We presented these ideas in Chapters 3 and 4 in our review of the Early Cycladic populations in the Cyclades. Let us recall the salient points of settlement theory previously presented: local communities, whether nucleated or dispersed, tend in conditions of relative social equality to remain within face-to-face limits of maximum 200-300 people and preferably fewer than 150 or so, to avoid social conflicts. This encourages the colonization of unused land and infill of already occupied regions by budding off surplus populations. At the same time, the demographic realities of such small communities are that they need to belong in the medium to long term to larger, more genetically hybrid communities, some 500 or more, to prevent the development of inbreeding defects in the gene pool. Socially this translates into rules in almost all known societies restricting marriage between closely related families (endogamy). There is strong anthropological evidence for a specific and highly potent transformation out of such settlement systems, with major implications for cultural evolution at different periods of history and prehistory and on a cross-cultural basis (Bintliff 1999). When a particular community grows up to the 500-plus size of population (something which can only be achieved through solving the social conflict problem), it commonly undergoes a metamophosis in its social and cultural character, becoming what anthropologists term a corporate community. In terms of Chaos-Complexity theory (Bentley and Maschner 2003), this represents a new structure which is not merely an elaboration of that which it grew out of, thus giving rise to what has been termed "emergent complexity." Whereas the previous face-to-face settlements were of necessity dependent on social and economic relations with several neighboring settlements, the new large foci were at least demographically, and thus in important ways socially and politically, autonomous. If the subsistence resources associated with the new nucleations were adequate in normal production years, then the "towns" were turned in on themselves and indeed free to ignore or to threaten their neighbors when conditions or opportunities suited.
(p. 157a) For the Melos island field survey formal fieldwalking only covered 20 percent of the island's surface
However, in between the regular survey strips laid out across the island, finds were already known from previous less systematic field survey.
(p. 157b) The village emerges into a village-state, with a townlike culture overlying a village culture. I suspect that several Middle Cycladic and Late Cycladic towns were transformed into tiny city-states
There is also a quite different question: How did this happen? First we have raised the requirement for such enlarged settlements to solve the problem of village fission, resulting from increased risks of social disorder within groups greater than a couple of hundred people. Here anthropologists note two common solutions: a horizontal division of the community, where districts within it appear each with a degree of delegated self-management at a face-to-face scale; and a vertical division, where a smaller group takes key decisions on behalf of the whole community. The latter controllers could merely be a minority of the most influential family heads, or an elite arising by economic power (Big Men) or as a dynastic lineage (chieftains) (for these terms see Renfrew 1973).
(p. 157c) The process of town emergence: some synergy between internal changes after a period of stress, external stimuli in terms of that navigation so critical to island life, and finally the appearance of "palatial" societies to the south, seems an appropriate basis for deeper explanations
On the other hand, different factors could have been at work elsewhere. Thus townlike foci arose on the Early Helladic Mainland well away from the sea, at Thebes and perhaps also at Eutresis in inland Central Greece.
(p. 159a) Phylakopi town: the apparent nucleation of almost the entire Melos island population into it
Melos is too large to be farmed from Phylakopi city, which lies eccentrically in its northeastern corner. Although the nucleation of almost all the island's inhabitants in Middle-Late Cycladic could have been compensated for by more intense use of its immediate hinterland, large areas such as the isolated western limb of the horn-shaped island could not have been farmed satisfactorily without some dispersed settlement. Whitelaw (in Dakouri-Hild and Sherratt 2005) has recently pointed out that there is indeed evidence for Middle Cycladic settlement elsewhere on the island.
(p. 159b) Was the management of Phylakopi town, of necessity beyond face-to-face relationships, carried out by a minority of family heads, among whom over time there arose an individual prominent clan as community leaders (a Big Man society)?
In an important respect the central feature of the emergence of corporate communities is the concept of the citizen community, so there is no necessity to seek class divisions in such townlike agglomerations at the 500-600 or more inhabitant level. On the other hand, the need to resolve internal social disputes at such a level of community is reflected in infrastructural institutions such as a horizontal subdivision or alternatively a vertical division for decision-making. The guesstimate of 1000-2000 people for the town of Phylakopi would imply 200-400 male family heads. This range would on anthropological parallels strain the effectiveness of face-to-face politics and tend to create factions (cf. Bintliff 1999), leading us to suggest that a smaller group of leading families, perhaps based on combinations of economic power, social networks, or merely seniority in lineage traditions, may have run the town. The absence of individualism in art or burial would indicate that whoever did organize this sizeable community had community support or were influential only as long as the above conditions prevailed for particular families. Nonethelesss the creation of the sequence of "mansions," even if under Minoan influence, could be read as demonstrating such a community leader.
(p. 159c) Few today would support a literal interpretation of later Greek traditions of a Minoan thalassocracy or maritime empire
If one wishes to seek military action involving Minoan and Cycladic communities, then the temporary erection of defenses on Crete at the start of the First Palace era (Middle Minoan 1A) and in the Cyclades the violent destruction of Phylakopi City 1 and that of Phylakopi 2 might be taken to indicate conflict. But was Crete threatened by internal war rather than fearful of outside attack? And if the Phylakopi destructions were not natural disasters, is it clear that the Minoans were responsible? We simply do not know yet, so it is probably more profitable to investigate other aspects of Minoan influence.
(p. 159d) Minoan economic and political influence spread along the Cyclades to exploit commercial potential, especially the copper and silver at Lavrion on the east coast of Attica (the earlier use of Cycladic metal sources declined owing to their limited potential)
Metal analyses (Gale and Stos-Gale in Brodie et al. 2008) show that from Final Neolithic to Early Bronze Age Aegean contexts, alongside the dominant use of metal ores from the Cyclades and Attica, there was a minor import of metal from Anatolia. As the Middle Cycladic-Late Cycladic era develops, an increasing amount of copper comes from Cyprus, another indication of how the Aegean is being drawn into East Mediterranean exchange spheres.
