The Bay of Volos, on the Aegean coast of Thessaly, presents another attractive setting for Mycenaean coastal activity (Fig. 7.32). Well sheltered by its position deep within the Pagasitic Gulf, the bay was the gateway from the sea to the rich Thessalian plain, already the destination of the earliest agropastoralists of the Greek Neolithic. Paleocoastal reconstruction of the bay shows that following the maximum marine transgression circa 6000 BP, at which time the sea penetrated three kilometers inland of its modern position, a series of human impacts and natural sedimentation processes caused the shore to prograde rapidly, so that by the EBA, the coastline had moved 1.5 to 2.0 kilometers seaward (Fig. 7.33; Zangger 1991). The location of the shoreline in the LBA is not known precisely, but it likely averaged two kilometers from the maximum marine transgression, or a little more than one kilometer inland from the modern coast. In addition to abundant arable and pasture land nearby, coastal dwellers could exploit
7.32 Area map of Thessaly, with important Neolithic and Bronze Age sites indicated. After Andreou et al. 2001: 261, fig. 1.
Marine resources and trade for timber and other forest products from the Pindos mountains.
Ringing the LBA Bay of Volos were a small number of large, nucleated settlements, most prominently Dimini, Kastro (Volos), and Pefkakia. By that time, Dimini was a little more than 2.5 kilometers from the bay, but Kastro and Pefkakia had always been and remained coastal sites. Each of these sites was inhabited through much of the Bronze Age, rarely with a hiatus or a shift in settlement location. Intrasite complexity was well established at the beginning of the Mycenaean palatial period, expressed in the construction of LH II—IIIA tholos tombs near Dimini and Kastro, and built chamber tombs at Pefkakia.13 Thus, by LH IIIA, one group in society built monumental structures and buried their dead in monumental tombs, while others lived and died more simply. All three sites suffered major destructions at the end of LH IIIB2; Dimini was reoccupied on a small scale in the beginning of LH IIIC, but by the end of LH IIIC Early was abandoned. Only Kastro persisted through LH IIIC and into Protogeometric and Geometric times (Batziou-Efstathiou 2003).
Thessaly is usually considered a periphery of the Mycenaean world, in spite of a large number of sites, both on the coast and in the interior, that were heavily Mycenaeanized. Bryan Feuer (1983, 1994, 1999, 2003) has modeled Thessaly as a periphery exhibiting decreasing integration with the Mycenaean world as one moves from the coast to the interior, in three zones that he terms the “inner border" (i. e., the coastal zone), the “outer border," and the “frontier" (e. g., Feuer 1999: fig. 5). Based on this pattern, Nikolas Papadimitriou (2008)
7.33 Map of the changing coastline of the Bay of Volos. Drawing by Felice Ford, after Zangger 1991: 3, fig. 1.
Characterizes Thessaly as both center and periphery. Adrimi-Sismani (2007) argues, however, that the entire region should be considered a fully integrated part of the Mycenaean world, having in common with it settlement patterns, intrasite settlement structure, tomb types, cult practices, pottery and other material culture, and a similar historical trajectory. For the coastal area, at least, this claim has merit and continuing discoveries tend to support it.
Much of Adrimi-Sismani's case rests on her excavations at the remarkable site of Dimini. She has touted Dimini as a Mycenaean palace center, probably the Iolkos of Homer and the saga of Jason and the Argonauts (Adrimi-Sismani 2006, 2007). Excavations from 1977 to 1997 revealed a Mycenaean settlement of around 10 hectares founded east of the Neolithic mound at the end of the fifteenth century (Adrimi-Sismani 1994, 1999, 2006, 2007). The site has two main architectural phases, in LH IIIA and LH IIIB. The later (thirteenth-century) settlement was divided into an eastern and a western zone by a wide road running north-south (Fig. 7.34). The western zone was an elite, or at least public, sector segregated from humbler domestic dwellings east of the road. The western sector centered on Megaron A and Megaron B, two large megaron-style corridor buildings, defined by Panagiota Pantou (2011: 39) as structures that comprise “ . . . a megaron-type unit flanked on one side by a long corridor and a series of smaller rooms (secondary wing)." These buildings were constructed of rubble stone foundations and mudbrick superstructures. A monumental gateway with three axial columns gave access to a forecourt and then to a peristyle courtyard before the megaron unit could be reached in Megaron A. In the series of small rooms to the south, separated from the megaron unit by a long corridor, evidence was found of food storage and preparation, as well as tools for potting and jewelry manufacture. Here too was found a fragment of a stone weight with a Linear B inscription (Adrimi-Sismani 2007: fig. 15.4). Megaron B was even more interesting, with plentiful evidence for cult activity and feasting (Adrim-Sismani 2007: 165). In the middle of the vestibule at the eastern end of the megaron unit lay an H-shaped altar of clay attached to an elliptical platform and two perforated, triangular mudbricks. A painted mug found in situ in front of the altar suggests the pouring of libations. In three small attached rooms to the south, cups holding the remains of animal bones were recovered. Outside the southern entrance to the large western room of the megaron unit, 16 small Mycenaean clay figurines were found next to a large limestone slab with cavities, suggesting a function as a kernos for the placement of cult offerings. The northern auxiliary wing contained many storage, cooking, and serving vessels, and just outside the building middens of animal and fish bones, seashells, and broken pottery may be the refuse of feasts. The two large rooms of the megaron unit were found nearly empty, but considering their size and the finds from adjacent areas, they may have been locations for communal eating and drinking, cult ceremonies, and other kinds of public gatherings (Pantou 2010: 386—87). The evidence from Dimini indicates the existence of an intrasite social hierarchy with two tiers: an elite ruling and priestly caste living in the western sector and burying their dead in two tholos tombs at the site, and a larger group of commoners engaged in agropastoral and craft occupations and burying their dead in modest cist graves (Pantou 2010: 389). Adrimi-Sismani (2007: 167) labels Dimini a palace center and the controlling hub of a regional hierarchy in which Dimini "... combines all the features of an administrative, financial, and religious center, and consequently it is the only settlement in Thessaly that clearly displays organization and social elements. . . of a true center."
