The Collapse of Mycenaean Civilization

LHIIIB-LHIIIC: 1320/1300-1050/1030

• 2 centuries of disasters: 1250-1050 bc

• Multiple destructions across Mycenaean world

LHIIIB1: Signs of Trouble?

• Mycenae• Zygouries• Thebes• Gla

• Tiryns• Athens• Isthmus Wall

Destruction at Mycenae

• Houses outside citadel (south of Grave Circle B) destroyed by fire

Fire Accidental

or Deliberate

?• Oil from

stirrup jars poured over floor of “House of the Oil Merchant”

Cistern & Expanded,

Strengthened Fortifications

GlaMassive engineering project to drain Copaic Basin

• Fortified granary?• Drainage channels

destroyed

Tiryns• Enclosure of lower citadel• Syringes

(underground water supply)

Pylos: Watchers by the Sea

Further Disasters in LHIIIB2

• Earthquake & Fire at Tiryns, Mycenae & Midea

• Mycenaean Collapse due to Natural Disasters?

• But Fire (not earthquake) destroys Menelaion, Nichoria & palace at Pylos

Population Movements in/before LHIIIC

• Massive depopulation of Messenia

• Depopulation of Argolid, Lakonia

• Influx in Achaia

Mapping the Movement

• Influx in Attica, Ionian Islands, Crete, Cyprus

• North-South line of depopulation

• East-West population increase

What is Happening

Social Unrest

• Neo-Marxist Theory

• Peasant revolt against elite?

• Thersites in Iliad

• But why abandon fertile land?

Mycenaean States at War?

• New fortifications due to threat from outside or inside Mycenaean World?

• “Watchers by the Sea” => fear of piratic neighboring Mycenaeans?

• Myths of Conflict post Trojan War => Internecine Strife?

• Eteocles and Polyneices: Theban vs. Argos?

Splits within the Elites?• Mycenae• Atreus vs.

Thyestes• Agamemnon

vs. Aegisthus & Clytemnestra

Climate Change across Eastern Mediterranean?

• Dendrochronology says drought in Anatolia may have destroyed Hittite Empire

• Possible but Unproven for GreeceBut why so many palaces destroyed at the same time?

Historic Evidence?

• In the seventh book of his History Herodotus recounts that Crete was so beset by famine and pestilence after the Trojan War that it became virtually uninhabited until its resettlement by later inhabitants.

Invasion of the Sea Peoples

• Egyptian Sources of C13th-C12th BC

• Attacked Levant, Cyprus, Anatolia, Egypt

• But Cycladic islands seem unscathed

Origins of Sea Peoples?

Ramses III: 1176 B.C.Medinet Habu Inscription

"No land could stand before their arms, from Hatti, Qode, Carchemish, Arzawa and Alasiya on, being cut off at one time. A camp was set up in one place in Amurru. They desolated its people, and its land was like that which has never come into being. They were coming toward Egypt, while the flame was prepared before them. Their confederation was the Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen, and Weshesh, lands united. They laid their hands upon the land as far as the circuit of the earth, their hearts confident and trusting: 'Our plans will succeed!'

Cut-and-thrust swords as evidence of Northern

“invaders”?

Good Evidence for Sea Peoples in Egypt but swords in Greece in good Mycenaean contexts:

graves, etc.

Evidence for Barbarian Invaders?

• Handmade Burnished Ware (HMBW) = “Barbarian or Dorian Ware” found at sites in central & southern Greece, Achaea, Troy VIIb

• Intrusive population of small bands of pirates from Central Europe?

Evidence from Myth?

• Tradition of Dorian Invasion

• Spartans claim decent from Dorians

• Athenians claim to have repulsed Dorians

• Who are the Dorians?• The Heracleidae?• Multiple waves of

invasions fits fits evidence & myth

Disruption of Trade

• Fragile palace economies pushed over the edge by collapse of trade routes

• But, again, why abandon fertile land?

Change in Warfare

• Light-armed, swift-moving Infantry with Javelin replaces Chariot-based warfare

• Mycenaean, Hittite, & other Near Eastern empires collapse

• But War Chariot depiction more popular than ever

Confusing Possibilities

• (a) Internal Social Upheaval

• (b) Mycenaean States at war

• (c) Climate Change• (d) Invasion from Outside

the Aegean World• (e) Changes in the Nature

of Warfare Economic Factors

Film time?

• Topics & Questions• Opportunity to boost

grade in discussion class