(p. 159e) The intense economic and cultural exchange sphere projected into the South Aegean by Second Palace Crete encouraged local elites on the islands to competitive emulation, with Minoan fashions being "the cultural language of power that Aegean communities co-opted to serve their symbolic and economic needs" (Davis and Gorogianni in Brodie et al. 2008: 340)
Adopting the more extreme rethinking of Minoan palatial politics, these authors parallel the "heterarchical" organization of Crete, with numerous competing elite clans, with their counterparts on the Cycladic islands. It is suggested that these leading families sought prestige through foreign contacts, exotic imports, and the imitation of Cretan culture and lifestyles in order to enhance their unstable local status. An exchange of products and surpluses between Crete and the islands might have been facilitated by diplomatic agreements sealed by gift exchange between both parties. Sealings at Akrotiri on Thera, impressed by a ring used on Crete, are seen as evidence of letters, perhaps on parchment, which went with trade packages in both directions.
(p. 160) Many specialists consider these to indicate a deeper penetration of Cycladic society by the Minoans
Knappett and Nikolakopoulou (2008) contribute further insights into the rise of Minoan influence on the Cyclades, with particular reference to the imported ceramics at Akrotiri in the MC-LC1 period. These are not very common but do represent a different style and manufacture, leading to local imitations. Their number rose only slightly between MC and LC1, however, although the novel potters' wheel was generally adopted by the latter period for the still predominant local production. Sourcing the Minoan imports to Knossos and emphasizing the notable rise in these with the inception of the New Palace period, MM3A, the authors see Crete as opening up after the end of the Old Palaces and meeting a welcome from Therans to create stronger links, which would increase during the LM1A/LC1 period. Rather than support these signs as indications of a gradual colonization of Thera by Minoan settlers, craftsmen, and even administrators, they prefer to see Minoan influence as reciprocal (Cycladic imports rise in New Palace Crete, for example), and a process of mutual cultural interaction. The objects are given primary "agency" in this theory. One might need some caution at this point: archaeologists perforce work with mute material culture and are naturally attracted to theories where the objects themselves make history rather than the people who make and use them! The authors are remarkably vague about the social and economic contexts behind these material signs of closer cultural exchanges, as if Theran and Minoan communities merely had stylistic interests at heart, although they do suggest that Theran elites might have used Minoan culture to signal social rank through possessing exotica. On the other hand, no evidence is presented that Minoan objects or local imitations were confined to elite circles and not more widely available. Nonetheless a less controversial contribution is the authors' comment that at Miletos on the southwest coast of Turkey and on the island of Kythera off Laconia Minoan ceramic forms and technology are earlier and stronger and conform to the traditional view that these were genuine Minoan colonies.
Part of this analysis utilized Network Theory, published by Knappett elsewhere. Thus in Knappett et al. (2008) an investigation is made where 34 Aegean Bronze Age sites are analyzed for their networking potential, based on site size, carrying capacity of their region, distance to other sites, etc. Such an approach has a considerable value in identifying to what extent site locations affect interregional levels of contact. However, the study is problematic since various filters and modifications are applied which do not directly stem from the raw data. Thus estimations of local resources are actually neglected in favor of either site size or perceived intensity of interaction with other sites. In the end one gets the impression that a degree of circularity may have entered the analysis so that the the observed cultural interactions between sites are used to modify the model rather than letting the raw data independently create maps of potential interaction levels.
(p. 161a) Aghia Irini on Kea: an impressively defended nucleation
A combination of island population nucleation and vigorous exchange would seem to be relevant to the elaborate townlike fortified communities such as Aghia Irini and the other island towns of Middle Cycladic-Late Cycladic date. The suggestion that Irini's importance was due to the control over the copper and silver ores of Eastern Attica is not entirely convincing, since the site was not obviously an industrial town, and one might have expected a settlement on the Attic Mainland to have been more appropriate for this role (Overbeck and Crego in Brodie et al. 2008).
(p. 161b) For the Late Cycladic era it has been noted that the complementing of the town at Akrotiri with villages and farms across Thera island is in contrast to other Cycladic islands such as Melos or Kea with little outside their nucleated island towns, and is more reminiscent of the Minoan palatial landscape
The clearest parallel would seem to be Kythera, an island off the Southern Mainland which was obviously a Minoan colony from Early Bronze Age times onward. Here again a flourishing landscape of small rural sites in the Middle Bronze Age era was in contrast to the contemporary nucleated hamlet or village pattern of the Middle Helladic Mainland and of the Middle Cycladic Cyclades, and this is argued to be the result of a "transported landscape" peculiar to Crete (Bevan 2002).
(p. 163) Akrotiri Town
Space is too limited to do full justice to the remarkable and innovative analysis of the small part of the settlement so far excavated by Clairy Palyvou (2005), in particular her identification of a model house plan. The transformation in LM1A/LC1 into imitation of the Neopalatial architectural style does confirm other evidence for a far greater Minoan impact, and indeed Shaw (2007) has wondered if a palace or mansion of a central authority (Theran? Minoan?) might not await discovery. E. Paliou (2011) has added to this earlier excellent work yet further innovation through her use of GIS and viewshed analysis to study the mural frescoes of Akrotiri. She suggests that these arrived with the rest of the Minoan Neopalatial package in LM1A/LC1 and are not a feature of the more culturally independent MC town, but exceptionally for Aegean settlements have been found in almost all houses so far dug at Akrotiri. Paliou believes that the wealthy citizens of Akrotiri (maybe on widespread commerce) used their elaborate houses to advertise social status in a competitive emulation with each other. She demonstrates that passers-by, wherever streets widened into small squares, were able to see large parts of the upper-floor figured mural frescoes. Although the details would not have been decipherable, the general impression aimed at was rather of opulence. Knappett and Nikolakopoulou (2008), however, while noting that MC pottery with its bright colors and strong figural repertoire contrasts with contemporary MM ceramics, go on to link this Cycladic tradition to the appearance of the highly figured and bright LC frescoes from Akrotiri, hinting at a significant local contribution to their appearance.
