The harbor at Kapsali Bay, on Kythera's southern coast, provides a typical example of the seasonally changing environmental conditions experienced at a southern Aegean anchorage (Naval Research Laboratory 2007). The southwestfacing harbor exhibits a classic configuration favored in the Bronze Age: a double-lobed harbor formed by a protruding headland with small, indented bays on either side (Fig. 4.8; see Chapter 5 For the configuration of Bronze Age harbors). The headland separates a larger, less sheltered western harbor from a smaller, shallower eastern harbor that is better sheltered by a narrow entrance. Kapsali Bay has relatively few modern built installations that artificially alter the impact of seasonal weather conditions. Boats may find mooring within the bays or lie at anchor just outside them.
Facing southwest, Kapsali Bay is exposed mainly to winds and weather from the west and south. The steep relief of the land to the north shields the harbor from the prevailing northerly winds, but when these are particularly strong, powerful gusts and squally weather can be produced by the vertical displacement of winds to the lee side of this prominent topographic feature. At the same time, coastal sea breezes flowing north are strongest in summer and may offset the prevailing northerlies, resulting in light wind conditions in the afternoon and early evening.
In spring, a long transition occurs between winter and summer conditions. Migratory winter cyclones may continue to arrive from the west well into May. Southerly siroccos peak in frequency and intensity in spring, and if particularly strong may make the harbor unusable for small craft (Heikell 2007: 146). They bring cloudy conditions with light rain and dust (producing “red rain"), with winds of 22 to 33 knots and waves of 1.1 to 2.1 meters. Sirocco events may last for several days, but because they develop slowly over a day or two and are preceded by altocumulus clouds, they can be anticipated and proper precautions taken. When stormy conditions are not present, northerly winds prevail.
Summer brings typical Mediterranean conditions: a nearly cloud-free, precipitation-free sky with warm temperatures and few hazardous weather concerns. Northerly winds prevail, notably the meltemi, which may be felt at varying strength from May to October. Strong meltemi winds may persist for days at a time, but the effects are usually diminished by a counteracting sea breeze. The onset and first day of a meltemi event may be marked by thunderstorms in May to June and September to October, but in July and August only by scattered altocumulus clouds.
In autumn, the onset of the winter pattern is usually rapid, occurring around the third week of October. The first storms of the season are migratory cyclones from the west. Though these are not as intense as later winter weather, they often catch sailors unprepared and cause damage for this reason.
The most difficult navigational conditions occur in winter. The prevailing northerly bora winds may reach 41 to 47 knots and cause early morning temperatures to drop to near freezing, with little warming during the day. The most hazardous conditions are initiated by migratory cyclones approaching from the west, accompanied by low clouds, heavy rain, high winds, and reduced visibility. As they pass over, winds may shift abruptly from northerly, to easterly, southeasterly, and finally southwesterly with ever increasing wind speeds.
These storms produce waves of 3.3 to 4.3 meters, in which case watercraft anchored outside the sheltered bays are fully exposed to squalls and battering waves.
Kapsali Bay, like any other Aegean landfall, presents distinctive local characteristics due to its geographical location, exposure, and configuration, while at the same time experiencing a typical range of seasonal conditions generated by the interplay of the broader environmental forces examined in this chapter.
Implications of the Environment for Aegean Navigation
The foregoing examination of the maritime environment of the Aegean region highlights several implications for Bronze Age seafaring. One of these is that although there are certain broadly predictable patterns of climate, weather, and conditions at sea, these can turn unpredictable and changeable at the scale of human experience. The sudden squalls, storms, and heavy seas reported from antiquity to the modern day often arise with little warning even when the general patterns of hazardous weather are well known. The captains of the Persian fleets, with their imperfect knowledge of local conditions along the western Aegean coast, learned this to their cost. Apart from weather hazards lasting for a few hours to a few days, longer-term anomalies arise because the circulation of air and water in the Aegean is governed by systems operating at multiple, interacting scales. The more extreme case of Europe's “Little Ice Age" shows that centuries-long environmental shifts are possible.