Leaving aside Dimini's possible mythical connections, not all accept the designation of the Megaron A/Megaron B complex as palatial, or of Dimini as a regionally dominant center. In a thorough and methodical reassessment of the archaeological evidence in the Volos region, Pantou (2010, 2011) has challenged many of Adrimi-Sismani's interpretations. Her disagreements fall in two main areas. First, she asserts that the "palace" at Dimini is not palatial. Although the plans (corridor buildings with megaron units, storage, industrial, and cult areas) and some of the activities (e. g., feasting, cult) carried out in Megara A and
7.34 Architectural plan of LBA Dimini. Drawing by Felice Ford, after Pantou 2010: 388,
Fig. 5.
B emulate those of the Mycenaean palaces, the materials used (stone socle and mudbrick superstructure), the modest elaboration (e. g., simple plastered floor and walls with some painted colors but no frescoes, no ashlar blocks), and the size (falling into Pascal Darcque's [2005] intermediate, not palatial, category) fall far short of their counterparts at Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos, and elsewhere. Further, the discovery of part of a stone weight with a Linear B inscription does not constitute evidence for “ . . . the presence of an accounting system that monitored the movement of products manufactured in the complex" (Adrimi-Sismani2007: 168).
Second, Dimini was perhaps not the “administrative, financial, and religious center" of the Volos region. Pantou (2010: 383) finds striking similarities in architecture, burial types, and material culture among the settlements at Dimini, Kas-tro, and Pefkakia. For example, only minor differences in elaboration and grave furnishings exist when one compares tholoi with tholoi and cist graves with cist graves across the region. A two-tiered social hierarchy of ruling elites and commoners existed at each site, manifest in contrasts of architectural elaboration and burial monuments, but in Pantou's view this did not extend to a regional hierarchy (an opinion already expressed by Andreou et al. 2001: 272—73). Instead, she envisions a stable socioeconomic environment with a heterarchical rather than hierarchical relationship among the sites. Dimini, Kastro, and Pefkakia were independent communities with their own internal hierarchies, but with regard to one another display overlapping, redundant features and functions. The settlements are three to five kilometers apart, intervisible, and unfortified.
They lack smaller satellite settlements. In this the Volos region differs from the inland settlement pattern (the Lake Karla region, Almyros Plain, and Pharsala region), where large settlements are surrounded by satellites, probably small agricultural or pastoral settlements (Adrimi-Sismani 2007: 171—74). The contrast must partly reflect a stronger orientation toward maritime and industrial pursuits at the coast, but Pantou (2010: 386) does caution that systematic, intensive surveys are needed to be sure that small sites have not been missed.
If Pantou's reconstruction of the Volos area without a central-place hierarchy is correct, it may be similar to the situation in the northern Corinthian plain, where Pullen and I have argued for long-term social and economic stability in a heterarchical arrangement of settlements (e. g., Gonia, Perdikaria, Korakou) spaced at regular intervals and exploiting similar resources in a generous environment (Pullen and Tartaron 2007; Pantou [2010: 394] notes the similarity herself). Such a stable milieu may in fact inhibit the emergence of an overarching palace center (Haggis 2002; Pullen and Tartaron 2007: 148). This is in contrast to the Saronic Gulf: although Aiginetan dominance was politically underdeveloped, Kolonna was nevertheless the undisputed central place settlement and economic power driving the maritime small world for a millennium. The Mycenaean features in the Volos region might be explained primarily by acculturation, since there is strong evidence of connections with southern Greece already in the MBA. The reader will recall Maran's argument that by MH II, potters in coastal Thessaly were emulating the shapes and decorative schemes of matt-painted Aiginetan pottery (his “Magnesia polychrome"), and from there the influences traveled along with Thessalian products to the northeastern Aegean islands in MH and early LH (Cultraro 2005; Maran 2007). By the time the Mycenaean palaces emerged in the Peloponnese and Boeotia, an elite familiar with southern materials and practices was in place and eager for practical and symbolic markers of power (Adrimi-Sismani 2010).