(p. 164a) As for the giant Thera eruption of Late Minoan 1A date, the current evidence argues strongly for a date of 1628 BC
As noted in our discussion of the Minoan palaces, the eruption of Thera and its abandonment is an issue of chronological dispute, mainly for estimating its potential effects on Crete (initiated as long ago as 1939 with the pioneer paper by Marinatos). The main contenders are a seventeenth - or sixteenth-century BC date, deploying conflicting and never absolutely secure evidence from calibrated C14 dates, ash layers in Greenland ice-cores, and artifact correlations with Egyptian historical dates. In early 2008 new evidence appeared to offer a resolution in favor of the eruption being 1628 BC (Bruins et al. 2008) (supported by rigorous checking from B. Weninger, pers. comm.). Although Driessen and Macdonald (1997) believe that the eruption destabilized the Second Palace societies of Crete, it is difficult to deny that the violent end to the latter civilization occurred in a later phase, Late Minoan IB instead of Late Minoan 1A, and cannot be directly attributed to the physical effects of the Thera eruption. It seemed till recently that because the other two heavily "Minoanized" islands of Melos and Kea show quantities of Late Minoan 1B imports, neither they nor Crete could have been in chaos as a result of the Late Minoan 1A explosion on Thera. Mountjoy and Ponting (2000) have altered our views considerably in their detailed investigation of such imports. In Middle Cycladic and early Late Cycladic, although clear Minoan influence such as the system of weights and measures and occasional Linear A documents occur in key Cycladic islands, the amounts of Minoan import ceramics are very limited, supporting "trade" far more than "colony" relations. Much pottery with Minoan decoration (for example, in the Marine Style) seems more likely to have been locally made on the islands, and the same is argued for similar "Minoan" style wares on the Mainland of Greece. Intriguingly, by Late Minoan 1B pots traded into Phylakopi and Aghia Irini have shifted to Mainland Mycenaean products. For Mountjoy and Ponting this implies that if there had been "Minoanization" in Late Minoan 1A it did not survive, perhaps due to the loss of Thera as a key commercial way-station and associated chaos on Crete. Knappett et al. (2011) studied a series of large pithoi from LM1A Akrotiri using scanning electron microscopy, and found a combination of Theran, Naxian, and Cretan sources in use.
(p. 164b) Middle Helladic ceramics show a shift over time from a dominance of dark-burnished wares in varied colors, to paler forms such as Yellow Minyan
As with most Aegean ceramic styles, the diffusion of Middle Helladic wares was uneven as a cultural fashion across the Greek Mainland, and it may have persisted in regions which were more peripheral to its Peloponnesian heartland well into the Late Helladic or Mycenaean era. In Thessaly, for example, even coastal sites in good contact with the South seemed to continue with Middle Helladic ceramics until the mature phase of Late Helladic 2B, when Mycenaean wares eventually become the norm (Adrimi-Sismani in Galaty and Parkinson 2007). Middle Helladic Grey Ware appears to have arisen in the Argolid under strong cultural influence from Anatolian ceramics, in late Early Helladic times (Schachner 1994-95), although at Troy in Northwest Anatolia grey wares show Greek inspiration. In Late Helladic times parts of the North Aegean including Troy persisted with grey wares as well as importing and copying Mycenaean ceramics.
(p. 166a) Renfrew proposes that the Greek language arrived in Mainland Greece with the Neolithic colonizers
This debate is part of the wider problem of the chronology and cultural context for the spread of Indo-European languages in Europe. The Minoan language has generally been seen as non-Indo-European (although one must be skeptical here, as it remains untranslated and has not been shown
To belong to any other language family), while the Mycenaean language from the Late Helladic period is known to be an Indo-European language - an early form of Greek. Since all of Greece (Crete included) had been supposed to have been settled by a single people in early farming times, as a consequence of a uniform Neolithic colonization from the Near East, it naturally followed that the Indo-European speakers must have arrived later. The much older idea that the post-Mycenaean Dark Ages brought the Greeks to the Aegean had to be abandoned after 1952 with Michael Ventris' decipherment of the Mycenaean Linear B texts as Greek, thus forcing scholars to find an earlier, but post-Neolithic, disruption to Aegean culture, when the Greeks would have arrived from elsewhere. Some saw the abrupt burial changes at the end of Middle Helladic and in earliest Late Helladic, just noted, as possible evidence of at least the arrival of a foreign elite, maybe the first Indo-European chiefs (revived in 1988 by Drews), whereas perhaps more reasonably, others noted the Aegean-wide catastrophic destructions in EB 2-3 as a better opportunity to find invading people introducing the Greek language. The clear continuity of Middle Cycladic and Middle Minoan culture from Early Cycladic and Early Minoan, compared to the more contrasted assemblages of Early Helladic and Middle Helladic on the Mainland, might mark the fact that the invaders just settled on the latter.
This would allow the non-Indo-European Minoan language to remain dominant on Crete as the indigenous language till the end of the Bronze Age; at that point Greek legends and linguistic data from Classical times suggested that "Dorian" invaders from the Mainland converted most of the island to speakers of that particular Greek dialect. That the "arrival of the Greeks" remains popular with some scholars can be seen in Betancourt's volume on prehistoric Aegean art, where he states that "most scholars" believe in a migration into the Aegean at the end of the Early Helladic period (2007: 133). Rutter (1993), reviewing the evidence with more caution, underlines the fact that the Early Helladic destructions were staggered over a long period and although there were changes in ceramics and cooking methods during this era, together with the arrival of innovations such as the horse and then the elite chariot to the Aegean, it remains difficult to identify a coherent wave of incoming migrants sufficient to create a new language community. For Drews, it was rather the power of chariot-warriors at the end of the Middle Helladic era which brought the first Greeks into the Aegean. In fact it seems more likely that chariots developed in the Near Eastern states in the early second millennium BC and then spread first to Crete before being adopted as a status "taxi" by final Middle Helladic and Late Helladic elites (Littauer and Crouwel 1996, Driessen in Laffineur 1999). Nonetheless, some close comparisons between horse-bits in Mycenaean contexts and those on the Black Sea steppes point to a significant association of cultural links between the development of horse-riding and the evolution of waggons and chariots in the Ukrainian and Russian steppes, and the adoption of these important novelties in the contemporary Near East and also in the later Middle Helladic and early Late Helladic South Aegean (Harding in Dakouri-Hild and Sherratt 2005).
(p. 166b) The International Trade Crossroads Model: This model suggested that the late Middle Helladic and early Late Helladic Mainlanders rose to prominence by creating a hub of long-distance trade networks running throughout Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Near East
The wealth of bronze and precious metal, together with Scandinavian amber and supposed Egyptian faience on the Greek Mainland in the late Middle Helladic and earliest Late Helladic shaft graves and tholoi seem to show that an elite society, especially at Mycenae, rose to power on the Mainland through manipulating long-distance trade between barbarian chieftain societies in Continental Europe, similar groups in the Balkans, and state societies in the East Mediterranean. The amber came via probably very indirect multiple exchange links from the Baltic, but the faience now seems to have been largely made in Minoan workshops (Dickinson 1994). Although it remains the case that the wealthy graves of Early Bronze Age Southern England and Central Europe predated the rise of Mycenaean wealth, the later phases of those cultures still overlapped with the Shaft Graves in Greece, and the international parallels and indeed origins of materials and forms of prestige artifact clearly show contacts, if almost certainly very indirect, between emergent elites in Continental and Southern Europe and the established states of the Near East in the second millennium BC (Randsborg 1992).
