Later LH IIIB. A last flourishing of Mycenaean civilisation, or an age of anxiety ?
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- Опубликовано: 12 июл 2016
- Later LH IIIB. A last flourishing of Mycenaean civilisation, or an age of anxiety ?
Conférence d'Olivier Dickinson (Durham University)
Love the old-school presentation style here -- very much. Both substance and style are top notch. So sick of professors trying to be "hip" by making juvenile wisecracks that the students know they'd better snicker at.
Huh? What a very strange comment
I have no idea why but lectures always sound better when someone with those old prim and proper British accents are doing it.
It would be foolish to discount Homer and The Illiad as a mere story. When I was a boy we were assured that Troy never existed and The Illiad was like an Arthurian fairy story. Yet now we find that Illios was a vassal city state of the Hittites and that the city is real and was inhabited up to the Roman Era. It is no coincidence that almost as soon as Troy's Hittite overlords fell off the world stage,The Myceneans fell upon a now vulnerable Troy.
Scholars are funny like that. They claimed Troy was a myth as if they dug every square inch of Anatolia. They claimed giant squids were sailor's yarn as if they explored the oceans from top to bottom. When in reality all they've really done is sit in their armchairs and bury their faces in dusty old books.
Excellent.
This map raises some interesting questions. How would a traveler get from Argos to the Cretan coast for tourism commerce or exploring? Barter? Networking? Education? Was there land title? I wonder what it was like to be a regular survivor making a life in this interesting geographic area and time. Was the climate benign? Thanks, Paul/Thailand
Thank you for an outstanding dissertation on Mycenaean society. Without wishing to argue the main thrust of the presentation, I would make a number of observations.
1 it would appear that the diplomatic dynamic with the western Anatolian settlements was in fact the line in the sand between the Hittites and Mycenae, predominantly driving by the Mycenae elite who had access to the wealth necessary to afford the weaponry and access to ships in conjunction with trade/ piracy and slavery to support the textile industry at home ( augmenting domestic supply and production)
2. It is interesting to note that the trade with the western islands Sicily, Sardinia and the Italian mainland appears to have been predominantly commercial. The development of these centres of population is much neglected, yet these people’s will in due cause be known as the key ingredients of the Sea People groups who bedevilled the Egyptians and Levant coast.
3. The cultural heritage of the Minoan population cannot be underestimated as their skills and commercial connections may well have been the basis of Mycenae trade. Notwithstanding the decline of this culture due to a wide range of impacts which remain to by fully understood, as a subject population of the Mycenaean elite on both Crete and the Minoan settlements around the Aegean, might well have propelled the Mycenaeans to their relatively strong position vis a vis the Hittites and the leaders of other, but weaker leaders of Mycenaean settlements.
This period remains to be fully understood both in the context of cultural evolution and human development and I would welcome other commenters to throw more light on the topic, if appropriate
'Rethinking the Mycaenean World' is a good adjunct and complementary lecture to this excellent presentation. Prof Nakassis (?) of the U of Toronto, 2015. Through studying Linear B texts, largely from Pylos, and all record-keeping, none literary, he also questions the traditional view of Mycaenean Palace culture as rigidly hierarchical and warlike.
Gla , please go and research Gla, megalithic stone channels 40 miles long . some stones 20 tonnes , and the tunnels also, i found this in 1927 journals. My study ancient Greek pottery making, 1980 QU Queensland
Bulk and Worked bronze are also actually perishable like textiles and agricultural products. i agree Mycenae could have had a large economy in export of agricultural product, textile of which there would be less extant today, but I disagree that would be all, since bronze can be reworked and would be expected to be if there was a sudden shortage as Near Eastern trade collapsed. Mycenaean civilization also clearly had a large economy in shipping. Overall this is a great presentation. That Schliemann proved Troy to exist, and the Trojan war to be rooted in actual events, prejudices us a bit. The pendulum swung and we attack more credibility to the Iliad -- in certain aspects -- than might be wise, since all historians until Schliemann were essentially stung by discounting Iliad. so I do think Dickinson is on the right tack in critiquing using Iliad as a lens. yes it occurred, but it is a slice, a snapshott of an event and not an accurate picture of the overall footing of Mycenaean civilization, which in fact was most likely, in great predominance, peaceful trade based.
How to quantitate the trade of Mycenae? Is there data for all the finds to date, where and how much of what?? Time will tell.
The best sources in the historical record are literary, conclusions gleaned from archaeological sources are usually problematic in some way or another and not as reliable
Do have an argument for the notion, that historical literature is less distorted by error, misunderstandings and ideology, than modern archaeology?
@@timthewombat1 Think about it. We are intimately aware of Cicero, Pliny, Julius Caesar, Augustine, and Marcus Aurelius through their letters. How much do we know about Hamarabi or Ghengis Khan or Tamerlane?
@@bretdouglas9407 you are mistaking quantity for quality