There are other useful frameworks that address the same issue. For example, Bernard Knapp and John Cherry (1994: 123-55) simplified Renfrew's list with four overlapping mechanisms of Late Bronze Age trade that emphasize the locus of control: centralized control, localized control, freelance trade, and gift exchange.
Chapter 3: Ships and Boats of the Aegean Bronze Age
McGrail (2001: 133) notes, however, that Egyptian shipwrights already knew of locked mortise-and-tenon joinery in the mid-third millennium BC, as superstructural elements of the Khufu funerary boat used the technique. It is uncertain why theY chose not to join the hull planks in this way.
According to McGrail (2001: 138), in the Mediterranean even sewn ships relied to some extent on treenails or mortise-and-tenon fastenings within the seams with lacings across the seams. Thus, the status of an ancient Mediterranean tradition of solelY sewn hulls comparable to that of northwestern Europe is uncertain.
The use of a pole for propulsion, known from Bronze Age Egypt but more suitable in riverine contexts, cannot be confirmed for the Aegean. Uniquely, the Stathatos seal (W910), of MM III-LM I date, may show two females poling a vessel that also has five oars below the hull.
There is enormous confusion about the relationship between the terms steering oar and quarter rudder, starting from their very definitions. There appears to be no universal agreement; depending on the source, they can be synonyms, hierarchically related (one is a kind of the other), or completely distinct (the rudder developed from and superseded the steering oar). For different perspectives, see Block 2003: 8-9; Mark 2005: 121-22; Mott 1991: 2; and Runyan 1999. Because most studies of Aegean Bronze Age ships use the term steering oar, with some justification, I follow that convention here.
A painted ceramic disk, recently discovered at As-Sabiyah in Kuwait in a context contemporaneous with Ubaid 3, the second half of the fifth millennium BC, depicts a boat with a bipod mast but no visible sail (Carter 2006). If we assume a sailing vessel, this would now be the earliest known use of mast and sail.
The gradual migration of the sail toward amidships in Egypt can be traced in representations from the Old to the New Kingdom: Jones 1995: 36-51, Plates V, VI, And VIII; Raban and Sterlitz 2002: 655.
The painted larnax from Gazi, Crete (W608) is a potential exception if the LM IIIB Date is correct.
Note should also be taken of the so-called talismanic glyptic representations of ships, bearing stylized, abstract elements on and above hulls that could be sails, awning structures, ikria (see below), or other structures. These enigmatic images, with a chronological range between MM III and LM II, have long been associated with ritual and magic (Wedde 2000: 134-41).
These “types” are of course the creation of modern observers. Apart from possibly failing to approximate the way Mycenaean people formed distinctions about watercraft, they very likely suppress real variabilitY (see below).
I am grateful to Hariclia Brecoulaki and Sharon Stocker for allowing me to mention the naval fresco, and for sending me an image of it in advance of publication.
I am grateful to Michael Cosmopoulos for his kind correspondence concerning the Iklaina fresco fragment, and for sending me a coPy of the paper cited here.
The assumption that the highly abstracted form of the stempost device of the Iron Age continues to represent a bird, in a unbroken chain of continuity from Mycenaean times (Wachsmann 1998: 177-97), is challenged by Wedde (2002: 83743), who interprets abstract curving devices of the Iron Age as horns. de Souza (2000: 16) advances a more extreme view that does not recognize coastal plundering as piracy: "People using ships to plunder coastal settlements are not called pirates, so they cannot really be said to be practising piracy.” His subsequent discussion of Homeric and other sources aPpears to contradict this position.
This question forms part of a greater inquiry into strategies of self-representation among ruling groups. The Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations did not share the Egyptian and Near Eastern propensity for iconographic and narrative emphasis on individual rulers, for example. Several archaeologists have modeled these contrasting tendencies in terms of "network” (centralized, exclusionary) vs. "corporate” (decentralized, inclusive) strategies of leadership and self-representation (Blanton et al. 1996; Feinman 2000). The Mycenaeans, with their sharply hierarchical social structure revealed in the Linear B archives, are usually placed farther toward the "network” end of this spectrum than the Minoans: Borgna 2004; Parkinson and GalatY 2007.