(p. 166c) A politically undeveloped society on the fringes of the civilized world using its warlike culture to gain wealth from the latter by either raiding or mercenary service
Specifically it has been suggested that the abrupt appearance of the fabulously wealthy Mycenae Shaft Graves reflects a warrior dynasty which had undertaken international piracy or mercenary service out of the Aegean and back.
(p. 166d) Artistic representations would seem to make clear that the Aegean was probably the location of raiding or open war in Middle Bronze Age-Late Bronze Age times
Barber (in Laffineur 1999) suggests that warriors shown on the Thera frescoes of Late Minoan 1A date, with boar's tusk helmets and tower shields, might be Mainland Mycenaeans, which would demonstrate the latter's involvement in wider warfare, perhaps under Minoan auspices.
(p. 166e) Hints of mercenary service in Egypt can also be cited
Jorrit Kelder (2009, 2010) has usefully brought together our knowledge of Mycenaean and Minoan involvement in Egypt. Intriguing scraps of evidence that might suit Mycenaean mercenary service in Egypt include, first, a fourteenth-century BC picture on a papyrus from Amarna appearing to show a battle between Egyptian and Libyan forces in which assistance is provided to the former by warriors dressed in part in a Mycenaean fashion. Second, a recent discovery on the Greek island of Salamis (near Athens) of a piece of bronze armor bears the royal insignia (cartouche) of Pharaoh Ramses II and is thus of thirteenth-century BC date. Last, in the thirteenth royal center at Tell el Dab'a in the Egyptian delta there has been found a piece of a Mycenaean-style boar's tusk helmet. However, all these hints are far too late to assist the theory of a mercenary role in the late Middle Helladic and early Late Helladic periods, dating as they do to Late Helladic 3A-B.
(p. 166f) Peter Warren has made a coherent case for placing the main explanatory emphasis for the radical transformation of late Middle Helladic and early Late Helladic societies, on growing Cretan Second Palace involvement with the Mainland
The expanding influence of Minoan palace society on the Cyclades and Southern Mainland through the Middle Bronze Age is argued to have been the major factor in stimulating the emergence of more complex political groupings under the leadership of warrior elites, both through commercial agreements and through political interactions, first in the Islands but later and more strikingly on the Mainland. As we observed in earlier chapters, the turn of the third to second millennium, or the transition from late Early Bronze Age to Middle Bronze Age in the Aegean, was a time when Crete at first, and then the Cyclades and the Mainland, became drawn into expanding maritime networks of trade and cultural (and surely) political interactions, between themselves, but also with the vigorous states of the Eastern Mediterranean. The diffusion from the East of efficient sailing boats was a key element in this new networking (Broodbank 2000). Voutsaki (1998, 1999) also sees the heightened exchange networks and other forms of interaction visible in Minoan and Cycladic communities as destabilizing the rather internalized, low-complexity Mainland societies. The emergent new elites of final Middle Helladic and early Late Helladic society were certainly using Minoan goods, iconography, and style to define themselves as an elevated stratum. Competition for prestige goods and raw materials led to a spiral in which more and more Middle Helladic communities became involved. The two Mycenae Shaft Grave Circles A and B (discussed below) may represent two competing elite family dynasties using exotic wealth to contest dominance of the settlement. Betancourt (2007) points out that the great defensive systems erected at many Mycenaean centers in subsequent centuries could have been as much to protect their wealth as their people.
(p. 167a) A pioneer large-scale regional field survey in Messenia was carried out in the 1960s, under the umbrella of the University of Minnesota, precisely with the idea of providing the settlement evidence to match the textual information for the Mycenaean Pylos state
Within a few years, however, the impact of the Messenia Expedition was somewhat blunted by the chance occurrence that the final volume of what had been the finest "extensive" survey in Greece, had coincided with the early seasons of the "intensive" survey approach (in the Agiofarango in Crete, and the Southwest Argolid in the Northeastern Peloponnese). Practitioners of intensive survey were swift (in retrospect unfairly so, mea culpa!) to criticize the settlement history reconstructions of the Minnesota team as seriously biased (see papers and discussions in Bintliff 1977a, Cherry 1983, 1984, Hope-Simpson 1984, 1985). Put simply, the extensive survey approach covered a very large area through a combination of studying air photos, driving around the landscape spotting likely settlement sites, talking to local villagers about casual discoveries, and only rarely conducting major fieldwalking activity. This is successful in mapping the larger settlements and sites in periods with a locational emphasis on prominent landscape features. In contrast, intensive survey prefers to cover small areas on foot, attempting to walk every field and relying on minute examination of surface finds (chiefly pottery sherds). The latter approach usually discovers many more small and vestigial settlement sites, and increases the discovery of activity foci in all kinds of topography. The specific critique, then, of the Minnesota Project, was that the numbers of sites of various periods, and their size and type, were distorted by the limitations of the "extensive" survey method.
(p. 167b) In the 1990s a new, intensive survey project was inaugurated in the Pylos palace region
At the same time Sofia Voutsaki (1998) has included the important Messenian Middle Helladic and Late Helladic monumental tombs in her wider study concerning burial changes and power structures in the Peloponnese during these periods.
(p. 167c) The development of Mycenaean life from its Middle Helladic beginnings must rely on transformations in rural settlements and burial traditions
Within Messenia the excavated settlements are so far of little help in this respect, so that special emphasis has to be placed on survey (the size and number of settlement sites) and the evidence from tombs. Indeed it is in the burial sphere that the otherwise rather unimpressive world of Middle
Helladic culture reveals the possibility of indicating potential change in the social and political sphere.
