New problems are encountered when trying to discern the transition from the local context to something larger, a medium scale that we might call regional, and then again from the regional to the interregional or international. It has always been tricky to define the medium-scale region, since one could use many criteria: geographical or environmental regions delimited by transitions from one climatic regime to another, or from one gulf, basin, or other oceanographic feature to another; economic regions based on the extent and intensity of trade relations; social regions based on the distribution of language or cultural traits such as architecture or religious practices; political regions based on territory controlled by a state; or some combination of these. For prehistoric periods, the absence of texts (or near absence, in the Mycenaean case) forces reliance on reading from the surviving archaeological remains the unifying factors that make up a region.
A crucial distinction must be made at this juncture. By region, I am referring to maritime regions and the scale at which connectivity at sea — measured by technology, travel times, social relations, and other environmental and human factors — permits extralocal interaction spheres to cohere at any given moment. This is very different from terrestrial regions, where a different set of topographic and cultural constraints causes territories to coalesce or fragment into what we call “regions." We should not expect them to map onto one another very closely. For the Mycenaean world, I prefer to define medium-scale regional maritime interaction as (1) occurring in a geographical space beyond the small world, and thus outside the realm of habitual, face-to-face interaction; but
(2) still characterized by participation in a recognizably Mycenaean material culture and, to the extent that we can know, common customs and beliefs; and
(3) occurring less frequently than interactions in the small world, but considerably more often than those involving long-distance, cross-cultural relations. This definition necessitates speaking of a Mycenaean “culture area." Such an area was neither static nor delimited by hard boundaries; nor was it continuous in space. Attempts have been made to draw lines around a map of the Mycenaean world, sometimes distinguishing between a “core area" and a “periphery" (and more recently, “semi-periphery" and “margin"; Feuer 1983, 1999; Kardu-lias 1996, 1999; Kilian 1990; Parkinson and Galaty 2009a; Sherratt and Sherratt 1998). Questions arise about the outer limits of a Mycenaean culture area: Was a maritime voyage from Mycenae to Knossos on Crete in LH/LM III an intracultural or cross-cultural journey? The answer depends on how pervasive one believes the Mycenaean presence was on Crete at the time, and on that point there is vigorous disagreement (Burke 2005; various articles in Driessen and Farnoux 1997; Preston 1999, 2004). In a similar vein, would the Mycenaean (or is it Mycenaeanized?) settlement at coastal Dimini in Thessaly (Adrimi-Sismani 2007; Pantou 2010) be considered part of the Mycenaean cultural sphere? Probably so, but what about sites like Assiros or Toumba Thessalonikis in Macedonia (Andreou and Kotsakis 1999; Buxeda i Garrigos et al. 2003; Wardle 1980), where contact with the Mycenaean world is apparent in pottery styles and decorations, which exist however in thriving local, non-Mycenaean, settlements? Probably not, but what factors determine inclusion or exclusion?
For the purposes of the present analysis, and from the perspective of a sea traveler, I suggest that intracultural interaction should include those places where a ship's captain could expect to find a substantial population of people speaking Greek and observing recognizable customs, such as ritual, funerary, and domestic practices. Other conformities with material culture, such as town planning and architectural design or pottery forms and decorations, were more variable and might not have been so central to Mycenaean identity. Roughly, this “Mycenaean maritime culture region" would encompass the Aegean Islands and the Aegean coasts of the Greek mainland as far north as the Bay of Volos; Crete from LM IIIA if not earlier; and the coasts and islands of the Ionian Sea as far north as the Ambracian Gulf, but would exclude much of the Aegean coast of Asia Minor north of Cape Mykale (Fig. 6.1). A regional, intracultural sphere of maritime interaction defined in this way is of course open to numerous objections. There are many areas within it, both coastal and inland, that by any definition were only tenuously Mycenaean; conversely, there are a few plausible Mycenaean coastal colonies and points of frequent contact beyond these areas, such as at Glykys Limin on the southern coast of Epirus (Tartaron 2004: 145—77), and in southern Italy and Sicily (but see Blake 2008 For a strong challenge to the notion of Mycenaean colonies there). Nonetheless, keeping in mind the fuzzy, shifting, and discontinuous nature of the Mycenaean cultural sphere over the course of the LBA (Tartaron 2005, 2010), it should be possible to carve out hypothetical regional interaction spheres within the confines of this map.