This orientation may be partially a consequence of the inward-focused Middle Bronze Age societies from which theY emerged.
Mention should also be made of the remains of a small wooden boat of the EBA-MBA transition recently discovered at Mitrou in central Greece (Van de Moortel and Zahou 2009). Conservation of this find is ongoing and little information is available at present.
This discussion does not take into account fishing in rivers or lakes. Because few rivers in Greece are perennial, especially in the southern and central regions and the Aegean islands, they are not a significant source of fish. Lakes of substantial size are also relatively few in Greece, but these presumably would have been well stocked with fish. The eels from Lake Kopais were an especial delicacy in classical times (Aristophanes, Acharnians l. 940-950; Pausanias 9.24.2; see Vika et al. 2009). Kopais was partially drained in the Mycenaean palatial period to reclaim land for agriculture (Knauss 2001).
Wedde's assessment is, of course, built upon the assumption that the artists tried to approximate the dimensions of real vessels of which they had some knowledge.
19 The sailing estimate from Crete to Egypt is based in part on a reference in the Odyssey (14.255-57) in which a sailing ship from Crete riding a fresh north wind made the Nile delta on the fifth day. The underlying assumption is that the performance traits of Aegean Bronze Age sailing ships were similar to those described by Homer. In view of the gradual development of ships like the Mycenaean galley in the Early Iron Age, this assumption has some validity.
20 Tilley (1999: 423) defines a true sailing ship as “ . . . one that can make some headway under sail up wind” (italics in original), and continues, “I would like to distinguish it as sharply as possible from a galley.” Modern sailing boats are not considered capable of sailing directly into the wind, and so must undertake tacking maneuvers at various anGles to windward.
21 Tzalas (1995b: 453-54) also suggests technical improvements that would increase speed and minimize the rather excessive drift that the canoe experienced. These steps might reduce travel time somewhat.
Chapter 4: The Maritime Environment of the Aegean Sea
1 A thorough and highly readable account by Jamie Morton, The Role of the Physical Environment in Ancient Greek Seafaring (Morton 2001), covers most of this ground in far more detail than is possible here. His work, however, focuses on the historical period and to a large extent provides a commentary on a wide range of textual references to Aegean seafaring found in literature from Homer to the Roman period. Some of the conditions of seafaring that he describes - for example with respect to ships, navigational knowledge, and the organization of maritime trade - were quite distinct from those that prevailed earlier in the Mycenaean period. Nevertheless, this is important source material and most of his observations on the seafaring environment remain valid for the Bronze AGe.
2 During a recent junior world championship sailing event in the Thermaic Gulf at Thessaloniki in July 2009, the competition was forced off the water by a strong vardari wind: Http://470.org/content. asp? id=1700, accessed March 24, 2010.
3 The recent discovery of Lower Paleolithic habitation in the Plakias region of Crete, an island for at least the last five million years, implies open-sea navigation at least 130,000 years ago: Strasser et al. 2010. If confirmed, these results will have a profound impact on our knowledge of early seafaring and the dispersal of early humans.
4 Several periploi are extant in fragmentary or near-complete form. Among the more complete are The Periplus of Hanno the Navigator (sixth century BC), The Massaliote Periplus (sixth century BC?), The Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax (fourth or third century BC), The Periplus of Scymnus of Chios (late second century BC), The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (first century BC), and the Periplus Ponti Euxini (early second century AD). The following passage from the Periplus Ponti Euxini, written by Arrian (best known for his history of Alexander the Great), exemplifies the use of these features as segments in a longer journey:
From the Phasis, we passed the navigable river Charies; there are 90 stades between the two.
From the river Charies, we sailed on another 90 stades to the river Chobos, and there we anchored. . . . From the Chobos, we passed the navigable river Sigame; it is approximately 210 stades from the Chobos. After the Sigame is the river Tarsouras; there are 120 stades between the
Two. The river Hippos is 150 stades beyond the Tarsouras, and the Astelephos 30 beyond the Hippos.