(p. 167d) Hood's (1960) suggestion that this emulates traditional Minoan stone tholos tomb construction has recently received new life from a reinterpretation of the earliest Pylos palace plan as of Minoan inspiration
The source for the "lithicization" (transformation into stone) of the core of the Middle Helladic tumulus into the built stone chamber with false vault, which is added to the earth mound in late Middle Helladic, was long ago sought by Sinclair Hood through the obvious parallels with the Early Minoan-Middle Minoan stone beehive tombs of Crete. Given the Warren model of an increasing "Minoanization" of the South Aegean in Middle Bronze Age times (see note to page 166), culminating in late Middle Helladic in clear evidence for the transference of craft knowledge and Minoan prestige objects to the Mainland, emulation of Cretan burials appears all the more plausible. However, several problems have been identified. First, Minoan collective burials do not seem to have been mounded, and never act as exclusive, princely tombs. The architectural construction method also differs. On the other hand, some Cretan tholoi of late date, by their dimensions and gifts, may represent at least leading families in particular areas (e. g., at Archanes). Despite this, Hood's still seems the best available theory, that the stone tholos was adopted into an indigenous monumental tomb tradition to emulate the prestigious society of Crete, and to enable emergent local dynasties to symbolize generational power in reopenable burial chambers with ceremonial entranceways attached. The arguments now being made by Nelson (see below), for an early Pylos palace looking more Minoan than typical Mycenaean, reinforce this theory considerably. This makes unnecessary the rather tortuous hypothesis that the tholos is a lithicization of a horizontally laid pithos or storage jar burial container set into a traditional Middle Helladic tumulus (Voutsaki 1998).
It is also worth noting here that there is less contrast than often imagined between the Western Peloponnesian, Messenian-originating tholos and the contemporary development in the Eastern Mainland and Aegina of the Shaft Graves. The latter are major elaborations of the traditional Middle Helladic stone slab grave, which often has a pebble floor, through creating much deeper shafts, and a system for re-entry to allow "dynastic" burials, as well as more consistently luxurious gifts. At the site of the later Pylos palace for example, a transitional Middle Helladic-Late Helladic special burial monument is constructed which is a hybrid Shaft Grave and early tholos (Voutsaki 1998). That there are more tholoi in Messenia, and that these tend to be smaller than those which are later built in the Argolid, need not imply that the monument in Messenia was not reserved for local elites (contra Voutsaki 1998). The origin of the type in Messenia at an earlier stage in the rise of Mycenaean civilization could be expected to meet the needs of a less hierarchical society, with more local chieftains claiming status burial, whereas the long-term trend in tholos construction is to limit their use to increasingly smaller numbers of the population, at higher levels of the elite scale. An exception to the latter rule, however, has to be made for peripheral regions of Mycenaean culture, where numerous smaller tholoi persist even after the fall of the Mycenaean palaces.
(p. 167e) Middle Helladic and Early Late Helladic tumulus and tholos burial
Although tumuli deserve further analysis, I am inclined to follow other specialists such as the members of the current Pylos Regional Archaeological Project (Spencer 1995, Bennet 1999) in agreeing with Voutsaki that the late Middle Helladic tholoi are local elite dynastic monuments, but disagreeing with her on the egalitarian nature of the Middle Helladic earth mound burials. It seems more likely that a degree of social stratification survived the disasters on the Mainland in Early Helladic 2-3, so that village Big Men or chiefs may have signalled their slightly elevated status over other household heads through a distinctive family monument. Tumuli are present in rare cases already in Early Helladic times, and we may note the ritual sealing of the House of the Tiles within a tumulus after its violent destruction. But they are also far more common in the contemporary South Balkans, with a specific link up the Adriatic coast being plausibly represented by the Early Helladic tumulus graves on the island of Levkas (Branigan 1975). The significance of this possible cultural tie is, however, unclear, as Early Helladic culture as a whole cannot be seen as shared with regions north of Greece. On Levkas, the Middle Helladic tumulus graves probably represent a higher social group than contemporary flat graves (Kilian-Dirlmeier 2005). At Argos flat graves predominate over occasional tumuli (Pierart and Touchais 1996). Scholars consider the "normal" burial in the Middle Helladic to be simple shallow pits or a pit lined with slabs to form a cist, placed intra - and extramural and not usually in large cemeteries (Wardle and Wardle 1997). Even Voutsaki (1999) notes that in the Argolid, tumuli are mainly found in the largest Middle Helladic settlements such as Argos, Asine, and Dendra. It is worth noting that in the wider world of prehistoric Europe Bronze Age tumuli are frequently considered to contain a minority of the population. In the Netherlands for example (Fokkens 1999) it is assumed that not more than 10-15 percent of the community was entitled to barrow burial, although it is also suggested that this group represents a larger social unit of kin than a family. Voutsaki also agrees that late Middle Helladic tumuli see clearer evidence of rank differences in all types of graves alongside a general increase in buried wealth to indicate status.
Important evidence to clarify these points has emerged from the extensive cemeteries of MH Asine in a coastal side valley adjacent to the Plain of Argos (Ingvarsson-Sundstrom 2008). In the Lower Town a large number of intramural burials have been discovered; in some cases it can be shown that they reflect kin groups (mixed age and gender) associated with the houses they are buried underneath or nearby. Outside the settlement there exist two further, extramural cemeteries. Significantly the East Cemetery lacks the pit graves common in the Lower Town but possesses a novel tumulus with graves within and around, reflecting a rise in energy investment and dated to the later period of MH. Likewise almost all wealthy graves in the extramural cemeteries are dated to later MH. In general it is argued that out of an apparently egalitarian representation at death, emphasizing small kin groups or households, there arose in later MH an emergent elite. The contribution of the new tool of isotope analysis of human burials has already begun to shed important light on MH-early LH populations and social dynamics. Triantaphyllou et al. (2008) use carbon and nitrogen isotope studies of the MH intramural burials from Lerna in the Plain of Argos to reconstruct diet, and compare their results from those of contemporary sites of this period. The population of Lerna appears homogeneous, with signs of differentiation only in late MH, certain males developing a higher protein (meat and dairy) intake then, compared to the mixed plant and meat diet typical for all burials before this time. As at Asine, clusters of graves seem to reflect family household groups, and this appearance of egalitarianism agrees with simple graves and rare and few gifts. In contrast, graves on the acropolis settlement of the Aspis at nearby Argos show a higher meat diet overall, as do, less surprisingly, the elite graves of late MH in the Shaft Grave B Circle at Mycenae. Notable is the overlapping, then slightly later, evidence from Mycenae Shaft Grave A Circle, with a high intake of marine food. Voutsaki (2010) has recently summarized the growing picture: in late MH (3) and earliest LH times (LH1) there was a widespread trend in the Southern
Mainland for extramural cemeteries to be created (pioneers include Asine and Argos already in MH2) and clearer distinctions to be marked between age, gender, and social status. Tumuli do seem to have been adopted as status markers, and were then replaced by tholos tombs and chamber tombs which both allowed repeated "family" burial.
