Late Bronze Age Greek Pottery - Coursework Example

Minoan Crete and mainland Mycenae form the crown jewel of second millennium b.c. Ancient Greece. Archaeologists have essentially dug up and recreateda culture from Bronze-Age Crete—extrapolating from the distinctive nature of sites at Mallia, Cnossos, Phaistos, and Zakro. What they have reconstructed is the former glory of a seemingly palatial society: one in which the magnificent Minoan palaces served as the highly complex and hierarchically structured centerpieces of administrative, religious, and economic activities in the state. Archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann excavated Mycenae, with Homer as his guide, uncovering traces of a powerful warrior society—with sites like Tiryns, Gla, and Orchomenos, surrounded by massive walls. Connecting these two civilizations was a series of tablets, written in so-called Linear B, which was translated by Michael Ventris in 1954. It is now clear that mainland Greeks occupied Cnossos, rebuilding it and residing there long enough to recreate the great palatial society. However, after the collapse of Minoa, Mycenaean power declined rapidly; a short time after 1,200 b.c., a series of events occurred which have been hotly contested in Ancient Greek archaeology. What caused the collapse of this great Bronze Age civilization? Some have suggested that it was a natural disaster, such as a volcanic eruption, or even a tidal wave. Others have suggested that invasions and military conquests brought an end to Mycenae. And yet another proposal is that internal revolts destroyed societies too fragile to resist. Answering this question of what happened to Mycenae is essential to answering the larger question of how we differentiate the Late Bronze Age from the Early Iron Age, or, what shall hereafter be called the “Dark Ages” of Ancient Greece. An examination of the passage of the Bronze Age will require a detailed examination of the vastly profound changes in Greek culture which occurred between 1,200 and 700 b.c. These changes concern a multitude of different aspects of such a culture, including political, religious, artistic, and philosophical changes brought on by the unknown disaster which occurred and launched Ancient Greece into dark times. It would also be instructive, in examining this transition, to look at the speed of recovery; that is, the time it took for Ancient Greece to return to a state of political and cultural stability. In doing so, we will draw a connection between the Early and later portions of the Iron Age: the birth of panhellenism. Nevertheless, it is the time between 1,200 and 700 b.c. that will be the focus of our present discussions—namely, the transition from bronze to iron in technology, and the emergence of a Dark Age, or, to describe it differently, an “Age of Heroes” with the rise of Homeric epic poetry. All things considered, this discussion will concentrate upon the aforementioned political and conventionalistic paradigm shifts that came about in the wake of the collapse of Bronze Age Ancient Greece: the general changes, specific changes, and, in summary, the fundamental discontinuities between the two which spell trouble for making a strong connection between the two and calling them “continuous” time periods. The Mycenaean civilization collapsed during the time period around 1,200 b.c. For a long time, the accepted theory of this collapse consisted of an invasion by Dorians, a warlike people that brought to Mycenae a new culture—and consequently, ushered in the Iron Age. Historians, however, are no longer certain of this theory’s verity. We know that Mycenae was a wealthy culture which obsessed over beautiful artefacts and gold, and that there existed a city of Troy which controlled the Dardanelles—as described in the Iliad—and this city was, of course, destroyed by siege. Archaeologists propose that such a decade-long war, ending in the defeat of Trojan forces, perhaps led to a progressive deterioration and inevitable collapse of Mycenae. Such a collapse, then, was not perpetrated and brought on by external invaders, but by the Mycenaean working class. Thus, perhaps the infamous “Dorian Invasion” was nothing more than an rebellion of peasants—the lower class who seized a chance to revolutionize their state. But although we cannot be sure of the nature—or cause—of this decline, what is absolutely certain is that it did occur. These two periods of time are united in some respect by their designations by historians. Metals, in antiquity, shaped the lives of individuals working under hard conditions, in both farming and warring. Iron is one of the latest of metals to come into use in the course of history. The transition into this age of iron was very gradual: in Greece, it was in progress in the Homeric age. Homer makes explicit mention of iron in the Iliad; however, iron in this context is typically spoken of in its agricultural applications (Homer, Iliad 1961). Bronze was still the constitutive material of helmets and weapons. In the Odyssey, progress in the common Ancient Greek utilization of iron seems to have been made: in one passage, a smith hardens iron by plunging the hot metal in water (Homer, Odyssey 1965). From Homer, the use of iron gradually spreads further. Eventually, iron is used for not only arms and utensils, but also for works of art, even. The city-state Sparta would even come to use iron currency, and the iron swords of Chalcis were praised in Aeschylus (Smith, Wayte and Marindin 1891, 166). We should now develop this enquiry into the reasoning behind the transition—it is not salient merely that it happened, or even how it happened, but why it happened is most important. For what reason did this replacement of bronze with iron occur for typically industrial or agricultural activities? Chiefly, bronze was preferably to iron in that its melting point is more