As for the causes of the fall of the Mycenaean world, no firm answers have been forthcoming, despite continual attempts at explanations (Shelmerdine 1997, Dickinson 2006). At the major centers of Mycenae, Tiryns, and Midea in the Argos Plain, at Athens, and at the Central Greek foci ofThebes and Gla, during the mid to late phases of the climax Mycenaean era of LH3B, we witness the erection of enlarged fortifications and at some centers secret water-supply tunnels, associated with multiple destruction events. But many of these mentioned centers go on into the final LH phase of 3C, if significantly without evidence for any palatial administration. It is therefore problematic when one of the older excavators of Mycenae described it as experiencing in 3C “its last century of greatness” (Mylonas 1968). Exceptionally, the Tiryns Lower Citadel continues in occupation through 3C into Submycenaean times, and its Lower Town expands not only significantly but as a well-planned urban extension (elevating the settlement to perhaps 45 ha). Some see a lone attempt here to revive a minor state during 3C. Midea sees occupation and remodeling of the settlement in 3C. Athens’ continuity through Submycenaean and beyond is taken to confirm Classical Athens’ tradition of its resistance to outside conquest. In contrast, many other sites are abandoned in late 3B or early 3C, with or without destruction. Suiting the idea of people fleeing to refuge centers, some sites grow or arise in 3C (Perati in Attica, and a large cluster in the Northwest Peloponnese). It is generally accepted that by 3C the palatial system has collapsed even if many centers survive in use. A poignant bowl from Mycenae of 3C date could even depict one of its last contingents of troops heading out to confront its unknown nemesis, with soldiers carrying lunch-bags hanging on their spears.
Later Greek tradition recognized an age of disturbance after the Age of Heroes and the time of the
Trojan War, with invasions, migrations, but nonetheless no mention of “foreign” attack. Legend suggests that the warfare was occasioned by internal strife and one particular group of Greek-speakers, the Dorians. What caused these civil wars and migrations is left rather unclear, and although legend describes dynastic power struggles, archaeology shows that no-one was “the winner,” and it is hard to accept competition between elites where every palace is destroyed.
Surely relevant are wider disturbances during the period of Mycenaean collapse: the almost contemporary violent downfall of the Anatolian civilization of the Hittites, and the attacks on Egypt and the Levant by a coalition called the “Sea Peoples.” If the Hittites succumbed to Anatolian enemies, the Sea Peoples may have arisen from opportunistic raiders or displaced groups gathered from a surprisingly wide region including the Central Mediterranean, the Aegean, and Cyprus.
Environmental factors have been linked with the end of the Mycenaean powers and related crises in the East Mediterranean. There is still a lack of convincing evidence for dramatic climatic change for this era. Earthquakes do seem to be proven for some Mycenaean centers during 3B, but are a regular phenomenon in the Aegean, and without ancillary crippling disasters are implausible as a cause of lasting civilizational collapse.
Other theories include changes in warfare, allowing “barbarians” to challenge Aegean and other East Mediterranean states (Drews 1993), which has not convinced most specialists, and the detection of alien invaders in Greece through a characteristic handmade burnished ware — likewise unlikely to be a “smoking gun” for the Mycenaean collapse (Rutter et al. 2007). One thing is sure, that military attack is the central direct agent for the violent Mycenaean fall. The increasing defense measures and multiple fire destructions, plus the absence of rebuilding of palaces and other indications of state organization, most suit human violence aimed at the nerve-centers of the Mycenaean states. The subsequent legends and archaeological evidence for migrations and abandonments could reflect major conflicts ranging widely over the Mainland and islands. Ingenious attempts to find signs of crisis in the Linear B archives (Chadwick 1976) lack conviction, but admittedly the political archives have never been located at any palatial site, in contrast to the economic records.
It is still too soon to choose a best-fit scenario for the Mycenaean collapse, but some key elements can be suggested. Inter-elite warfare is problematic as no center benefits. Large-scale immigrant invasion fails to convince since the succeeding culture develops out of Mycenaean. If civil war swept through the Mycenaean states, eliminating the royal palatial elites, ethnohis-toric parallels could explain much of the puzzling post-palatial political landscape. With the destruction of large unitary states, did temporary warlords, perhaps directing those attacks, create an unstable mosaic of feuding statelets? Many scholars consider the complex palatial civilization as unpopular in its tax load or labor demands from the middle and lower classes, envisaging massive popular uprisings against the top level of the hierarchy, which does explain the total disappearance of all the palaces. However, current thinking on the Mycenaean economy has balanced private against public in such a way as to undermine such a model, whilst surveys generally do not support overpopulation and high levels of land use driven by palatial pressure to extract ever-greater surpluses. Finally, recently the idea has developed that Mycenaean palaces were dependent on international trade to support their power, so that the decline of exchange systems in the thirteenth and twelfth centuries due to military disruption in the Eastern Mediterranean brought collapse to all the Aegean palaces. Since expert analyses of ceramics and other materials find Mycenaean exports abroad as small-scale, and it has yet to be demonstrated that the palaces were primarily (as claimed) maintained by prestige craftwork (“wealth finance”) as opposed to the much more plausible support for their personnel through a tax on food, textile production (“staple finance”), and the right to labor-services, I don’t see this model as realistic.
With the collapse of “the monopoly of power” which is a key definition of “the state,” ordinary folk may have concentrated in fortified or remote refuge settlements, and (as we see in war-torn parts of Africa today), migrate en masse to safe territories. Early Iron Age populations in Southern Greece appear much reduced from a peak in the Late Bronze Age. We can consider direct casualties in the razing of larger and small Mycenaean centers, then indirect fatalities from the collapse of the redistributive economy formerly radiating from the state, and finally food shortages with the abandonment of settlements and cultivated land, or the burning or expropriation of food stores by competing war-bands.
Archaeology can highlight processes operating over several centuries, but can rarely pinpoint events within a single decade (the histoire evenementielle of the Annales School). As with the rise of Mycenae, I am tempted to conclude that some of the critical moves in the military and political history of this period are as yet undetectable with any clarity at the archaeological timescale. Were it not for the historically-recorded Egyptian victories over the Sea Peoples, we would not have an inkling of such dramatic international processes during this era.
World History
