LBA Pylos Fall of Mycenaean Civilization

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LBA Pylos Fall of Mycenaean Civilization

• 2/14/06
• CNE/ART 354

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Mycenaean Clay Cult Figurines (Met)
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More Cult Figurines
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Psi Figurine
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Attika Clay Kernos
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Mycenaean Seated Figurines from Athenian Agora
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Violent Culture

• Shown in architecture (citadels focused on
  defense), grave goods (swords), frescoes (war and
  hunting scenes), armor, seal ring art (hunt
  scenes, war scenes).

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Mycenaean Armor
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Bronze Sword and Spear
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Tiryns

• Near the coast
• Massive fortifications (greater than Mycenaes)
• Megaron on top
• Port citadel subordinate to Mycenae?
• Associated with Herakles in myth.

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Acropolis Development, Tiryns
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Tiryns, Gallery
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Tiryns, Battle Fresco
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Tiryns, Fresco of Woman
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Gla

• In central Greece, NE of Thebes
• In prehistoric times, was a seasonal lake (Lake
  Kopais).
• Around 1350, they drained it with canals into the
  gulf. Huge earthen dykes built with walls. Water
  entering was channeled between them.
• Massive hydraulic engineering project.
• Reclaimed land for agriculture.
• Flooded again in post-Mycenaean times
  permanently drained in 19th c. CE.

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Pylos (Messenia)

• Palace of Nestor
• Built on low rise, one of best preserved
  Mycenaean palaces.
• Destroyed circa 1200 dont know much about its
  earlier phases since the walls are so massive in
  its later, final phase.
• Organized around megaron, surrounded by
  storerooms and workshops, residential areas.

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• Built circa 1300.
• No central court.
• Originally fortified, then not.
• Megaron had circular hearth in center, painted
  plaster floor (tiled effect), surrounded by
  pillars wood throne.
• Frescoes of griffins, heraldic around throne,
  suggests ideology of sustaining/justifying the
  power of rulers.

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Frescoes in Megaron
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Court of the Megaron
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Pylos Fresco in Megaron
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Megaron Floor Colors
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Head from Silver Cup in Propylon
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War Fresco
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Griffin Lion Fresco
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Room 5 Procession Fresco
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Room 5
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Palace

• Excavated in its entirety
• By entranceway archive room.
• 1300 Linear B tablets found on first day of
  excavation by Blegen.
• Domestic area to the W
• Shrine area to the E
• Repair area for chariots, armor, arms

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Palace Architecture

• Walls rubble with timber framework
• Ceilings and columns also timber
• Wall exteriors ashlar limestone blocks
• Storage areas pantries stored pottery magazines
  had jars embedded in benches.

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Room 38 Pots, as excavated
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Painted Pots, Magazine 32
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Storerooms
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Palace Kylikes, as excavated
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Storage-sized Stirrup Jar
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Linear B Tablets

• Lined, highly organized on page
• Record ritual activity
• Mention officials (political or bureaucratic
  organization), with the wanax at the top
  (king). Documents reveal a finely graded
  hierarchy (even to fire-kindlers, bakers,
  etc.).
• Document economic organization of the territory,
  found in the palaces, massive redistribution
  centers with dozens of storerooms.

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Linear B Tablets as excavated in Archive Room
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Linear B Tablet FR 1184
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Linear B Tablet FR 12256
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Pylos Port Topography
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Pictorial Representations

• Begin in LHIIIB C.
• Representation of warriors, chariots, horses.
• Example Warrior Vase from Mycenae
• Theory as to why they appear fresco art is
  turned to pottery, which otherwise continued the
  dark on light style.

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Warrior Vase (Krater)
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Krater Fragment
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Man and Bull, c. 1250
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Mycenaean Importance

• Trade shows us that the Mycenaeans were involved
  in farflung networks of exchange (found in the
  west, Sicily and Sardinia, and in the Near East
  and Egypt).
• Hittite state archives have letters complaining
  about a western kingdom, Ahhiyawa (Akhaia,
  later a name for a region in Greece). In the 13th
  century, Hittite kings addressed the Ahhiyawa
  rulers as equals.

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Fall of Mycenaean Civilization

• Scales of Analysis
• site (e.g. Pylos)
• region (e.g. Messenia)
• area (e.g. southern Greece)
• inter-area (e.g. eastern Mediterranean)

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Signs of Trouble

• 13th century - raw materials were being used more
  sparingly by Mycenaean metalworkers.
• Circa 1200 Linear B tablets show shortfalls in
  tax collection.
• Fortifications increased at Mycenae, Tiryns,
  Athens, the Isthmus of Corinth. Subterranean
  water supply systems were added to citadels to
  withstand siege (Mycenae, Tiryns, Athens).
• Population shifted from unfortified to fortified
  areas.

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Wall at Mycenae
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Mycenae Citadel Reconstruction
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Caveat re Dating

• For this time period, the dating of Aegean events
  is mostly relative, relying on ceramics lacks
  precision.
• Lack of publication of sites, and so lack of
  information about the pottery in the final
  occupation levels of sites LHIIIB.

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Series of Destructions

• Between 1225 and 1175 BCE
• Pylos destroyed, burnt, never reoccupied
• Tiryns Between 1300-1200, suffered 2
  destructions citadel fortifications built,
  damaged by earthquake, rebuilt, but no longer
  functioned as a palace. 1150 citadel is not
  reoccupied, site gradually deserted.
• Mycenae 1250, buildings outside citadel suffer
  damage, not rebuilt. Large walls are built around
  citadel. 1200 destruction - earthquake? 1150
  site abandoned.