achievable in ready terms than the melting point needed to cast iron. Thus, the Iron Age’s emergence is chiefly the result of better, more efficient smelting techniques. The benefits of iron over bronze consist of bronze’s requirement of copper and tin—elements that are not quite as readily available as iron, and the fact that iron is malleable by various techniques even after it has been formed; however, bronze can only be reshaped by reforging the metal. Anthony M. Snodgrass, in The Dark Age of Greece, argues that a shortage of tin made it preferable to develop alternatives to bronze. This shift in demand was caused, according to him, by disruptions in Mediterranean trade during this period. Consequently, bronze implements became recycled for other purposes (Snodgrass, The Dark Age of Greece: An Archeological Survey of the Eleventh to the Eighth Centuries B.C. 2000, 231). The complete replacement of bronze with iron did not happen until about 700 b.c., leaving in between the fall of Mycenae and the rise of the Greek polis almost four hundred years of an Age of Darkness, illuminated at times by the brilliant pieces of literature which came from this period, but kept silent by the lack of cohesion between the Greek peoples. What was the cause of this dissolution in relationships between peoples in large structured societies? The Dark Age political affiliation which replaced the rich, material civilization of the Mycenae was one of attachments between individuals in the household—structured around smaller social units dominated by chieftains and clan leaders—called the oikos. In the collapse of the large societies in the valleys, individuals took for the hills, taking their goats, sheep, cows, and so on with them. Individuals did this in order to escape marauders, pirates, and so on when life became uncertain, when social ties had become broken, and anarchy became inevitable. After 1,200, the great walls of Mycenae had fallen, the cities abandoned, and the population gone (somewhere). These oikos are the societies which dominate Dark Age Greece—in the beginning of the Iron Age—that differ from the elaborate Bronze Age societies of Minoa and Mycenae. Thus, we can identify a striking difference in the political structure of Greek civilization between these two times, and the Greek oikos would become, in the 5th century b.c., a model for the creation of the polis. With a political transition established, what other vast changes in lifestyle make it apparent that a profound change occurred at this time—between 1,200 and 1,100 b.c.? Besides the obvious replacement of bronze with iron that has already been discussed, many other differences arise. For one, the Early Iron Age seems to be an entirely illiterate age, to contrast with the Late Bronze Age that produced two distinct language systems in the centers of Aegean culture. Additionally, Hittite and Egyptian documents make quite detailed references to the Late Bronze Age cultures of Ancient Greece, and yet, are almost silent on the affairs of any Early Iron Age civilization in the region. By looking at the pottery of these two time periods, archaeologists recognize the “vital function of providing a chronological framework on which to hang any other scraps of knowledge that we can muster” (Snodgrass, The Dark Age of Greece: An Archeological Survey of the Eleventh to the Eighth Centuries B.C. 2000, 27), as it provides key clues into discussions of regional difference and social and economic interferences. In the last couple centuries of the Dark Ages (approximately 950 to 750 b.c.)—a time period called the Geometric period—a new abstract method of pottery decoration came into style. However, as Snodgrass argues, using pottery as a primary indicator of Dark Age culture in Greece, is “not helpful but dangerous”, and are not “the best divisions of cultural eras” (Snodgrass, The Dark Age of Greece: An Archeological Survey of the Eleventh to the Eighth Centuries B.C. 2000, 27). As an example to illustrate his claim, he points to the inability of pottery to provide a correct outer termini for the period, and that thus, attempts to distinguish internal periods based solely on pottery should not be trusted. So, although pottery is instructive in some respects, for the purposes of our discussion, the pottery of the Dark Ages itself will not be a chief concern. Sigrid Deger-Jalkotzy and Irene S. Lemos, in their book entitled Ancient Greece: From the Mycenaean Palaces to the Age of Homer, suggest that analyzing burial practices from the two eras could be helpful (accordingly, more helpful than exclusive use of pottery) in establishing the distinction between the two. In the Bronze Age, multiple burials were common in Mycenaean culture (Castleden 2005, 20). The adoption of single burial practices in the Dark Ages, according to Deger-Jalkotzy and Lemos, is “more probably [a reflection of] changes in the way that burial was used to reflect social ideology”. In addition, “the establishment of new cemetery areas… marks a break with the past… changes in the social order that were sufficiently significant for the establishment of new cemeteries to be chosen as one way to reflect them” (Deger-Jalkotzy and Lemos 2006, 119). The authors also cite cremation as another form of single burial that arose in the Early Iron Age. These burial patterns, most fundamentally, present picture of a lack of an established elite, which is a view consistent with the political situ observed above. Other artistic aspects of Ancient Greek culture provide clues about the transition from Bronze to Iron Age Greece. One might argue that the “historical reality” of the Late Bronze Age has no corollary in the Early Iron Age, “insofar as any legends can be argued to have their origins in these centuries, they are… utterly impoverished”. In terms of archaeology, this claim is valid in that the extensive collection of military