We can assume that similar kinds of anomalies, at least those of short duration, occurred during the Mycenaean period, though we have no empirical evidence for them. A great deal of speculation has surrounded climatic disturbance, usually a decadal-scale pattern of drought, as a possible contributor to the collapse of the Mycenaean palatial system (Carpenter 1966), but our data — whether from pollen, tree rings, ice cores, terrestrial and deep-sea sediments, or other proxy measures — lack sufficient geographical and chronological resolution to demonstrate this or indeed any specific environmental anomaly during the Mycenaean period. The most we can say is that by the mid-Holocene (roughly 5000 BC), the basic climatic conditions that we experience in the Mediterranean area today were in place (Loy and Wright 1972: 40; McCoy 1980), and global (eustatic) sea level had stabilized at just a few meters below current levels (Lambeck 1995, 1996). It is likely, therefore, that the environmental anomalies of recent centuries, for which we have historical accounts and some meteorological data, approximate those encountered in the LBA. This means that Mycenaean sea captains faced weather-related hazards similar to those encountered by their later counterparts prior to motorized watercraft and advanced navigational aids.
The winds and currents described in this chapter also made it possible for boats — whether paddled, rowed, or sailed — to make progress on the sea. These movements normally followed the prevailing winds and sea currents, but knowledge of local winds, coastal currents, and land and sea breezes often made it possible to move against the dominant forces in short segments. This ability to move about locally also broadened the horizon of maritime activity by extending the sailing season, and significantly promoted the kind of short-distance connectivity that led to the formation of the maritime “small worlds" to be described in Chapter 7.
Equally important to Mycenaean navigation were the topographies of coastal landscapes. These were normally stable over the scale of a human lifetime, though as we will see in Chapter 5, modern coastal configurations are often dramatically different from those of the Bronze Age. Working in favor of Mycenaean navigators were the thousands of islands and highly irregular coastlines of the Aegean, indented with an abundance of natural harbors and anchorages. It was possible to traverse most of the Aegean, and in fact much of the eastern Mediterranean, with land always in sight, the main exception being the Libyan Sea between Crete and northern Africa (Fig. 4.9). When bad weather conditions arose, some form of safe anchorage was usually within reach, but it must be emphasized that the hazards of shallow coastal waters, if not known to the crew or in adverse weather, could be just as dangerous as running out to the open sea. Because suitable landfall was rarely more than a day's travel from any harbor within the Aegean, there was little need for night voyaging unless one left the Aegean Sea proper (by choice or when blown off course).
For these reasons, coast - and island-hopping facilitated movement by sea in the Aegean, and travel by sea was bound to play a fundamental role in the development of early Greece. The evolution of navigational skills is apparent in the archaeological record (Papageorgiou 2009: 199—200). Beginning with indirect evidence of sea travel in the presence of Melian obsidian at Franchthi Cave in the late ninth or early eighth millennium BC,3 Subsequent millennia saw traces of inhabitation on several islands and the colonization of Crete in the seventh millennium. Over the following 3,000 years, Aegean islands and mainland coastlines were gradually settled, until during the EBA (third millennium), proto-urban settlements and dense maritime communications were established (Broodbank 2000; Cherry 2004). These networks, along with technologies including the sail, were well developed by the time the Mycenaeans emerged as a complex society with ambitions beyond the Greek mainland.
The omnipresence of coasts and islands was also a hindrance to safe navigation, however, and this was a fundamental condition for the formation of navigational techniques in the Aegean. The quote that opens this chapter, taken from a twentieth-century sailing manual, succinctly makes the point that navigating the Aegean was more a problem of pilotage through complex coastal