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Earthquake Damage

• Collapse of huge walls
• Bending of huge walls at strange angles
• Separations of houses from foundations
• Bodies found under rubble.
• Earthquake storm? Within a fault, the released
  stress of an earthquake goes on to trigger
  another earthquake elsewhere large independent
  quakes over long distances and long spans of time.

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Iain Stewart, BBC

• Most controversial is the theory that an
  earthquake storm may have been responsible for
  the abrupt physical and political collapse of
  Aegean Bronze Age world around 1200 BC. Some
  geologists and archaeologists point out that most
  of the ancient cities that fell at that time lie
  along the plate-boundary of the eastern
  Mediterranean and show signs of destruction
  typical of earthquakes. It supports a view that a
  storm of earthquakes successively unzipped the
  plate boundary, so weakening the cities along the
  way that they were left vulnerable militarily,
  inviting attacks from opportunistic neighbours.

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Series of Destructions

• Athens experienced violent destructions of the
  Mycenaean citadel on the Acropolis circa 1200.
• Thebes destructions circa 1250, 1200.
• Gla destructions circa 1200.
• Crete 1250/1200 burnings, destructions at
  Kommos, Chania, Knossos.

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Pattern of Events

• What is happening, on different scales?
• These are not for the most part single
  destructions, but an accumulation of them.
• Slow abandonment of sites taking place over 4
  generations.
• After 1200, massive reduction of sites around
  palace centers, including large, fertile areas.
  Example Messenia before 1200 150 known sites.
  After 1200 14 known sites. Widespread population
  shifts/movements.

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Migrations

• Population influxes can be seen both west and
  east of the mainland
• Ionian islands
• Cypus
• BUT Some areas on the mainland seem to have
  absorbed influx as well Achaea, eastern Attika

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Map Geographic Areas
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Post-palatial sites
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Questions

• How? Most palaces were burned.
• Why?
• a) Later Greek literary tradition of the Dorian
  invasion (no archaeological evidence for this).
• b) Set of factors inherent in the system power
  and control centered in the palaces. Maintenance
  of the palaces was essential to the cultures
  survival.

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Disruptions of the System

• Could bring down rulers
• bad harvests (evidence for extended drought
  palaces stormed to get agricultural produce?)
• disrupted trade routes (happened throughout the
  Aegean as we know from Egyptian records there
  was major unrest throughout the region at this
  time)
• A combination of factors such as these could
  destabilize the palace, leading to destruction
  from within the society itself.

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Sea Peoples Other Enemies

• End of 13th century Egypt was attacked by the
  Sea Peoples.
• 12th century Egypt and the Hittites fought
  intermittently until the Hittite empire
  collapsed.
• Circa 1300 great city of Troy VI destroyed by
  earthquake, rebuilt, besieged, destroyed by fire.
• Only Egypt of the major ancient civilizations
  survived the disruptions at this time.

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Sea Peoples Glazed Tiles
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Sea Peoples Canaanites Philistine
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Medinet Habu Reliefs
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Close up of the Peleset (Philistines?)
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Who were the Philistines?

• Mycenaean Greek refugees.
• Material evidence after their defeat by Ramses
  III in 1176 BCE, they settled 5 towns in the area
  of the modern Gaza strip and southern Israel.
• Excavation finds are almost exactly the same as
  those from 12th century Greece.

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Close up of Sheklesh (Sicilians?)
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Linear B Evidence

• Tablet recording religious ceremony that seems to
  indicate the sacrifice of people to the gods.
• Example PYLOS perform an action at the shrine
  of Zeus, and bring the gifts and bring those to
  carry them. To Zeus one gold bowl, one man. To
  Posidaeia one gold cup, one woman.

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Danger from the Sea

• Linear B tablet from Pylos may refer to military
  danger from the sea
• As follows, the watchers are guarding the
  coastal area. Command of Maleus at Owitono
  Ampelitawon, Orestas, Etewas, Kokkion. 50
  suweowijo men of Owitono at Oichalia . . .
• Final defense against sea invasion, or routine
  military force?

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Summary of Theories

• From Rutter
• Economic factors
• Climatic change
• Internal social upheaval
• Invasion from outside the Aegean world
• Changes in the nature of warfare (massed
  chariotry replaced with light-armed and highly
  mobile infantry using javelins)

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Questions to Consider (Rutter)

• How stable was Mycenaean palatial civilization in
  the first place?
• Were there certain shocks that affected the
  palatial civilization as a whole?
• Why were the palaces never rebuilt?
• Why were large, fertile portions of the
  Peloponnese depopulated for as much as a century
  afterward? What population percentages died of
  famine/disease/battle, what percentages migrated?

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Consequences of the Fall of Palatial Civilization

• Palace bureaucracies collapsed.
• Linear B writing disappeared
• Disruption in trade routes, especially of tin.
  Bronze is still produced, but costs are up,
  availability, down.
• Palace art forms disappear (frescoes, large-scale
  architecture, ivory-working, precious-metalworking
  , stone sculpture)
• Settlements established later are fewer, more
  scattered, less unified culturally.
• Lowering of level of civilization, overall.