5 In this regard, it is interesting that one of the contingents of rowers listed on An 610 came from the island of Zakynthos and may have held mercenary status.
6 Hesiod himself had sailed only as far as Euboea, a short crossing from the mainland, and as a passenger at that. The advice he dispenses about the sea is common wisdom; he can hardly be said to have any specific knowledge about seafaring. The implication that land-locked farmers regularly owned ships and took to the sea is intriguing, but we cannot tell from this passage how far they ventured. According to the model presented in this book, these must have been relatively short-distance voyages, for reasons of knowledge but also because perishable commodities would not keeP for long.
7 Tim Severin (1985: 132-44) gives a vivid description of the extraordinary difficulties of passing through the Bosporus from the Dardanelles in the Argo, a reconstructed “Bronze Age” twenty-oared galley.
Chapter 5: Coasts and Harbors of the Bronze Age Aegean: Characteristics, Discovery, and Reconstruction
1 The main area of disagreement I have with Morton (2001) and Papageorgiou (2009) concerns the pervasiveness of coastal change, especially of tectonic origin, and the importance of identifying coastal configuration at a specific, local scale. They are right that in general the processes of change are the same as in the past (by simple uni-formitarian principles) and that the same range of coastal features existed in the Bronze Age as do now. But I believe that coastal change is more dynamic than they allow, resulting in shifting anchorages over time, and I hope to argue persuasively in this chapter for acquiring detailed knowledge of local coastal settings as a necessary first steP toward understanding Mycenaean maritime networks at all scales.
2 Isostasy refers to the rebound of land masses formerly under ice sheets, causing a drop in relative sea level (isostatic compensation) in glacial margins. Because this is not a process that affects the Mediterranean, I do not consider it further.
3 Tanner (1995) outlines an alternate mechanism in which the ridge and swale sets are formed bY a sea-level rise-and-fall couplet with amplitude from 5 to 30 centimeters.
4 Although similar in plan, the Minoan structures differ from later Classical ship sheds in their location away from the shore; thus, they were not used for launching ships as were the Classical shiP sheds (Shaw and Shaw 1999: 369).
5 It may be significant that Ellen Davis (2007) considers the Ayia Irini frescoes to have been painted by traveling Cretan artists.
6 Van de Noort and O'Sullivan (2006: 36-37) emphasize that certain types of biogenic wetlands, notably peatlands, actually rank among the poorest biomass producers in the world because of saturation, which deprives plants and animals of nutrients, and high acidity. Mediterranean wetlands generally have a riverine or estuarine oriGin, with high biomass and biodiversity.
7 Here I use this term in a generic sense to indicate the recovery of a continuous core; see Rapp and Hill 1998: 192-94 for distinctions among the terms coring, drilling, and anGering.
8 Other biogenic clasts, including diatoms and pollen, are not included here as they have not played a significant role in paleocoastal reconstruction to date. For details, see Marriner and Morhange 2007: 170-71.
Chapter 6: Concepts for Mycenaean Coastal Worlds
Brad Duncan (2006: 10) points out that although Westerdahl coined a term that has come into common use, a long tradition of ethnographic, archaeological, and anthropological research in the Pacific had already addressed many of the same issues using oral traditions, toponymy, and specialized local knowledge to illumiNate identity and belonging to place among maritime communities.
W. V. Harris (2005: 6, n. 15) observes that while the microregion is a central concept in The Corrupting Sea, it is nowhere defined explicitly enough to prevent ambiguity in attemptinG to apply it.
Constantakopoulou (2007: 231) acknowledges that the term peraia has a broader application to any region that is controlled or possessed by a state. The narrower sense employed here is, however, the most commonly attested.
