The first signs of the emergence of complex society on the Greek mainland during the Bronze Age occurred with the precocious appearance of wealth and social differentiation in the shaft graves at Mycenae (Fig. 2.1), roughly contemporary with the neopalatial Minoan palaces on Crete (see Fig. 1.1, Table 1.1). The richness and quantity of the imported goods buried with the dead are especially striking against the background of a materially poor Middle Bronze Age (MBA; Rutter 2001, pp. 124—47, 151—55). This conspicuous consumption and display of exotic wealth is seen as a deliberate strategy to proclaim status through access to distant lands and their luxury materials (Voutsaki 1995, 1998, 1999, 2001). Because the exotic objects and pictorial art of the shaft graves show close ties with Minoan Crete, at that time at the apex of its neopalatial prowess, it has often been suggested that small groups of nascent elites on the mainland cultivated a “special relationship" with one or more Minoan palaces
2.1 Artist's reconstruction of Grave Circle A, as it appeared at Mycenae circa 1210 BC. Drawing by Piet de Jong, Annual of the British School at Athens 25: plate XVIII. Reproduced with the permission of the British School at Athens.
To gain access to exotic materials and artisans. The Minoan influence is certainly real and even profound in some areas, including iconography, ceramic forms and styles, metalworking, and to some extent funerary architecture, but the graves and their furnishings betray many other sources and craft traditions, including Anatolian and Egyptian, but more prominently of local or other mainland origin. Still, Minoan expansion may have been the catalyst for this transformation: the influx of Minoan and Cycladic goods disrupted the egalitarian social structures of Middle Helladic (MH) Greece with novel ideas and ways to distinguish oneself through the creation and expression of prestige (Voutsaki 1999, 2010). These new objects and styles were put to work as political capital through conspicuous ritual deposition in tombs. The execution of certain objects in distinct Minoan technique and style, but depicting mainland-oriented themes such as warfare and hunting, suggests the presence at Mycenae of Cretan artisans.
Meanwhile, in Messenia in the southwestern Peloponnese, a competitive process was underway, marked by the occurrence of early tholos tombs at several sites. Regional-scale research has traced the diachronic histories of several small settlements, demonstrating their changing fortunes and functions over time, first within a competitive environment and later as part of a palace state centered at Pylos. Excavations and surface surveys have documented the growth of
2.2 Aerial view of the citadel, Mycenae. Courtesy of Ira Block.
Settlement at Pylos from the beginning of the Shaft Grave Era to the formation and expansion of the palace (Bennet 1999), along with an apparent nucleation of population around the palace after 1400 as formerly active settlements in the hinterland diminished in importance (Bennet and Shelmerdine 2001).
World History