The entire area in question is not large, and a sailing vessel should have been able to traverse most of it within several days or less. But once a ship and its crew broke free of the confines of the small world, the nature of seafaring changed, with different actors and different agendas. We can now assume the presence of specialist seafarers, members of the kind of maritime community described in Chapter 4, who possessed specialized knowledge of navigation and of the natural and social conditions existing at distant places. Their ships would now have to be open-seaworthy, and perhaps more purpose designed to optimize for hauling cargo or transporting personnel over longer distances. Because of the topography of the Aegean archipelago, extended trips could be made by coast-and island-hopping, minimizing the need for frequent open-sea or night sailing.
At regional scales, different modes of trade become prominent, including down-the-line and freelance (cabotage) trade as sailors move beyond the realm of habitual contacts to a world inhabited by comprehensible, yet increasingly unfamiliar, people and places. This aspect of the regional is similarly evoked by Wright (2010: 806): “ . . . contact and travel among these localities is regarded as a departure from the safe and familiar."
Regional spheres of interaction are best measured by material culture studies that define the distribution of chronologically and culturally sensitive artifacts, features, and practices. Traditional methods of stylistic and formal analysis of pottery, stone tools, weapons, jewelry, seals and sealings, wall paintings, and other objects can be combined with archaeometric analyses to trace the movements of goods and illuminate the social dimensions of production, distribution, and consumption. This kind of synergy is illustrated, for instance, by the way that Penelope Mountjoy's stylistic study of regional variation in Mycenaean painted pottery (Mountjoy 1999) is informed by the results of chemical and petrographic analyses undertaken over several decades, most recently by the Bonn group (Hein et al. 2002; Mommsen et al. 2002).
The archaeological record points to a material culture koine gradually enveloping most of the Mycenaean core area in the palatial period. This trend culminates in the mature stages of LH IIIA, continues into LH IIIB, but diminishes in the second half of the thirteenth century in LH IIIB2. Goods and information flowed relatively freely within the Mycenaean world. Imports were common, but style and technology were also transmitted, as attested by local imitations of widely disseminated artifact types. Petrographic analysis has demonstrated that pottery shapes and decorative styles were often imitated, using not only local materials, but also fabric recipes and manufacturing techniques
Specific to local potting communities. For example, during MH the spread of fine gray burnished ware across central Greece, the Corinthian Gulf, and the western Peloponnese, or the distribution of lustrous decorated ware that links Kythera, Laconia, and the Argolid, can be said to mark out intracultural regions of economic interaction (Wright 2010: 809—10).
Only a few mentions of intra-Aegean trade exist in the Linear B tablets: most notably, Mycenae Tablet X508 records the transfer of a type of cloth to Thebes (Bennet 2008: 201—202), and exchanges between Thebes and the apparently subordinate towns of Karystos and Amarynthos on the island of Euboea involve the movement of wool to Euboea and pigs, goats, sheep, and cattle to Thebes (Chadwick 1994: 99; Mclnerney 2010: 64; Palaima 2004: 106). These latter interactions parallel Hesiod's short journeys from Boeotia to Euboea, and seemingly reflect the geographical extent of the Theban state and possibly a microregion of the scope described by Horden and Purcell. Various explanations have been advanced for the scarcity of references to intra-Aegean exchange, which patently contradicts the archaeological record. In view of the thousands of extant tablets that document other aspects of the economy in considerable detail, we can rule out accidents of preservation; and given the archaeological evidence it is difficult to argue that the interactions were simply infrequent. The most plausible explanations center on the palaces' administrative practices: if these exchanges were seasonal or irregular, they may have occurred outside the limited time frame of the administrative cycle preserved by the destructions, or they may have belonged to a different, perhaps higher, administrative level not recorded on clay tablets (Bennet 2008: 202). It is also possible to suggest that most such connections had been interrupted by social disturbances in the months and years leading up the collapse of the palaces. Nevertheless, the homogeneity of the Linear B script, the language it represents, and the administrative system it served at the palaces indicate a significant level of intracultural interaction, at least at the elite level, which complements the archaeological evidence for the interconnectedness of the Mycenaean polities.
World History