These observations help us to better define coastscapes and small worlds in the Volos region and beyond. The Bay of Volos may comprise a series of coastscapes within a small world defined by the Pagasitic Gulf. To the south, the Almyros plain and the western and southern coasts of the Pagasitic Gulf have produced several LH sites and five small tholos tombs in the Pteleos area, despite patchy investigation (Adrimi-Sismani 2007: 173). Even less information is available about the Gulf's eastern promontory. It remains likely, however, that the Bay of Volos, with three major, independent settlements, was the main port area for the Pagasitic Gulf, and Pefkakia may have served as the principal harbor. Heterarchy does not mean simply the absence of hierarchy, however, but the possibility of shifting hierarchies and nonhierarchical configurations over time. Thus, in the Volos region we see that the main settlement at Dimini suffered a hiatus between EH III and MH II; Pefkakia was particularly prosperous and outward looking in the EBA and MBA; tholos tomb use continued in LH IIIB only at Dimini; and only Kastro survived beyond LH IIIC Early. With these and many more observations on individual site histories we can tease out the subtleties of their interrelationships over time.
Casting an eye beyond the Gulf to the regional scale, the early interactions with the nearby Sporades and the northern Aegean islands as far as Lemnos trace out one part of the regional interaction sphere. Another obvious and important maritime route ran south into the narrow Euboean Gulf, the safer side of Euboea for navigation, giving access to Attica, the Cyclades, and farther on the Saronic Gulf and the eastern Peloponnese. The North Euboean Gulf, with many coastal Mycenaean sites, was surely another small world that would reward investigation (Crielaard 2006; Kramer-Hajos 2008; Nikolopoulos 2003; Van de Moortel and Zahou 2005).
Placing an area like the Bay of Volos in a maritime cultural landscape framework may be simply a matter of posing the question from that point of view. One could systematically gather information on the exploitation of marine resources (e. g., fish and shellfish at Dimini), the physical traces of harbor activities at Pefkakia, the evidence of extralocal contacts in the material culture assemblages (e. g., Aiginetan influence on the MBA pottery repertoire; a Canaanite amphora at Dimini), and compare these across the sites. Were the intervisible communities at Dimini, Kastro, and Pefkakia acting in concert in connecting to networks within and beyond the Pagasitic Gulf, or were they acting independently? Was Pefkakia the main harbor for all three? Returning to the question of surface survey coverage in the region, Pantou (2010: 386) doubts that we understand the nature and degree of integration of the coastal area with the interior because there have not been systematic, intensive surveys. How much would such a survey change the picture we now have of large, solitary coastal settlements articulating with very differently organized habitation and production in the interior? How much could systematic survey add to the more “empty" eastern and western land masses enclosing the Pagasitic Gulf, and how would that change our reconstruction of coastscapes and maritime small worlds in the area? The Pagasitic Gulf is a fascinating case study in the extension of Mycenaean influence along maritime routes, and despite a spate of new discoveries and the extraordinary work at sites like Dimini, there is much more that could be learned with problem-oriented research on maritime networks at the local and small-regional scale.
Conclusion
The aim in presenting one detailed and two brief case studies of Mycenaean maritime worlds has been not only to demonstrate a particular approach, but also to try to convince the reader that this approach offers the possibility of alternative histories that are truly meaningful because they reveal details about the fabric of Mycenaean life as experienced by most coastal and near-coastal dwellers. The scale of analysis appears to be justified because to a surprising extent, each region in the Mycenaean world was unique, due to the varied environmental and historical conditions that are expressed in the structure and contingency of the long-, medium-, and short-term processes of annales history. Just how striking these contrasts can be is shown in a brief comparative analysis of seven Bronze Age “settlement regions" on or near the North Euboean Gulf by Margaretha Kramer-Hajos (2008: 114—17). Despite being contiguous and occupying a relatively small part of Greece, they exhibit sharp differences in political organization, site types and locations, burial practices, monumental works, and other social and cultural characteristics. Surely this result validates the microregional framework of Horden and Purcell, and the focus of this book on the local and microregonal scale. Nevertheless, we must not lose sight of the bigger picture: the results of the analysis of coastscapes and small worlds form the robust data sets that can make big-picture and cross-cultural studies more than “cherry picking" from trait lists for superficial similarities and differences (Tartaron 2008: 134, 2010).
In the concluding chapter, I shall restate the main points of the study, and discuss prospects for future research along the same lines.
World History
