As mentioned above, complex society on the Greek mainland emerged with much influence from Minoan Crete in the seventeenth to sixteenth centuries, corresponding to ceramic phases MH III—LH IIA. Minoan dominance of sea lanes in the Aegean and long-distance connections with the eastern Mediterranean would endure for some time afterward, until widespread destructions on Crete at the end of LM IB brought the neopalatial period to a close around the middle of the fifteenth century. Those destructions left Knossos the only functioning palace on Crete, apparently controlled by a Mycenaean elite who recorded in Linear B the administration of the palace and a broad swath of western to east-central Crete. The Mycenaean presence at Knossos was accompanied by the introduction across Crete of mainland styles of pottery, fresco iconography, and burial practice. The influx of people and material culture from the mainland may have been the result of an invasion that caused the destructions around the island; alternatively a group of Mycenaeans may have exploited an internal crisis to seize control.
On the mainland, the later fifteenth century was still a time of competition and consolidation of regional political hegemony, in advance of the establishment of territorial palace states in the early fourteenth century (LH IIIA1). The mainland polities were not particularly active in maritime ventures in the Aegean or eastern Mediterranean in LH I—II (Mee 2008: 381), most likely because of Minoan control of sea routes. Starting in LH IIIA, the Mycenaeans broadened their overseas contacts into the Aegean and beyond, superseding Cretan interests and inheriting Minoan maritime trade routes to the east. At Miletos on the coast of Asia Minor, a Minoan colony (Miletos IV) was replaced by a Mycenaean colony (Miletos V) encompassing ceramic phases LH IIIA1—IIIA2, roughly 100 years between the late fifteenth and fourteenth centuries, before suffering a major destruction. Mycenaean Miletos is surely to be identified with Millawanda, the coastal base of the Ahhiyawa in the Hittite texts (Niemeier 2003: 103-105).
In general, Mycenaean objects (mainly painted pottery) begin to appear in quantity in the Aegean, Cyprus, the Levant, and Egypt by LH IIIA1 or LH IIIA2. In LH IIIA and early LH IIIB, most of these Mycenaean vessels were exported from the Greek mainland; a good percentage can be traced to production centers in the Argolid by chemical characterization of their fabrics (Mommsen et al. 2002; Zuckerman et al. 2010). Subsequently, there is a shift in LH IIIB2— IIIC toward local production of Mycenaean-style pottery, and where a Greek provenience can be established, a greater diversity of production centers is indicated. Interestingly, imports to the Aegean from the Near East and Egypt are still heavily biased toward Crete, particularly Kommos and Knossos, in LH/LM IIIA (Cline 1994: 92, 2007). This may be a good illustration of the tenacity of economic relations in spite of political changes and other disruptions (Horden and Purcell 2000: 343-44). A long series of coarse to medium-coarse transport stirrup jars was produced on Crete from the fifteenth to twelfth centuries and used from Sardinia in the west to Egypt and the Levant in the east, including at Mycenaean palace centers in the Argolid and Boeotia (Ben-Shlomo et al. 2011; Haskell et al. 2011; Maran 2005). In LH IIIB, most imports to the Aegean found their way to the mainland, primarily to a few palatial centers (Mycenae, Tiryns, and Thebes).
An entirely different picture emerges for Mycenaean activity in the central Mediterranean (Blake 2008; Mee 2008: 379—81). Already in LH I Mycenaean pottery appears in southern Italy, Sicily, and the Aeolian islands. In these areas Minoan influence is minimal, and the Mycenaean presence may reflect a freedom to search for alternative sources of raw materials, probably metals. During LH IIIA these contacts expanded; many more sites in Italy have Mycenaean pottery. By LH IIIB, however, contacts diminished sharply with Sicily and the Aeolian islands, while relations with Sardinia and southern Italy strengthened. In the central Mediterranean, Mycenaean pottery was exclusively imported in LH I—IIIA, but in LH IIIB local imitations became increasingly common and by LH IIIC they were predominant. Italian imports in the Aegean are rare, with one exception: at Kommos, which through LH IIIA had been a major importer of goods from the east, objects from the central Mediterranean began to arrive in LH IIIA and by LH IIIB dominated the foreign assemblage (Cline 1994: 90, table 58). Kommos is the closest thing we know of to an international emporion in the Aegean (Rutter 1999; Shaw 2004).
In the postpalatial world of the twelfth century, maritime interaction continued and even prospered, but with significant changes in scale and content (Dickinson 2006: 197—205). The well-organized and regulated system of diplomatic and commercial exchanges in the Near East disappeared, and this had consequences for the Aegean as well. The large, standardized cargoes of metal ingots and goods shipped in large transport containers, referred to in Near Eastern and Egyptian texts and demonstrated so spectacularly in the Uluburun shipwreck, no longer made their way to the Aegean. Very few transport stirrup jars or Mycenaean fineware vessels left the Aegean. Yet Near Eastern ships continued to voyage west in search of metals. Along the way, they stopped on Attica's eastern coast at Perati, where the community probably controlled the silver mines at Lavrion. Further north, Lefkandi and Mitrou may have been stops on the route to metal sources on the Chalkidiki peninsula. Elsewhere, good harbors on Crete and the Greek mainland offered stopping points en route to the metal sources of Sardinia and Italy.
On the whole, maritime connections were as important in LH IIIC as in the palatial period, particularly with potentially dangerous conditions in the interior, but the scope of the exchanges was modified. Some exotic goods from distant places still reached the coastal settlements of the Aegean, but these were mostly small items that we might be tempted to characterize as trinkets. In the LH IIIC Middle chamber tomb cemetery at Perati, the grave goods include Egyptian, Syrian, Mesopotamian, and Cypriot seals, scarabs, amulets, and beads (Thomatos 2006). The scarcity of Aegean-made transport stirrup jars and other fineware vessels outside the Aegean suggests that perfumed oils, wine, and probably textiles were no longer manufactured for export. There is a perceived shift toward regional and local exchange networks in a less regulated and more opportunistic environment. Vigorous trade continued within the Aegean orbit, as attested by the movement of pottery and the mutual influences of local styles. Regions such as the Euboean Gulf preserved their strong maritime orientation and took on distinct identities characteristic of maritime small worlds (Crielaard 2006). But the interregional contacts that did survive were of great importance, particularly for the introduction of new metal styles and technologies. The technology of ironworking seems to have been developed on Cyprus and was learned there by Greek immigrants in the postpalatial period (Iacovou 2006, 2008a, 2008b; Pickles and Peltenburg 1998), and recently introduced metal artifact types arrived from northern Italy, including long pins, fibulae, Naue Type II swords, daggers, and “flame"-shaped spearheads (Dickinson 2006: 204). Cyprus seems to have been of capital importance in this era, pursuing an independent agenda with active ties in the Levant, in the central Mediterranean with Sardinia, and on the Greek mainland with Euboea, Attica, and Tiryns (Maran 2004). The notion of a sharp swing from maritime exchange dominated by interregional networks to a narrowed focus on local and intra-Aegean relations is misleading, for two reasons. First, ongoing discoveries have shown that long-distance ties were not cut as completely as once thought. Second, as argued in Chapter 1, local - and regional-scale networks must always have dominated the total picture of maritime interactions. The thriving interregional relations of the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries were more the product of exceptional circumstances; being so extraordinary, they draw attention away from other scales of interaction.
World History