4.9 Visibility of land from the sea in the Mediterranean. After Broodbank 2000: 40, fig. 4.
And near-coastal topographies under the influence of varied environmental conditions than a matter of celestial navigation, dead reckoning, or other means of way-finding on the open sea. Thus, despite the obvious advantage of constant visibility of land, knowledge of local coastal conditions was paramount to ensure safe passage and landfall. Ancient texts are replete with stories of ships run afoul of coastal hazards while trying to make safe landing. To cite an example, one of the misadventures of St. Paul's long sea journey from Palestine to Rome was shipwreck on the coast of Malta (Acts of the Apostles 27.6—28.10). After being blown off course from Crete for several days by a raging storm, the ship's captain spied a bay with a sandy beach on the Maltese coast, but on approaching, the ship ran aground on a sandbar, became wedged, and was destroyed by the pounding waves. Such disasters as befell the Persians in 492 and 480 BC or St. Paul in the early years of the Roman Empire were undoubtedly common, and underscore not only a general need for knowledge of local conditions — or better perhaps to highlight the consequences of not having that knowledge — but also support the argument for the prevalence of short-distance connections among those with local experience, leading to the formation of maritime “small worlds." A detailed examination of coastal landforms and navigational conditions in the Aegean in Chapter 5, along with case studies in Chapter 7, will permit these arguments to be developed in full.
These peculiarities distinguish the Aegean from other seas with which it is often compared. For example, ethnographic accounts of navigation among aboriginal South Pacific islanders are often found appealing as comparative material because they offer detailed studies of navigational techniques that do not rely on modern instruments or advanced seacraft, not to mention insights into maritime communities and their social and economic links with similar communities both near and far. Among these insights is a better understanding of how a pre-literate society can develop and disseminate sophisticated systems of navigation based on detailed observations of celestial bodies and other environmental features.
Yet although many of these insights are useful and even compelling, fundamental differences must be kept in mind. Broodbank (2000: 38—43) examines the similarities and differences of low-technology voyaging in the Mediterranean, Caribbean, and southwestern Oceania. In spite of comparable challenges inherent to small wind - or human-powered craft, and even some similarities in social and economic organization, Broodbank points to fundamental differences between the Cycladic Islands of the Early Bronze Age and these other areas. One of these is the basic geography of the island chains. In the South Pacific, islands are much more isolated, separated from one another and from any continent by great distances with a seemingly boundless sea intervening. These geographical factors have had a profound effect on the way that social and economic relationships developed over time among the scattered island communities. To a much greater extent, the proximity of Aegean islands to each other and to continental land masses created a profusion of potential maritime routes and situated coastal communities within range of recurrent external influences.
To Broodbank's observations we might add that a very different kind of navigational skill was required for a navigator departing in a small sailing canoe from one tiny Pacific island for another, often hundreds of nautical miles away. The main objective was to avoid missing a tiny speck of land in a vast sea, since the consequence of deviating even a few degrees off course might be to be lost in the open sea. Indeed, from time to time, canoes departed, never to be seen again. Other voyages turned into long adventures of missing the target (due to navigational error or inclement weather), only to turn up at some other island, where the errant crew might remain for a time before returning (Feinberg 1988: 25—31). Most such voyages were successful, however, and to make this possible an elaborate and complex system of navigation using celestial observation of the movements of the sun and stars was developed, partly independently and partly through shared traditions, by many island societies in the South Pacific (Feinberg 1988: 87—118; Gladwin 1970: 145—213; Thomas 1987: 73—85). By contrast, so long as the Mycenaeans were traveling within the Aegean, Ionian, or Adriatic Seas, or along the coasts of the Levant or southern Asia Minor, they could choose to avoid the open sea, instead navigating by coastal and island landforms and relying on their knowledge of safe anchorages en route.