Here we must treat Crete as a mainland or mini-continent, and not an island. It has not been suggested that the small islands off the Cretan coast possessed peraiai; rather, islands such as Mochlos and Pseira acted as “gateways” to harbors on Crete's northern coast (Betancourt 2004; Betancourt and Banou 1991; Branigan 1991). Malkin's important book, which incorporates his prior work on colonization, crosscultural interaction, identity, and ethnicity into a network theory framework, arrived too late for me to consider in detail in the present work.
Leone Porciani (2009) observes that Horden and Purcell tend to emphasize peaceful relations, while underplaying the role of aggressive and hostile interactions.
This summary of Broodbank's PPA model is partly excerpted from Tartaron 2001b: 228.
For an overview of the intellectual history of network analysis, see Scott 1991: 7-38.
Chapter 7: Coastscapes and Small Worlds of the Aegean Bronze Age: Case Studies
Because changes in the coastline at a local scale since the Bronze Age can be considerable, this statement should be qualified simply by keeping in mind that today's good anchorages need not be the same as those in the Bronze Age, but on average anchorages of comparable kind and quality were available.
If the story that the hoard was found in the nineteenth century in a LHIIIB chamber tomb on Windmill Hill is correct, this would mean that the hoard was originally looted in the Bronze Age and redeposited in the chamber tomb, or that it was preserved as an heirloom collection for several hundred years before its ultimate dePosition in the LH IIIB burial.
The contributors to Fitton 2009 Do not come to a consensus about the date of the Aigina Treasure, though a date between later MH I and MH II seems to be favored. The treasure and the shaft grave are not so readily comparable because the artifact composition between a jewelry hoard and a warrior burial are functionally distinct. Hiller (2009) believes that the gold objects from the two contexts represent different traditions, one Minoan (the jewelry of the Aigina Treasure) and one from the mainland (the shaft grave).
Much of the following discussion closely follows excerpts from Tartaron 2010: 17172 and Tartaron et al. 2011, with some modifications and additions. These recent writings continue to reflect mY current thinking on the matter.
The Saronic Harbors Archaeological Research Project is carried out under the auspices of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, with the approval of the 37th Ephoreia of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities and the 25th Ephoreia
Of Byzantine Antiquities, and a permit issued by the Greek Ministry of Culture. For their kind support, we wish to thank Konstantinos Kissas and Panayiota Kasimi from the 37th Ephoreia and Demetrios Athanasoulis from the 25th Ephoreia. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Institute for Aegean Prehistory, the U. S. National Science Foundation (Grant BCS-0810096), the Stavros S. Niar-chos Foundation, the Loeb Classical Library Foundation, the Arete Foundation, the Florida State University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Norwich University. Investigations of the underwater areas of Kalamianos and the Korphos Bay region are undertaken as a joint Greek-Canadian project, under the direction of Despina Koutsoumba of the Ephoreia of Enalion Antiquities and Joseph Boyce of McMaster University, representing the Canadian Institute in Greece. This project is independent of, but in close cooperation with, SHARP.
The reconstructed shoreline positions are approximations based on the modern bathymetric contours and do not take into account the effects of sediment accumulation and compaction following the submergence of the beachrock platforms. These parameters will be clarified in future studies.
Amy Dill and D. J. Pullen, personal communication. A number of samples have been selected for a future program of petrographic and chemical analysis aimed at clarifying the source of the potting materials as well as aspects of production and consumPtion.
Recent discussions with colleagues have raised the likelihood that similar cairns may exist in many places in southern Greece that have not previously been recognized as EBA features.
The interviews were much more extensive than those I consulted here. The oral histories will be the subject of future publication by Tzortzopoulou-Gregory.
For a brief but vivid description of a traditional charcoal-burning operation in the Souli region of southern Epirus, see Newby 1998: 168-170.
In the post-Bronze Age era, the progradation was asymmetrical, with the bifurcation of the Maeander into northern and southern branches, of which the northern branch caused a far more rapid advance of the coastline in the northern and central Gulf than in the south (Knipping et al. 2008: fig. 1; Mullenhoff et al. 2005).
Another tholos tomb was discovered at Kazanaki, but it is sufficiently distant from the settlements under discussion that it may have been attached to an undiscovered settlement.
World History
