In this brief concluding chapter I revisit a few central topics and offer some thoughts on where the approach advocated in this book might take us in the future.
A Conceptual Reorientation
During my twenty years of archaeological research in coastal areas of Greece, I have repeatedly confronted a disconnect between the usual narratives of Mycenaean maritime connectivity, focused on long-distance exchange and elite cargoes, and the lives I imagined for people living in the small coastal sites I often encountered in survey. Others had identified the same problem, albeit using different approaches. Horden and Purcell's (2000) attempt to write a history of the Mediterranean from the point of view of microregions and short-distance connectivity was an eye-opening inspiration, as was Broodbank's (2000) network analysis of small maritime worlds in the Cycladic islands. A group of archaeologists, among them Broodbank, Rainbird (2007), and Berg (2010), identified another problem in the segregation of land from sea, both conceptually and in fieldwork. As Berg (2010: 19) points out, the interest of continental and island surveys has generally stopped at the water's edge. To some extent, this problem arises because the sea-land divide is formalized in Greece by an administrative structure that places sea and land in the purview of two entirely separate authorities, with the result that permits to work on land do not extend to the sea and vice versa. Yet there is no intellectual justification for upholding this division. Islands are not in fact isolated “laboratories" of cultural evolution, and the sea is not a flat and featureless “liquid plain" serving only as connective space, but rather it is a textured, richly humanized place permeated by opportunity and danger, and animated by daily activity and maritime lore. Land and sea are not experienced separately in coastal regions, so our studies should not compartmentalize them either.
To the extent that I have any evangelical agenda in this study, it is to advocate for a shift in scholarly attention to the local scale of coastscapes and small worlds. Many of the arguments for shifting focus to the local scale have already been made convincingly. Horden and Purcell (2000: 123) regard microregions as the basic units of connectivity that may coalesce in larger and larger aggregates that effectively cross-cut environmental zones and geographical scales, while Broodbank showed that even in the modest expanse of the Cycladic islands, a non-uniform and fluctuating pattern of local-scale maritime interactions over time distinctly affected the overall configuration of connectivity in the island chain in the EBA. A fundamental argument in the present work is that the interactions of daily life and travel occurred overwhelmingly at close range, yet the excessive attention to long-distance maritime networks has created gaps in knowledge of the local scale. As an antidote, the coastscape is offered not as a periphery or as a boundary between land and sea, but as a uniquely central and integrative place articulating terrestrial and maritime worlds. If we wish to characterize life for the vast majority of coastal dwellers in the Mycenaean period, coastscapes and small worlds are appropriate units of analysis.
Coastscapes and small worlds are no more isolates than are islands. Like the microregions of Horden and Purcell, they coalesce and fragment, form larger aggregrates by joining other small worlds, and then devolve once again into local entities. They are routinely affected or even transformed by external influences and events: the Saronic Gulf small world was profoundly affected first by the mysterious Middle Helladic hiatus, and later by the successive influences of the Minoans and the Mycenaeans. This multiscalar dynamism is a strong indication that a renewed interest in local-scale entities should not be misunderstood as a return to historical particularism. Moreover, robust data from local and regional scales safeguards against superficial characterizations when we attempt to write larger narratives of the Mycenaean world or the eastern Mediterranean, or mine the data for cross-cultural comparisons.
A Conceptual and Methodological Toolkit
It is not a simple matter to “find" a coastscape or a small world. We generally do not know where Bronze Age anchorages were: sites and anchorages may be lost to coastal processes, and there is no evidence as yet that Mycenaeans built durable harbor structures that might aid in identification. The Linear B tablets tell us very little about coastal and maritime activity, and the LBA is too remote from Homer to hope that we can learn much from the epic poems. There is no surviving hull material from a Mycenaean boat, and the artistic representations depict a narrow range of seagoing vessels or are difficult to interpret.
