Greece of LH IIIA-B (about the 14th and 13 th centuries) is characterised by the palace system. At this time Mycenaean civilisation reached its apogee and combined a series of features: territorial organisation resting on a hierarchy of settlements; a social pyramid dominated by the wanax; a centralised palace economy of a redistributive type; and a specific way of thinking, reflected in different means of expression.366 Its spread continued right down to LH IIIA1 in the Agean, in particular on Crete and the Dodecanese, whilst its expansion in the Mediterranean reached its maximum extent in LH IIIA2—B. The evidence is so numerous that a complete listing is thus impossible.
In the Aegean, the Cyclades henceforth formed a part of the Mycenaean world.367 In this period the Mycenaeans established themselves on Crete, even if the date of their arrival at Knossos continues to be debated.368 Mycenaean pottery is present in numerous places along the Aegean coast, even if the majority of finds are chance and sporadic.369 However, several sites are exceptions to this. Troy has yielded a considerable quantity of Mycenaean pottery, part of it made locally, but despite this, the settlement does not lose its Anatolian features.370 In the settlement and necropolis of Panaztepe, which has a number of tombs with a small oval tholos, Mycenaean vases, both imports and imitations, lie alongside local pottery.371 On the other hand, Iasus, and more so Miletus with its megaron, vases of Mycenaean type found in pottery kilns, its necropolis of chamber tombs, etc., became major centres of Mycenaean culture at this time.372 A necropolis of chamber tombs at Muskebi, where the grave goods include not a single local vase, and a tholos tomb at Colophon have provided Mycenaean vases.373 For the interior of the country we can point out the fragments from Sardis and Gavurtepe, that from Beycesultan and the vases from the necropolis of Duver.374 A few fragments were found in Lycia,375 but this region is known above all by two shipwrecks. Apart from ingots, the cargo of that from Ulu Burun, dated to LH IIIA2/B, consisted of Egyptian, Levantine, Cypriot and Aegean objects.376 The wreck from Cape Gelidonya, dated to LH IIIB or to the beginning of LH IIIC, contained mainly Cypriot and Levantine objects.377 In this period, a smaller quantity of fragments of Mycenaean vases come from the Cilician sites of Mersin, Tarsus and Kazanli (which has yielded one LH IIA fragment).378 The spread of LH IIIA2-B material also reached central Anatolia, as the vases from Masat, to which we shall return below, testify.
On Cyprus the movement of Mycenaean imports, which had started from LH IIB, is observed first towards the coastal sites in the south and east of the island, and after that also towards the sites of the interior. The number of sites increased considerably during LH IIIA2, culminating during LH IIIB. Almost 80 sites dispersed throughout the entire island have produced at least one Mycenaean fragment, and among them, funerary contexts outnumber settlements by two to one. The main sites with LH IIIA-B pottery, often associated with Minoan pottery, are Apliki, Kalavassos, Klavdhia, Lapithos, Larnaka, Maroni, Morphou, Myrtou, Nicosia and Palaipaphos, with Hala Sultan Tekke, Kourion, Kition and, above all, Enkomi standing out noticeably from the rest.379 Mycenaean imports other than vases are almost absent on Cyprus, with the exception of prestige objects of one sort or another, such as the silver bowl decorated with gold and niello incrustations found at Enkomi. Archeometric analysis of LH I-IIIB vases found on the island indicates that they were produced generally in the Peloponnese, in the Argolis in particular, and to a lesser degree on Crete, thus invalidating the claims made by some archaeologists for local production and, in consequence, of Mycenaean settlement on Cyprus from LH IIIA.380 Other provenances which have sometimes been suggested are not proven.381 Aegean origin is also confirmed for both the vases of pictorial style and those of shapes lacking true parallels in the Aegean and qualified as ‘Levanto-Mycenaean’, which are found almost exclusively on Cyprus and in the Near East.382 Vases of Mycenaean type do not start to be made locally until the Late Cypriot IIC period; this applies, among others, to those of Pastoral Style.383 In return, Cyprus exported to Greece mainly vases, in particular milk bowls and small jugs, and, starting from LH IIIA2, copper.384
This phase marks the maximum penetration of Mycenaean objects in the Levant, where examples have been found at more than a hundred sites, from Karchemish and Emar in the north to el-Arish in the south. They are distributed mainly in coastal regions, along caravan routes and in areas accessible by navigable rivers. LH IIIB vases predominate considerably over LH IIIA. The finds are most widespread in Syria, where Mycenaean vases are found chiefly in the coastal sites of Minet el-Beida/Ugarit, Byblos, etc., and along the Litani at places such as Kamid el-Loz and the Orontes at such as Hama, Qatna, Qadesh, etc. However, those of the Orontes have not yielded LH IIIB material. On the other hand, Palestine is characterised by a greater concentration of finds. In fact we can observe groupings in certain of its key regions, such as the valley of Jizreel, which, starting from Tell Abu Hawam on the coast, leads to the valley of the Jordan via Megiddo and Beth Shan, the region of Tell el-Farah on the road connecting Samaria to the same valley, or to Sichem in a pass at Mount Ephraim. Admittedly less abundant than at coastal sites or those closer to the sea, Mycenaean pottery is well attested in the interior and is also present in most sites to the east of the Jordan, in particular at Deir Alla, Amman and Madaba. The distribution of the finds illustrates clearly the way in which Mycenaean vases were spread: acquired in the centres of the coastal zone, where more or less direct exchange took place, after that they were redistributed towards the markets of the interior.385 Having said that, it has to be added that Mycenaean vases are always found accompanied by large quantities of Cypriot vases.386 The only exceptions are the tomb of Sarepta and the temple of Amman, where the latter are completely absent, as well as the settlement of Tell Abu Hawam. Here Cypriot pottery is almost non-existent and one building has sometimes been considered as Mycenaean in view of the strong concentration within it of LH IIIB vases,387 ignoring its Palestinian architectural features (Fig. 7).388 The corpus of pottery from the Levant is constituted mainly of vases coming from settlements, very often from places connected with a palace or a temple, which have yielded, for the most part, open types, i. e. tableware. Overall, however, these are outnumbered by the closed types found mostly in graves (Fig. 8).389 A few sites have also yielded one Mycenaean figurine, but only Ugarit, Tell Sukas, Sarepta, Hazor and Tell Abu Hawam have yielded numerous examples.390
Like elsewhere, Egypt witnesses a uniform increase in sites characterised by the presence of Mycenaean vases. These are found, naturally, along the Nile, and thenceforth spread through Middle Egypt and the Delta,391 particularly at Tell el-Daba which, despite its frescoes of Minoan inspiration dated to the end of the Hyksos period, had not hitherto yielded Aegean pottery.392 The LH IIIA—B vases come in general from graves, where there is often merely a single example, but major finds have been made in places of habitation, including palace or official contexts as well as domestic ones.393 One of them is Gurob, an agglomeration of the Fayum region, where phases from LH IIB to IIIB are illustrated.394 The vases excavated in the short-lived capital of Akhenaton, Tell el-Amarna, belong almost uniquely to LH IIIA2,395 but their number rises to several hundreds,
Cline 1994, 60.
Fig. 7. Tell Abu Hawam (after Gregor! and Palumbo 1986, fig. 9).
World History
