

Recent interest in modern climate change has stimulated extensive scientific study into past societal responses to climate variability. However, examining climate change and society as a historical narrative drawing upon politics, economics, and settlement patterns does not provide a direct link between climate and society. Given that most inhabitants of the premodern world engaged in agriculture and/or pastoralism, examining chronological correlations between climate and foodways, not as a historical narrative but as a longterm socioenvironmental process, has the potential to identify direct societal adaptations to a changing environment.From South Greece there is evidence for drier conditions at the end of the Late Bronze Age. Is the disappearance of writing, art, and many known settlements at the end of the Bronze Age an example of collapse in the face of inability to adapt to climate change? This is a difficult question to answer given the coarse resolution of many of our archaeological and climatic datasets. Settlement faunal records suggest that food production systems became increasingly homogenous in Late Bronze Age Greece, potentially due to an elite control over various production systems that promoted intensification of certain products. However, in the first millennium B.C.E., animal husbandry, specifically, and food production systems, more broadly, became more heterogenous, and a proportional increase in goats in areas with less rainfall was likely an adaptive response to the drier climate. This paper examines the adaptive relationship between foodways and climate and argues for a process driven approach when explaining social responses to ancient climate change.

“Little women”: Gender, performance, and gesture in Mycenaean female figurines

This paper examines Mycenaean female figurines, focusing on their gesture, posture, and dress as evidence for somatic messages of Mycenaean female personhood and identity and what this might tell us about women’s lives in Late Bronze Age Greece. The primary focus is on the corporeal messages encoded in the figurines, with reference to Butler’s understanding of gender performativity and Connerton’s notion of incorporated body knowledges, to better understand how the figurines were embedded in Mycenaean habitus. This includes an experiential study of the gestures and posture of the figurines, to explore ancient embodied experiences, and analysis of the painted and applied details of clothing of the three main female types. The aim of the paper is to explore becoming a Mycenaean woman through the medium of sculpted clay.

Orthographic variation as evidence for the development of the Linear B writing system

AbstractThis paper investigates the issue of orthographic variation in the Linear B writing system in order to explore ways in which studying a writing system’s orthographic conventions may shed light on the history of its development. Linear B was used in the palatial/administrative centres of Late Bronze Age Greece and Crete (c.1400–1200 B.C.E.) and records an early Greek dialect known as ‘Mycenaean’. The writing system’s structure and orthographic conventions permit flexibility in the spelling of particular phonological sequences: this paper discusses the varying orthographic representation of such sequences and shows that synchronic variation is common or even the norm in many cases. Investigating the factors which underlie this variation demonstrates the potential for a study of synchronic variation to illuminate a writing system’s diachronic development; it also underlines the importance of analysing the ways in which writers actually choose to use writing systems in order to fully understand their development.

Influence of Climate on Stable Nitrogen Isotopic Values of Contemporary Greek Samples: Implications for Isotopic Studies of Human Remains from Neolithic to Late Bronze Age Greece

In this paper, we study δ15N enrichment as an indicator not only of marine protein diet, but also of climate change. The slope of the variation of δ15N with precipitation was calculated equal to 0.38/100 mm of precipitation for Greek plants, 0.38/100 mm of precipitation for herbivores, and 0.32/100 mm of precipitation for the Greek human population (hair samples). As a case study, the slope was used to re-evaluate the published mean δ15N human bone collagen values from the Early Neolithic to Late Bronze Age for 22 archaeological sites. The results indicate that climate has a significant impact on the final δ15N values of plant and animal tissues. Furthermore, for the same sites, we investigated the intra-site diet patterns, while taking into account the environmental effect on the observed δ15N human bone collagen values.

Imported Exotica and Mortuary Ritual at Perati in Late Helladic IIIC East Attica

The study of maritime trade in Late Bronze Age Greece often focuses on the analysis of imported exotica, which are usually interpreted as luxury goods used by elites to express or entrench social difference. A contextual analysis of exotica from the 12th-century cemetery at Perati does not support the notion that imports from the Postpalatial Aegean fit such an interpretation. I examine the context, distribution, and characteristics of imported objects at Perati and argue that the cemetery was the setting for a wide-ranging array of mortuary rituals that involved the deposition of exotic objects with members of the community across spectra of wealth, age, and gender. Exotica at Perati, instead of indicating elite strategies or economic exchanges, might best be understood as the residue of diverse mortuary beliefs and rituals operative within a culturally heterogeneous resident community.

A case of dental fusion in primary dentition from late bronze age Greece

Background/Aim: Dental fusion is a developmental abnormality that can occur in primary and/or permanent dentition. Case report: A case of double primary teeth from a Late Bronze Age cemetery in Greece is presented. Age estimation of the skeleton was based on dental eruption and development as well as on fusion of primary ossification centres of the cranial and post-cranial skeleton. Analysis of double teeth used morphology, anatomy, location, tooth count and radiological examination. Results showed a 18 month infant. Primary lower right central and lateral incisors were joined by the dentin, and they had distinct crowns and separated pulp chambers; each tooth maintained its own root canal and resembled a normal primary central and lateral incisor shape respectively. Diagnosis showed that double teeth were the result of partial fusion rather than gemination. No other dental abnormalities or lesions were recorded and subsequent teeth were not affected. Conclusions: This is the first example of double teeth in primary dentition reported in the literature from archaeological assemblages in Greece. Being one of the rare examples of dental fusion in the bioarchaeological record, this report adds further to the mapping of dental anomalies in past populations.