(p. 168a) The Pylos Project team have considered the development of several settlements around the Pylos palace in order to contextualize the rise of the later palace community in terms of competitive local elites. This includes links with the erection of regional tumuli and later tholoi
Although the earliest tholoi or vaulted stone elite tombs on the Mainland of Greece included one constructed next to the Middle Helladic Pylos settlement (the so-called "Grave Circle") and another by a significant settlement nearer the coast at Beylerbey, in transitional Middle Helladic-Late Helladic times (Davis and Bennet 1999), intensive surface survey by the PRAP (Pylos Project) team has clearly shown that these two settlements were quite unequal in size and in their suspected regional influence (Bennet in Galaty and Parkinson 1999). Beylerby was 2 ha in Middle Helladic and grew to 3.5 ha only in mature Late Helladic times; in contrast, the Middle Helladic Pylos settlement was 6 ha and in the palatial Late Helladic phase grew to 14 ha. The existence and role of larger settlements in Middle Helladic is further discussed later in this chapter.
(p. 168b) Nelson's reworking of the original excavation records for Pylos palace postulates an early mansion for Late Helladic 1-2 associated with a gated defense wall, followed by the first palace in Late Helladic 3A with a strongly Minoan design
In this major reinterpretation of the history of the palace, traces of reused blocks are suggested to derive from an early monumental building complex beneath the later Pylos palace. This would belong to the Late Helladic 1-2 era and betrays significant influences from Minoan construction models through the use of ashlar masonry, which even exhibits a Minoan mason's mark. It is also associated with a gated defense wall. The first clear building plan at the site, however, derives from a Late Helladic 3A palace and confirms earlier theories of Kilian, since it reveals an open design of three blocks around a Central Court, very much a Minoan palatial concept.
(p. 168c) The traditional way of seeing the development of prehistoric farming settlements in Mainland Greece has been in social evolutionary terms, where the seemingly inevitable rise of Aegean palatial society suffers a local setback during Middle Bronze Age times
Central to this "Teleological Model" (explaining events from what happened later) is the concept that pre-Mycenaean settlement patterns reveal early precursors of the hierarchical Mycenaean state settlement network. Thus in Neolithic and Early to Middle Helladic times, larger or more elaborate settlements are termed "central places" and their smaller neighbors "satellites," while networks of little differentiated domestic sites are a provincial background of underdevelopment.
(pp. 168-169a) Through intensive surface survey, we have gained a whole series of regional settlement histories. It is revealing to re-analyze the Neolithic to Mycenaean settlement patterns of Southern Mainland Greece in order to clarify the place of the Middle Helladic era within its development
Data from the following projects can be used: the Oropus Survey (Cosmopoulos 2001), the Boeotia-Tanagra Surveys (Bintliff et al. 1999, 2002, 2007, 2008), the Methana Survey (Mee and Forbes 1997), the Nemea Survey (Wright et al. 1990), the Berbati Survey (Wells and Runnels 1996), the Argolid Survey (Jameson et al. 1994), the Laconia Survey (Cavanagh et al. 1996, 2002, Cavanagh 2004), and the Asea Survey (Forsen and Forsen 2003).
(p. 169b) Middle Helladic settlement patterns and population show strong thinning out of occupation, rather than a process of population nucleation following the abandonment of the many small dispersed settlements of the Early Helladic era
For example, the Argolid Survey revealed a dense Final Neolithic-Early Helladic landscape with four villages several kilometers apart and many dispersed hamlets or farms. Here the Middle Helladic period saw a drastic collapse of two small villages and a farm/hamlet, spaced several kilometers apart. Late Helladic followed with several villages at several-kilometer intervals, plus dispersed hamlets and farms back to Early Helladic density. This would agree with indications in later Early Bronze Age times throughout the Aegean of large-scale catastrophic disruption to human society, which seems, particularly on the Mainland, to have created a longer-lived period of decline and then stagnation in earlier Middle Bronze Age times.
(p. 169c) The range of settlement sizes and the variety of their spatial grouping is rather comparable across the Neolithic and the Early Helladic eras. Small villages of 1-2 hectares or less are typical, separated in fertile areas by a few kilometers, and south of Thessaly, often associated with dispersed farm/hamlet sites
Let us take as our example my own Boeotia Survey: the Thespiae district shows two village or hamlet clusters 2.5 km apart, occupied in the Neolithic and throughout the Bronze Age, between which in later Neolithic and Early Helladic times a dispersed farmstead pattern appeared.
(p. 169d) Let us take as our example for these later periods the Methana Survey
Note that my interpretation differs somewhat from that of the survey team for technical reasons, to do with the evaluation of limited prehistoric finds on multiperiod sites, or those with relatively small dated collections (for the relevant arguments see Bintliff et al. 1999).
(p. 169e) A community can solve its marriage needs through expanding to a size where it is predominantly endogamous
This is a strong tendency rather than a mathematical law, as shown by statistics from traditional Palestinian village endogamy rates, but the shift from low to very high endogamy around 500-600 inhabitants is pronounced (Lehmann 2004).
(p. 169f) It is precisely in such settlements, larger than 500 or so inhabitants, that cross-cultural research has documented the emergence of townlike political behaviors
Kirsten (1956) and Ruschenbusch (1985) have demonstrated that the typical Classical Greek city-state or polis arose as a village-state with, even at its climax, an average of just a few thousand citizens and with territories a mere 5-6 km in radius.
(p. 169h) Later prehistoric Mainland communities of some 4-5 ha or more (generally seen as at or over the 500-600 inhabitant threshold), might be considered to have begun to develop political behaviors of an incipient city-state character
We have already suggested that on these grounds, Late Neolithic Knossos and Phaistos, as well as Middle Neolithic Sesklo, are candidates for such emergent city-states. More clearly, the island towns of the Middle Cycladic period such as Phylakopi may have been city-states of this kind.