This is not to say that Mycenaeans did not undertake open-sea voyages, or that they were ignorant of celestial navigation. Within the Aegean, ship captains often had a choice between a circuitous coastal route and a more direct open-sea voyage. The decision involved considerations of the ship's structural fitness and equipment (sailing rig, oars, crew, provisions, etc.), the captain's and helmsman's experience, the expected environmental conditions (winds, currents, weather), and the urgency of a speedy arrival (McGrail 1991: 88—89). These dilemmas figured prominently in the return of the Homeric heroes from Troy (McGrail 1991: 88). After arriving on Lesbos, Nestor, Diomedes, and Menelaus debated two island-hopping routes for their return to the Peloponnese, one sailing through the narrow channel between Chios and the Anatolian coast before turning west to the northern Cyclades and thence to Euboea and Attica; and the other keeping west of Chios between that island and Psyra before also turning west to the Cyclades and beyond. Nestor, after inquiring of Zeus, chose instead a direct open-sea voyage to the southern coast of Euboea, keeping Psyra to port (Odyssey 3.169—79). Interestingly, none of these routes is favored by winds or currents, yet Nestor reports that his ships, taking the open-sea route, were able to run before a freshening wind astern, reaching Karystos in southern Euboea by dawn the next day. The route ostensibly favored by environmental conditions was long, possibly involving a crossing toward Skyros in the northern Sporades before turning south to catch the prevailing winds and currents along the eastern coast of Euboea. Matching environmental expectations more closely is a journey found in Odysseus' phony tale of his youthful exploits on Crete (Odyssey 14.252—57), in which he describes a plausible sea voyage from Crete to Egypt, riding a northerly wind down the lee side of Crete and arriving at the Nile in just over four days. The journey from the Aegean to Egypt illustrates the fact that when ancient ships left the familiar confines of the Aegean, they encountered extended periods of days (or even weeks if things went wrong) in the open sea, often out of sight of land. Because these trips involved sailing at night, some means of staying the course was necessary. Homer's sea captains were familiar with stellar navigation: after leaving Calypso's island, Odysseus set a course for seventeen days with reference to the Pleiades, the “late-setting Ploughman" (Arctophylax), Ursa Major (our Big Dipper), and Orion (Odyssey 5.270—77). There is an important difference between the use of prominent stars and constellations to determine orientation and rough geographic position, and the Pacific Islanders' technique of “star path steering," which relies on an intimate knowledge of the rising and setting azimuths of numerous stars, as well as the ability to correct for winds and currents en route (Davis 2002: 298—99). There is no evidence in the Homeric text that Odysseus used this technique in his voyage from Calypso's island (Davis 2002: 299—300).
The fact that night sailing by means of celestial navigation was reasonably well established by the time Homer's epics were set to writing, circa 700 BC, is no proof that Mycenaean sailors were similarly capable more than a half-millennium earlier (McGrail 1991: 89). Indeed, many modern scholars are skeptical of LBA celestial navigation (e. g., Chryssoulaki 2005: 79; Lambrou-Phillipson 1991: 13). Yet there are reasons to believe that such knowledge already existed in the
Bronze Age. Christos Agouridis (1997: 17) develops an argument in favor of celestial navigation in the Aegean Early Bronze Age that, although lacking direct archaeological evidence, is in many respects compelling. The material evidence that is preserved reflects intensive engagement with the sea by EB II, including a proliferation of fortified coastal settlements and the movement of goods by sea throughout the Aegean. Given that the most sophisticated seagoing vessel of the period was the paddled longboat with a maximum daily range of 40 to 50 kilometers (Broodbank 2000: 102), some journeys must have involved overnights on the sea. Meanwhile, a novel suite of iconographic symbols related to sea, sky, and maritime travel emerged in the Cyclades in EB II (Broodbank 2000: 249—53, fig. 81). The ceramic “frying pans" of Syros type carry incised depictions of longboats, fish, sun/star symbols, and abstract “sea spirals" that probably represent billowing waves. The co-occurrence of incised fish, sea spirals, and a sun/star on an early frying pan from the Louros Athalassou cemetery on Naxos (Fig. 4.10) is suggestive of celestial navigation. Adding to the material evidence, Agouridis invokes ethnographic parallels of widespread celestial navigation and open-sea voyaging among Pacific and Caribbean islanders to argue that people engaged intimately with the sea and making long sea crossings will naturally observe the position and movements of heavenly bodies and realize their potential for tracking one's location and destination, likely out of necessity while on the sea at night.