Hellenic Marine Forces in Late Bronze Age Greece

Hellenic Marine Forces in Late Bronze Age Greece

I Will Follow You into the Dark: Death and Emotion in a Mycenaean Royal Funeral

SummaryDespite many years of intensive research into burial and funeral practices in Late Bronze Age (LBA) Greece, emotion remains largely absent from the discussion. Yet death and the emotions it provoked would have been familiar aspects of daily life in Mycenaean Greece. The dead had to be dealt with and moved on through various rites until they became a safe part of the landscape and memory of individuals and communities. In addition to anthropological and psychological research on death and grieving, we have several categories of evidence that can allow us a glimpse of the emotional world of death in LBA Greece: the Homeric poems the Iliad and Odyssey, iconographical representations of death, funeral practices and mourning, and the archaeological material itself – the tombs and offerings. In this paper, I introduce the various categories of evidence and draw on them to support an imaginative reconstruction of an event that happened, but which is not recorded in any historical sources – the death and burial of a great king of Mycenae. I argue that using emotion as a lens through which to view the evidence can sometimes allow deeper interpretation and enable fuller historical reconstructions of lived lives and experiences.

SETinSTONE: an impact assessment of the human and environmental resource requirements of Late Bronze Age Mycenaean monumental architecture

Mycenaean monumental architecture has been well studied. Yet the extent to which large-scale building programmes may have contributed to change and crises in Late Bronze Age Greece (c. 1600–1100/1070 BC) has never been investigated using actual field data. The aim of the SETinSTONE project is to assess if and how monumental building activities in Late Bronze Age Greece affected the political and socio-economic structures of Mycenaean polities, and how people may have responded to these changes (Brysbaert 2013).

Reciprocity: A Response

This response to a set of wide-ranging papers on the dimensions of reciprocity in Bronze Age Greece introduces three areas for further research, in order to expand the framework in terms of gender, space, and time. These include greater emphasis on the role of women and gender relations in the circulation of labor, land, goods, and prestige; the question of reciprocal relations beyond the Aegean; and, last but not least, the afterlife of prehistoric relationships of reciprocity in ritual practices and elite display in Iron Age Greece. Alternate methodologies are required for these investigations, particularly in archaeological science for exploring diet, health, and foodways that indicate access to resources, in the analysis of non-Aegean documents relevant to Late Bronze Age Greece, and in the juxtaposition of Homeric views of reciprocity with those identified in Bronze Age Greece. As in the evolving development of theories of reciprocity and gift exchange over a century, the ethnographic and ethnohistoric record, largely outside Greece, informs Aegean research.

Towards an Archaeology of Disentanglement

The impact of connectivity in past societies has long been a focus of archaeological studies. Well-established approaches have been developed over the years to understand emergent connections and entanglement between distant communities, including world system, culture contact, post-colonial theories and network analyses. Our understanding of connectivity remains partial, however, because researchers have focussed on the establishment and consequences of contact and largely ignored the dynamics that often led to its interruption. Yet these processes of ‘disentanglement’ are just as complex and far-reaching as their converse and need to be understood in their own right. This paper shows that a thorough analysis of disentanglement processes can contribute to our understanding of the very nature of the interrupted contacts, as well as shed light on the social dynamics that engender long-term changes in contact patterns. The concept of disentanglement is discussed in the light of current theories of connectivity and explored through regional case studies in Late Bronze Age Italy (Salento) and Greece (Achaea).

Images of the defeated: a good death in late Bronze Age Greece?

Warriors engaged in combat are characteristic images of Late Bronze Age Greece, depicting both the victors and the defeated. An examination of Early Mycenaean and Mycenaean images of the defeated, and of the presentation of the deceased by their funerary offerings, suggests that a death in battle was not perceived as a disgrace. Furthermore, a display of respect towards the fallen enemy may have enhanced the victor. The surviving images from Late Bronze Age Greece celebrate skill in warfare, both for the victor and also for the defeated. The images suggest that death in battle was considered to be a good death throughout the Late Bronze Age on the Greek mainland, whether victor or loser.

Mourning on the Larnakes at Tanagra: Gender and Agency in Late Bronze Age Greece

Mourning on the Larnakes at Tanagra: Gender and Agency in Late Bronze Age Greece

The Technology of Land Reclamation, Drainage and Irrigation Projects in MBA–LBA Greece and Possible Implications

Technology and its “products”, when unearthed from archaeologists, are irrefutable witnesses of the technological level of each era and place. Evaluation of archaeological finds in relation to the advanced technology of each era and compared to the ancient literature, could infer conclusions regarding the nature of relations between different civilizations. Metallurgy, construction technology and know-how (structures, flood-control works, Land Reclamation, Drainage and Irrigation works etc.), production and exchange of precious metals, silver and iron, as very rare metals, constituted “cutting-edge technology” for the Middle and the Late Bronze Age. In prosperity periods –of excessive wealth– the “Arts and Engineering” flourish, an advanced know-how in constructions is developed and monumental projects are launched. The examination of the technological level in (monumental) constructions and hydraulic works of Middle Bronze Age – Late Bronze Age (MBA, ca. 2200/2100-1580 B.C. – LBA, ca. 1600 – 1100 B.C.) Greece, and the environment that was shaped, as it is implied by the material evidence, could infer implications for the historical canvas of the period. There is a debate surrounding Technology and its “flow”, its nature and origins. Some researchers support the spread of innovation from East to West, and a contradictious aspect of cross-fertilization or diffusion between East and West. In the present study, a combination of the archaeological evidence (both material and textual) of the technological level in constructions –especially in MBA and LBA Greece– and metal production, the ancient literature, the written sources, is attempted, in order to infer conclusions for the Technological, environmental, cultural and socio-economic aspects regarding possible relations and exchanges of Technology among Minoan Crete and/or Mycenaean Greeks -Danaoi/Achaeans, as Homer calls them- with Egypt and the land of Hatti, specifically during the Middle and Late Bronze Age.