(p. 170a) Neolithic to Middle Helladic settlements of 4-5 ha or more would be run on a different social basis than the face-to-face villages of 1-300 people that were the norm throughout. In the case of Middle Helladic Argos and Early Helladic-Middle Helladic Fournoi, both in the Northeastern Peloponnese, the suggestion of multiple hamlets meets one of these alternatives
In contrast, monumental Early Helladic structures such as Corridor Houses and the Tiryns Rundbau (Marzolff 2004) might have been the markers for an elite sector in other settlements.
(p. 170b) A rare emergent super-village - for example, the key MH sites of Argos and Mycenae - could exploit its advantages over its neighbors and presumably enhance its own leading families over theirs
The development of MH Argos has become clearer due to recent excavations and re-examination of older excavations (Philippa-Touchais and Touchais 2006). The MH settlement appears to consist of several discrete areas of housing on the plain at the foot of the Aspis as well as on that hilltop itself.
If the earlier settlement on the Aspis hill seems little differentiated, with intramural burials, the final MH era and that transitional to earliest LH shows a radical replanning of the hilltop. A defense wall surrounds the hilltop and against it are ranged a dense row of houses. In the center of the hill and on its highest point an inner wall encloses a small number of houses, while others lie around and outside that wall. The degree of planning and the careful separation of residences within the Aspis, with its "acropolis" character, is in contrast to the other domestic zones below the hill in the "lower town," and suggests to the excavators the emergence of social elites.
(p. 170c) The sudden rise within the Plain of Argos in the relative status of Mycenae over Argos during the late Middle Helladic period must be explained through these kinds of political shifts within local settlement networks becoming entangled with increasing interactions with external societies and events in the wider Aegean world
In the same way, there is increasing evidence that shifts in external contacts played a major role in the prominent role of Messenia - generally a peripheral province in Greek history - in the rise of Mycenaean civilization (Rutter 2005). Whereas the neighboring province of Laconia was more closely linked to Crete in terms of Minoan cultural influences in Middle Helladic, from the transitional Middle Helladic-Late Helladic period into early Late Helladic it is Messenia where the main ties with Second Palace Crete occur. It seems probable that after the eruption of Thera in Late Minoan 1A and the subsequent chaotic events on Crete, the Minoan colony on Kythera island off Laconia was absorbed into the expanding Messenian state of Pylos.
(p. 170d) The necessity for district social clusters, given the rareness of communities large enough to be self-sufficient "small worlds" or achieved city-states, created creative social "arenas." These greatly facilitated: the mobilization of manpower for military purposes, of agricultural and other surpluses for economic purposes, and of participants for large-scale cult activities. In this model we may identify one of the mechanisms through which Bronze Age territorial states were formed
In Chapter 7 we shall turn to the next stage, when expanding Mycenaean power centers began to intervene in the settlement networks of adjacent regions. Here, to anticipate, we can fully agree with Wright's (2004) stimulating proposals regarding Mycenaean core-periphery systems, and his emphasis on the locally variable ways in which expanding core statelets interacted with internal developments in the settlement networks of their peripheries.
It is also always good to step outside the Aegean and find wider trends which can enlighten our interpretations, and here Primas (2002) usefully generalizes on the reasons for the emergence and then abandonment of fortified hilltop centers of power in the Bronze Age of Continental Europe. As many increasingly argue for the Aegean, local and contingent (chance) historical factors rather than grand models seem to have accounted for the instability in time and space of such "central places," without denying that underlying elements such as control over prestige goods, people, and food surpluses, and successful mobilization of warriors created the raw materials for such divergent local outcomes.
(p. 171a) They had relatively swiftly gained the ability to access large amounts of precious metal, long-distance prestige goods (faience, amber), and the services of exceptionally skilled craftsmen (argued to have been Minoan)
Shapland (2010) interestingly challenges the assumption that the finer objects in the Mycenae Shaft Graves were of Minoan workmanship, by pointing out that portrayals of heroes hunting lions have no Minoan parallels and appear to be a distinctly Mycenaean elite genre. However, this rather underestimates the ability of highly skilled craftsmen to adapt to the demands of new patrons.
(p. 171b) The Shaft Grave Circles are for two distinct lineages, of which the slightly younger represented in A eclipses the dynasty of B by later Late Helladic times
The older Shaft Graves B cluster, with 24 graves, has its oldest burials as normal Middle Helladic cists, then gradually over time its tombs become deeper and more elaborate, until they form genuine Shaft Graves. In the Shaft Graves A cluster the seven graves are mostly all larger than those of B. There is continuing debate as to whether the two circles were originally mounded, which would of course embed them even further into older Middle Helladic traditions (Betancourt 2007). That child burials were given remarkable prominence, as their gold sheet covers in the A Shaft Graves attest, points to "ascribed status," that is a person's value in society is tied to their perceived rank rather than practical achievements. In this case the high status of the parents attaches itself to their offspring, however young. The Shaft Graves were roofed and so designed that the vaults could be reopened for sequent burials, which links in with the other elements emphasizing the continuing significance of kinship in Middle Helladic and Late Helladic society (Graziado 1991).
(p. 171c) Kilian-Dirlmeier makes an excellent case for the gradual elaboration over time of a distinct prestigious dress code for the elite from the oldest to youngest graves in the Shaft Graves
Although her redating of the chronology of the tombs is controversial (Oliver Dickinson, pers. comm.).
(p. 172) Shaft Graves have been found elsewhere, also with wealth and status objects, although not in such remarkable quantities. Mycenae remains outstanding at this moment in time
Ongoing palaeopathological (study of human remains) and DNA research under the direction of John Prag, Sofia Voutsaki, and others is expected to reveal important details concerning the kinship relations of the Circle A and B bodies, and whether they are closely related to groups buried in neighboring cemeteries of the region, such as Argos (Voutsaki et al. 2009a [2007], 2009b [2007]). Facial reconstruction for the B Shaft Grave bodies (Brown et al. 2000) has indicated the expected family resemblances between individuals buried there together, while DNA analysis has made it likely that two facially similar individuals from the B Shaft Graves were brother and sister (Bouwman et al. 2008). It is important to note that just as Shaft Graves were not confined to Mycenae (although the most luxurious examples are found there), so also the elaboration of a status dress for elites was a wider phenomenon in final Middle Helladic and early Late Helladic society. At Argos for example, one of the Middle Helladic tumulus graves contains a six-year-old child with a sword and two daggers, argued to symbolize unfulfilled "heroic" status (Nordquist and Ingvarsson-Sundstrom in Dakouri-Hild and Sherratt 2005). Other elite Shaft Graves or massive deep cist burials with special elaborate features and wealth are known from the near-Mainland island of Aegina, from Thebes and from several other sites within and outside the Argolid (Voutsaki 1999).