These problems present theoretical and methodological challenges. It is first essential to recognize that coastscapes and small worlds are theoretical constructs devised by archaeologists to bring order to a world they know only dimly from fragmentary evidence. They have no empirical reality independent of our typological frameworks; thus, we designate coastscapes and small worlds, we do not discover or recognize them. The framework presented in Table 6.1 is a set of models that simplify and order spatial data in an attempt to illuminate the operation of maritime networks at contrasting scales. The difficulty I encountered in trying to define the geographical scales and their attributes reflects the complexity of human spheres of interaction: boundaries are fluid and porous, networks of different size and shape overlap in space, and change is constant. The best outcome for such a framework is that the individual models — each of the spheres of interaction a testable hypothesis — present a scenario that plausibly fits the distribution of artifacts and other material evidence, and that together credibly portray the complexity of a multiscalar system. As I pointed out, this particular framework is designed for the geographical and cultural milieu of the LBA Aegean; it would not likely be valid for other times and places without extensive modification. Yet it is a tool; I offer it here with the hope that it will be tested and refined as needed. Much of the benefit of the framework resides in the way it can facilitate systematic thought about a particular problem. It may be useful in thinking through research designs, and in interpreting results.
There is nothing shockingly new in the methods I propose, since there are long traditions in both archaeology and geoarchaeology of recovering the kinds of data that could lead to the reconstitution of coastscapes and small worlds. The collaboration of archaeologists and geoarchaeologists at Kalami-anos is hardly unique, but it does illustrate how interdisciplinary research can restore the essential elements of a Bronze Age coastal world. In other settings, it may not be as easy to recover ancient shores or the settlements and activity areas associated with them. A striking outcome of a long-term program of paleo-geographic reconstruction of western Peloponnesian coastlines is that Bronze Age sites along much of the coast, which existed in a lagoon and barrier environment, are now buried under colluvium, alluvium, and lagoonal mud (Kraft et al. 2005: 33—35). In such cases, geophysical remote sensing may assist in the recovery of lost sites. Most of these techniques are expensive and require lengthy analyses — even the rapid results of modern geophysical methods normally must be verified by excavation — but as I have emphasized throughout, it is difficult to reconstitute maritime networks at any scale without baseline information on the Bronze Age configuration of the coastline in the area of interest.
Maritime Coastal Communities
The maritime activities of coastal inhabitants are elusive. We learn little about them from the Linear B tablets, apart from a few cases of shipbuilding and rowing in state-controlled ships. The archaeological record contains limited faunal and artifactual evidence for the use of marine resources (Powell 1996), and the results of stable isotope analyses have not yet demonstrated a significant contribution of marine protein to the diet of individuals at coastal sites (Petroutsa and Manolis 2010; Triantaphyllou et al. 2008). This appears to fly in the face of reason — depictions of fish and fishing on pottery and the frescoes of fishermen at Akrotiri tend to inspire greater confidence. Perhaps further development of the methods and standards used for the stable isotope studies (Hedges 2004), and more careful excavation recovery methods, will resolve this contradiction.
I chose to focus on three related aspects of maritime activity: navigational skill, the transmission of maritime knowledge across generations, and the organization of maritime activity within the larger social setting of the coastal community. I proposed that two types of individuals were active on the sea: nonspecialized fishermen and farmers operating in inshore waters and traveling to nearby destinations; and master navigators who were capable of directing long sea voyages beyond the confines of the small world. Hesiod, with his short crossings to Euboea, is representative of the first group, while Homer's hard sea captains belong to the second. This division too is fluid, but it agrees with ethnographic information from the South Pacific, where most sea travel is local and only a small percentage of men attain the status of master navigator capable of leading long voyages.
Ethnographic data are informative on the other two aspects. Among South Pacific islanders, navigational knowledge is sophisticated and is protected within the maritime community — a subset of the larger village community — by physical segregation in boathouses and at sea, and by an esoteric and secret body of maritime knowledge and lore. Part of this lore involves vivid stories about markers and hazards en route to specific destinations. I suggested that the stories of hideous monsters and conspicuous burial tumuli in the Odyssey might be echoes of the kinds of maritime lore shared about distant and unfamiliar places in the Bronze Age. Specialized expertise in the mechanics of navigation and the features of specific itineraries constituted a habitus of maritime knowledge that was vital to the success of the maritime community, and it is not surprising that we should find traces of it embedded in metaphorical tales. Although there are no equivalent structures in the Mycenaean world, the Minoan ship sheds may have served a secondary function as meeting places for the seafaring community.