conflict involved in the Late Bronze Age civilization does not continue into the Early Iron Age. That is, large-scale hostilities do not appear until almost the end of the Dark Age and the “use of monumental masonry… disappears for some centuries after the end of the Bronze Age” (Snodgrass, An Archaeology of Greece: An Introduction 1996). Culturally, this suggests that the new Greeks wished not to reproduce the idols which the Bronze Age Greeks worshipped: idols of brave fighters and honorable destruction. It seems that such man-worship momentarily ended upon the collapse of societies who possessed such reverences. There are additional cultural aspects of the seemingly disparateness, or discontinuity, between these two stages of Ancient Greek civilization. For one, already touched upon, is the fact there is no continuity in writing systems between the two. Although both stages spoke what is essentially the Greek language (an instance of identifiable continuity), the writing systems are completely incongruent, as we can tell from Linear B, and the practice of writing was lost for the Greeks in three centuries of the Dark Ages. In religious aspects, there is distinct discontinuity. Although various classical Greek gods and goddesses exist in the Mycenaean records, certain other gods and goddesses come from outside of Greece and are intermittently interwoven into the theistic system. In different respects, we might think of the cultures as continuous in that bronze-age royal palaces often became classical temples, devoted to gods; that is, although there is not religious continuity in the strict sense, there is continuity in the palatial sense. Even though certain locations remained sacred over time, the religious systems that endow the spot with sacred meaning might change. In the last paragraph, I mentioned that the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age are “two stages”, instead of being two different, or two separate, civilizations—not continuous, and related only by the lineage of the people who formed these new oikos (household) states. Snodgrass argues that even while the Iron Age is clearly not continuous with the age preceding it, the Iron Age cannot merely be seen as a beginning of a new time period in the historical account of Greek civilization. We might regard this transformation, according to him, as a fundamental shift in attitudes, culture, and political structure—summarized aptly in the revolution of the “whole attitude to the heroic past that came about with the westward spread of Ionian epic” (Snodgrass, An Archaeology of Greece: An Introduction 1996, 172). Snodgrass continues on this line of thought by saying that the so-called “Heroic Age”, with its hero-worship, of the Late Bronze Age was linked, inextricably, to ancestor worship and “not tied to one specific past era”. The period known as the Dark Ages in Ancient Greece represents a transition period between the fall of a great many advanced civilizations and the establishment of polis city-states, a time period between approximately 1,200 and 700 b.c. There are many distinct discontinuities between the Bronze and Iron Ages, and we cannot properly distinguish a point wherein Mycenaean Greek civilization became classical Greek civilization. The fact of the matter is that there are irreconcilable differences in culture, politics, and religion between the two time periods, and thus, to use the word “transition” may not be apt. Nevertheless, we can still accurately and appropriately trace changes in various aspects of Greek life in making the loose connection between the two—using such artefacts as pottery, such practices and rites as burials, and tools of commerce, agriculture, and war. Chronologically, one can trace the end of the Bronze Age, and the beginning of widespread use of iron and the formation of recognizable city-states, and then simply fill in the gap between these points in time with the amorphous label “the Dark Ages”. Snodgrass considers the division between the two points to be a division of “an intellectual and spiritual kind”, and one based on deeply-rooted political and cultural premises. David Clarke has suggested that the chief objective of archaeology is “the development of higher category knowledge or principles that synthesize and correlate the material in hand while possessing a high predictive value” (Clarke 1968, 20). In our present case, we have differentiated between the two time periods, assigned comparative dates and figures to our classification, and defended this classification with extensive, well-documented archeological findings about Ancient Greek civilization. We have achieved “the development of higher category knowledge”; we have synthesized and correlated the material in hand; and, additionally, we have sufficient predictive value in many further claims about pre-classical Greece. Works Cited Carr, Karen Dr. Late Bronze Age Greek Pottery. November 10, 2006. http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/greeks/art/pottery/latebronze.htm (accessed October 29, 2008). Castleden, Rodney. Mycenaeans: Life in Bronze Age Greece. New York: Routledge, 2005. Clarke, D. L. Analytical Archaeology. London: R. Chapman, 1968. Deger-Jalkotzy, Sigrid, and Irene S. Lemos. Ancient Greece: From the Mycenaean Palaces to the Age of Homer. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006. Homer. Iliad. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961. —. Odyssey. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 1965. Smith, William, William Wayte, and George Edin Marindin. A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. London: J. Murray, 1891. Snodgrass, Anthony M. An Archaeology of Greece: An Introduction. New York: Cornell University Press, 1996. —. The Dark Age of Greece: An Archeological Survey of the Eleventh to the Eighth Centuries B.C. New York: Routledge, 2000. Read More