The contrast between seafaring as presented in the Homeric epics and as known from archaeological evidence of the LBA eastern Mediterranean may shed further light on the question of celestial navigation. Jan-Paul Crielaard (2000) observes that long-distance maritime relations in the LBA were far greater in scale, more complex in organization and infrastructure, and served a wider range of exchange relationships than those depicted in the Iliad and Odyssey. The dense networks of trade in raw materials and finished goods, the elaborate harbor facilities of Egypt and the Levant, and the long-distance political relationships among the great states of the eastern Mediterranean had largely evaporated in the Early Iron Age, and do not figure in the epics. Crielaard's principal aim is to show that seafaring provides additional support for the argument, widely accepted today, that the world of the Homeric epics should be situated close to Homer's own time, if to any historical period at all (Bennet 1997; Morris 1997). But another implication of his arguments can be expressed as a question: If long-distance seafaring was better organized and more sophisticated in the LBA, would it be surprising to learn that Mycenaeans sailed at night and navigated by the stars, as did Homer's sea captains? The Homeric texts, together with iconographic evidence for a gradual development of the oared galley from late Mycenaean times to the Geometric period (see Chapter 3), do not imply significant technological progress. Although this is not conclusive
4.10 Sun, sea spirals, and fish incised on an Early Cycladic frying pan, Louros Athalassou cemetery, Naxos. © Hellenic Ministry of Education and Religions, Culture and Athletics/ Archaeological Receipts Fund. Courtesy of the National Archaeological Museum, Athens.
Proof, I am inclined to agree with Agouridis (1997: 17) that the use of celestial navigation for nighttime voyages on the open sea is virtually certain for the Aegean Bronze Age. Moreover, it may be that there was a division in Mycenaean maritime societies between master navigators, able to steer ships on long open-sea journeys by celestial navigation, and those whose knowledge was limited to local and daytime trips. This would parallel the recent situation in the South Pacific, where most ocean travel occurred within a short distance of a given island and the majority of men became adept at it, but only a handful achieved the level of navigational skill required for long open-sea journeys (Feinberg 1988: 88-91).
Even when Mycenaean captains chose to avoid open-sea voyaging when possible, it does not mean that their vessels hugged the coast too closely (Mark 2005: 139-42; Morton 2001: 143-72). Apart from the navigational hazards, known or unknown that lurked in coastal waters (pilotage along a coastline at night was particularly dangerous), the purpose of a voyage affected the desirability of a coastwise route. There might be little reason to stray far from shore for fishing excursions, or for visits to nearby coastal communities for social or trading purposes. Longer trading voyages involving multiple stops en route to buy and sell goods might also necessitate a coastwise, harbor-to-harbor strategy in which the vessel traveled a safe distance from the coast, but could quickly make for a harbor or anchorage to trade or to find shelter. In this case, the route reflected not fear of open-sea voyaging, but economic sense. As mentioned above, ships traveling near-coastal routes might also take advantage of coastal breezes and currents to make headway with or against prevailing winds. On the other hand, when the intention was to travel quickly from one place to another with little interest in intervening locations, a direct route over open sea was often preferable if environmental and human conditions permitted.
Maritime Networks in the Mycenaean World Sailing Routes in the Aegean
Although the proximity of myriad islands and coastlines presented almost unlimited hypothetical routes crisscrossing the Aegean, certain dominant and habitual routes may have emerged over time. There can be little doubt that environmental factors strongly influenced the routes that sea travelers followed around the Aegean in the Bronze Age. Winds, currents, topography, and seasonal weather patterns combined with technologies of shipbuilding, propulsion, and navigation to give shape to a range of possible routes and seasonal schedules. If these factors were sufficiently determinative, certain well-traveled sea lanes could be formalized over long periods of time, with a consequently strong impact on the pattern of social relations. Here a crucial question arises: Did environmental forces play a determining role in coastal settlement patterns, and even in maritime social relations? That is, did coastal communities arise or flourish because they were positioned advantageously with respect to sea paths favored by environmental forces such as winds and currents? Further, were their external relations patterned, or even determined, by movement along these favorable routes? If so, it should be possible to create a simple predictive model for the existence of significant Bronze Age coastal settlements at well-placed nodes along these routes.