(p. 173a) The rich hill-land of Corinth lacks a major Mycenaean center, perhaps indicating that Mycenae's state territory may have first expanded northward toward the Gulf of Corinth, before absorbing rival centers in its own Plain of Argos, such as Argos, Dendra-Midea, and Tiryns
James Wright (2004) has also suggested that Mycenae elaborated a policy of expansion into its periphery as the basis for its rise to dominance.
(p. 173b) The large quantities of weaponry, coupled with the warrior iconography
Voutsaki (2010) has re-emphasized the warrior-male symbolism of the Shaft Grave and contemporary MH3-LH1 art and grave goods elsewhere. Portrayals of women are rare, and in the Shaft Graves they have no tomb markers or theirs are very simple compared to the elaborate male versions. The art and grave gifts focus on male weapons, ornaments, precious containers, and metal drinking-cups, and when portrayed men are always engaged in fighting and hunting. Interestingly she adds that scenes of combat are not usually battle scenes but stress equal heroic combat, a genre rather than specific historic events. Finally the heroic male is underlined by careful attention to his musculature.
(p. 173c) Could the Mycenaean warrior elite, like the Normans of the early Medieval world in the Atlantic coasts and the Mediterranean, have set themselves up as lords of small and later larger "conquest states"?
Earlier study of the Shaft Grave bodies by Lawrence Angel suggested that the Mycenae elite were taller and fitter than populations buried elsewhere in the region, perhaps accommodating the vision of a group growing powerful through physical domination? (Dickinson 1977, Graziado 1991). That one of the SG grave markers shows a warrior in a chariot indicates involvement in expensive elite warfare already at this early stage of Mycenaean emergent elites, which could also confirm a previous experience in warfare in more complex-state societies abroad.
(p. 173d) While in late Middle Helladic-early Late Helladic the Shaft Graves have no parallel in the Plain of Argos, suggesting a statement of intent by the elite of Mycenae to be preeminent, by Late Helladic 2 when the Argos Plain elite adopt the Messenian form of prestigious burial - the tholos - Mycenae's tholos tombs are matched by several elsewhere in the region, perhaps signalling competition for power and status. In Late Helladic 3, however, Mycenae continues to build multiple tholoi, including the grandest in the region, and most if not all other centers cease their construction or use
The gradual cessation in the construction of provincial tholoi after Late Helladic 1-2 seems to indicate that by the Late Helladic 3 climax of Mycenaean civilization only the putative palatial, state centers claimed the right to erect what had become a royal tholos tomb. This observation can be made not just in the Plain of Argos but also in Messenia and Eastern Thessaly (Bennet 1999, Adrimi-Sismani in Galaty and Parkinson 2007). According to Wright (pers. comm.) the construction of a typical tholos required something like 20 times the labor costs of a Shaft Grave, highlighting the close association between wealth and control over manpower in the commissioning of these elite stone monuments. The overall trend from early Middle Helladic to late Late Helladic was a spiralling competition in which tomb elaboration and the display of wealth indicated inter-elite rivalry on an ever-widening scale. In the absence of numerous excavated settlements of pre-Late Helladic 3 date, this does help us to witness the stage-by-stage erection of that pyramidal power hierarchy which is generally reconstructed for mature Mycenaean society (and as represented in the palatial archives) (Gallou 2005). Argos certainly lost its elevated status of Middle Helladic by Late Helladic 2, which might indicate that at least the West and Central Plain fell into Mycenae's power. But there is the curious tholos-like tomb at Kokla not far away to its south, poorly built and a hybrid with chamber tomb features, though painted (Voutsaki 1995), and this could reasonably be seen as a weak attempt at competition by Argos. In mature Mycenaean times Argos may have possessed a hilltop fortification on the hill of Larisa, of no great pretension, and multi-storied houses with frescoes on the slopes of the Aspis hill, but the French excavators see the settlement as a lesser satellite of Mycenae and/or Tiryns (Pierart and Touchais 1996). The site at Dendra-Midea has a walled acropolis, though so far no clear palatial town, but it also has a tholos tomb, and is more likely to have been subordinate to one of its neighbors - Mycenae or Tiryns. Tiryns in the far south of the Plain, near the sea, has a palace, probably two tholos tombs close by, a Lower Town and Late Helladic 3 fortifications which are more impressive than Mycenae itself. In Homeric legend the great hero Diomedes appears to have dominated the Southern Plain, with Argos, Tiryns, Asine, as well as the Argolid peninsula in his power. The two Tiryns tholoi are undated, so it remains possible that the site's major status in Late Helladic 3B, on the basis of its size and massive fortifications, might have been matched by its retaining the right to royal burial monuments.
(pp. 173-174a) More significant was surely the increasing complexity of the legendary town of Thebes in Central Greece. In the Middle Helladic era its size expands to 20 ha
Not only did Thebes in subsequent Late Helladic times grow into one of the most extensive palatial complexes, but some even believe that it was Thebes, rather than Mycenae, that formed the power-base of the King of the Ahhiyawa (Mycenaeans) with whom the rulers of the Hittite Empire in contemporary Central Anatolia negotiated (Kelder 2008).
(p. 174b) The island settlement of Aegina at Kolonna: a substantial planned community with massive fortifications in the Middle Bronze Age and early Late Bronze Age. In the late Middle Helladic phase a rich Shaft Grave was deposited and to the same period may belong a very large, monumental building in the center of the settlement
The great building or "Grossteinbau" from its large cut-block construction and general dimensions (up to 30 m long), and central location in the site, is compared to a mansion or small palatial complex, and stands out from the far simpler architecture of domestic houses elsewhere in the settlement. Recent micromorphological analysis of its floor sediments (the study of the organic and inorganic composition of living floors) (E. Krekou, pers. comm.) indicate that parts of the structure were in domestic use for long periods, based on evidenc
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