A central debate about the Dark Age is over the degree of social stratification that survived the cataclysmic destruction of the Mycenaean palace societies - a revolutionary transformation that may have extended over a hundred-year period - roughly 1200-1100. Some scholars believe that the Mycenaean ruling elite and along with it subordinated peasants and slaves survived this major trauma intact and maintained relations of domination throughout the Dark Age down into the eighth century “renaissance” or “revolution” as it is now frequently called (Latacz 1977). Some, while acknowledging the massive disruption associated with destruction of palace civilization, argue that “a considerable degree of social hierarchy survived the twelfth-century catastrophes” (Morris 1987: 2). Others, focusing on the poverty of the remains of the so-called “Dark Age,” believe the society of at least the early Dark Age was essentially egalitarian and meritocratic.8 Relying on comparative anthropology, they offer a model of social organization in which “big-men” or “chiefs,” who have to demonstrate regularly their abilities in battle and in effecting relative economic security and social harmony for their followers, arrogate to themselves some of the meager social surplus but function primarily as a means of redistribution of social wealth in bad years or in good times through generous public feasts, presumably with a religious component (Donlan 1985; 1989; 1997b). Where a Marxist approach to classes may be relevant to this debate is in its focus on the necessity of substantial social surplus to sustain the gross inequalities associated with a fully developed class system. The archaeological evidence for the early Dark Age (for example, the excavation of Nichoria) suggests for the period 1075-975 such small numbers (some sixty people: Thomas and Conant 1999: 36) and such meager architectural differentiation between the ordinary homes and the home of the leader of the community (with storage pits that fit well with a redistributive role) that little room is left for the high degree of social differentiation posited by some. On the other hand, the sheer size of the structure and the relative wealth of the burials (including gold ornaments and two slaughtered horses) at the so-called “heroon” of Lefkandi (dated roughly to about 950: Thomas and Conant 1999: 97) suggest that in this community at least - and it was probably not unique - the process of consolidation, presumably through heredity, had led to a very sharp differentiation of the local chief and the concentration of far more of the social surplus in his hands and probably in the hands of a small elite of his closest allies who had the most stake in perpetuating his memory as more than human. Horses in a poor mountainous land like Greece were always a mark of wealth and prestige, ideological markers of status. The appearance of bronze horse figurines at the end of the ninth century and throughout the eighth centuries suggests a new self-consciousness of a class wealthy enough to own horses (Osborne 1998a: 24-7).
World History