Models that emphasize the role of environment on the formation of maritime networks in the Aegean Bronze Age have often been proposed, perhaps most cogently in recent years by Agouridis (1997) and Despoina Papageorgiou (2008, 2009). This approach has generally involved creating maps of hypothetical sea lanes based on environmental factors, particularly currents and/or winds, and then plotting the known archaeological sites for a given period to assess the fit between these two sets of data. Agouridis (1997: 6—15) shows how the currents and winds may have facilitated the dense connections implied by the archaeological evidence. He stresses that proximity can be misleading: islands close to one another but separated by rough seas may have had little contact (Agouridis 1997: 19). Papageorgiou strongly emphasizes the role of sea-surface circulation, determined by wind - and density-driven sea currents: “It is clear that the sea circulation contributed decisively to forming the routes of prehistoric ships in every direction, and to establishing sea lanes between all the mainland coasts and the Aegean islands" (Papageorgiou 2009: 204). On the basis of sea circulation patterns, she proposes six principal Aegean sea routes, with numerous potential subroutes (Fig. 4.11). These include both open-sea and coastal routes, since Papa-georgiou believes that open-sea and off-season travel were practiced whenever and wherever environmental conditions were permissive. Having established these routes, Papageorgiou examines the archaeological evidence for site location and activity in the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. She concludes that prehistoric coastal settlements “. . . were invariably founded on small promontories
4.11 Hypothetical Aegean Bronze Age sea routes. After Papageorgiou 2009: 210, fig. 4.
And peninsulas, close to protected bays and safe anchorages," and "... located at crucial points on the sea lanes" (Papageorgiou 2009: 216). On a larger stage, winds and currents are generally believed to have dictated a counterclockwise motion to long-distance trade in the eastern Mediterranean in the Bronze Age (Fig. 4.12).
Yet cultural factors may have figured more prominently in the establishment and evolution of maritime connections than allowed in these reconstructions. In Chapter 3, we saw how the introduction of the sail in the Cyclades at the end of the Early Bronze Age may have initiated a reconfiguration of prominent coastal nodes and the networks they served (Broodbank 2000: 347—49). Indeed, Broodbank has injected a stronger cultural element into the formation and configuration of maritime cultural networks in the prehistoric Aegean. He maintains that the mutability of environmental conditions and social and economic relations "... makes it unlikely that prevailing currents and winds would determine the locations of maritime centres," and further that "[i]t is more likely that social geography in combination with technological parameters for early seafaring defined such centres and fashioned the sea-paths linking them" (Brood-bank 2000: 94). From this perspective, environment, technology, and society converged in various ways to favor or hinder maritime connections in the Bronze Age Aegean. Among the conditions motivating such connections were kinship relations; demographic needs for exogamy and labor sharing; unequal resource distribution, which presented opportunities for exchange and possibly led to “social storage" arrangements among communities to buffer against resource failure; inter-elite relations; and mutual protection against predatory raiding. This view aligns closely with Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell's (2000) examination of historical interaction patterns around the Mediterranean, which reveals countless cases in which human tendencies to connection and mobility trump the ostensible constraints of topography on land and environmental conditions at sea. These connections then come to define regions of different scales and types, which are shaped as much by social as environmental imperatives. Thus, it is plainly inadequate to map maritime interactions based solely on environmental factors. It is the human response, operating within the opportunities and constraints of natural environment and socioeconomic milieu, which is decisive. Seafarers may develop innovative technologies (e. g., the sail) to alter the relationship between human and environment in their favor, or they may forge connections in spite of environmental challenges by finding ways to work around the more prohibitive obstacles. Once set in motion, maritime connections can create a cumulative history that serves to perpetuate relationships regardless of whether or not they reflect economic or environmental logic through changing times. For this reason, unraveling the history of particular connections can be revealing about how relationships among people and communities may persevere in spite of the vagaries of time.
One way to take these ideas further is to think in terms of a feedback or dialectical relationship between environmental and cultural variables, an annales history in which the relationships of humans with the sea, and with other humans across the sea, unfold over different scales of time and space (Braudel 1972). Building on the data discussed so far, we might propose that the parameters of seafaring involve the interplay of long-term structures of the longue duree (timeless circulation patterns that create the Mediterranean maritime climate, simple technologies of shipbuilding and navigation), medium-term patterns (conjunctures) of the moyenne duree (major climatic oscillations, technological innovations in boat construction and navigation, political and economic relationships on the scale of centuries), and historically contingent evenements that may be single events or short-term developments (collapse of the Mycenaean palaces, colonial forays, wars, short-term climatic variations). Johan Ronnby (2007) calls these “maritime durees" and proposes that it may be possible to identify experiences and mentalites unique to coastal inhabitants around the world and through time, an observation that is incorporated into the concept of coastscape, developed in Chapter 6.