Building Networks
The network analyses of Broodbank (2000), with updates and modifications suggested by Knappett and colleagues (2008, 2011) and Leidwanger (2011), are promising advances toward an understanding of how networks actually form, expand, and contract. The more recent versions address specific shortcomings by adding a range of cultural and environmental variables, the values of which can be altered individually or covaried to simulate different conditions (Knap-pett), and by adding texture to the sea to produce more realistic travel times (Leidwanger). The social network studies of Duncan Watts and Steven Strogatz (Watts 1999; Watts and Strogatz 1998) and Albert-Laszlo Barabasi (Barabasi 2002; Barabasi and Albert 1999) examine the behavior of networks, showing how shortcuts extend networks over long distances, and explaining why some sites are perennially better connected than most others, and expand in connectivity more rapidly than others. I suggested that these properties of social networks may help to explain the prominence of Knossos, Mycenae, and Kolonna at various moments in prehistory. Human behavior can be difficult to model, however, and social network models as they currently exist for the Aegean can be described as a work in progress.
A Universe of Coastscapes and Small Worlds
Malkin and colleagues (2007: 7) record a pithy quote from Barabasi: “Networks are present everywhere. All we need is an eye for them" (Barabasi 2002: 7). The same can be said for coastscapes and small worlds; if there is a central message to this book, it might be expressed in the exhortation: “They are out there; go out and find them!" Bearing in mind that assigning a coastscape or small world is an act of interpretation and not observation (one does not really “find" them), the number of Mycenaean maritime small worlds one could investigate is practically unlimited. It primarily requires a shift in thinking about the archaeological record in terms of maritime cultural landscapes. Several archaeologists have already put a comparable approach to work, as, for example, Momigliano (2005) for the vicinity of lasos in the southeastern Aegean and Crielaard (2006) and Kramer-Hajos (2008) for the Euboean Gulf. Other possibilities come immediately to mind. The Argolic Gulf would be a challenging case study, because of the complex and ambiguous nature of the relationships of the major sites around the Gulf and further inland (Mycenae, Midea, Tiryns, Argos, Asine, Lerna, Nafplion, etc.; see Sjoberg 2004; Voutsaki 2001, 2010). Although important paleocoastal work has been accomplished (Zangger 1991, 1993, 1994a, 1994b), the lack of systematic surface survey on much of the territory bordering the Gulf hinders discussion of the human landscape. Another large study might target the western Messenian coast of the Peloponnese, drawing upon the rich combination of archaeological survey and excavation, geoarchaeological studies, and the Pylian Linear B archives (Bennet 1999; Bennet and Shelmerdine 2001; Davis 1998; Zangger et al. 1997). On Crete, the Gulf of Mirabello and the Isthmus of Ierapetra, with the sites of Mochlos, Pseira, Kavousi, Gournia, and Vrokastro, would make an intriguing study. As much as anything, limitations of space prevent me from pursuing these case studies in the present work.
This book presents a set of methodological and conceptual approaches to support a particular vision of coastal archaeology, and strives to demonstrate what that approach would look like when applied to archaeological case studies. Despite the broad awareness of a comprehensive agenda for island archaeologies (Broodbank 2000; Rainbird 2007) and maritime cultural landscapes (West-erdahl 1992), the translation of these ideas into practice has been slow, as Berg (2010) stresses. I have tried to be equally explicit in defining an archaeological problem — a lack of balance in our knowledge of the Mycenaean maritime world — and offering a complete set of tools to attack it. I hope to stimulate discussion, but even more to encourage new field studies and analyses inspired by the maritime cultural landscape concept.
World History