4.12 Hypothetical long-distance sea routes in the eastern Mediterranean. After Wachsmann 1998: 296, fig. 13.1.
Scale affects historical trajectories in distinctive ways. The analytical focus advocated in this book on local-scale interactions owes a debt to Horden and Purcell's emphasis on the durability of short-distance interactions among “microregions," with considerably more unstable linkages to the shifting fortunes of supraregional entities. This emphasis results in a very different history from the traditional “Great Men and Battles" version, but one that reflects more faithfully the true rhythm and full scope of Mediterranean life. One of these alternative histories can be written about short-distance maritime connections, which offer a fundamentally different view from the great interregional trading routes on which most scholarship has focused. Although rarely studied, maritime small worlds of the Aegean Bronze Age offer a window on long-lived, though not necessarily unchanging or even stable, interactions. The durability of short-distance relations results from several factors that are typically absent in large-scale, cross-cultural contacts: (1) they are easier to maintain from a practical point of view, since distances and environmental obstacles are less inhibitive; (2) they are often founded on long-established and deeply embedded social ties; and (3) the communities they bind may be less susceptible to changing political fortunes if they lie outside the mainstream of momentous historical events. By contrast, interregional connections are more vulnerable to environmental and political forces, and are the first to be broken in turbulent times.
In effect, the analysis of maritime small worlds compresses space while expanding time. It is therefore possible to build a diachronic narrative of continuity and change in which small worlds are the focus and larger power centers and spheres of influence move into and out of view over time. The intent of this exercise is not a return to historical particularism, but rather on the one hand an interest in these people and places in their own right, and on the other a desire to assemble robust data in the service of regional-scale archaeological reconstructions, as well as comparative models that may embrace scales from regional to global (e. g., Parkinson and Galaty 2007; Wright 2004). Too often, these reconstructions and models have a flimsy foundation in data or rely on data sets that are not comparable. By building up from many well-documented local settings, we are better able to clarify their political and economic role in larger webs of interaction, and to analyze the nature and limits of influence wielded by power centers in peripheral areas (Tartaron 2010). Taking advantage of the benefits of this shift in perspective for the Mycenaean period relies on a comprehensive and interdisciplinary examination of the archaeological and environmental record.
Bronze Age Navigation in Practice: Navigational Aids
In the previous section, we established the vital nature of coastal pilotage for navigation in the Aegean. Pilotage was aided both by physical features that marked out maritime routes, warned of dangers, or promised safe haven; and by a body of maritime wisdom about them that systematized knowledge into practice. Let us first specify the aids that might have been available to Mycenaean navigators, and then consider how knowledge of their existence and use was transmitted over time.
The terminology describing navigational aids can be confusing. The terms landmark, seamark, and skymark would seem to indicate navigational cues existing on land, sea, and sky, respectively. This is exactly the usage adopted here, disregarding the more expansive definition of seamark that one often encounters, which includes all features that can be seen from the sea (Table 4.1). The specific combination of marks relevant to a given voyage cross-cuts these categories according to the nature of the travel: long distance or short run; day or night; coastwise or open sea; planned or opportunistic journey; familiar or unfamiliar routes; friendly or hostile waters; fair or foul weather. A local trip
From one coastal community to another might require knowledge of only a few coastal hazards and landmarks, while a voyage of some length could involve a great many of these navigational marks and a much greater store of knowledge and navigational skill. A sea captain leading a Mycenaean trading mission from the Argolid to Knossos on Crete would have called upon his knowledge ofwinds, currents, islands, and celestial bodies, as well as a solid knowledge of Cretan coastal topography, wind conditions, and coastal settlements.
World History
