Thalassocracy and Minoan Crete

1. Thalassocracy and Minoan Crete I begin the real history of Greece with the first recorded Olympiad, or 776 B.C…The times…I set apart from the region of history are discernible only through a different atmosphere--that of epic and legend. George Grote (1846)

2. Defining Civilization • Political Hierarchies • Societal Stratification • Division of Labor • Population Density-Urbanization (Cities) • Religious Consensus or Near-Consensus • Long-Distance Trade • Writing

3. Who Were the Greeks? • Indo-European Migrants (Achaeans) • Enter the Aegean islands and Balkans around 2250 BCE • Domesticated Horse • Pottery Wheel • Minoan Cretans not Greeks (in linguistic sense)

4. Dominant Bronze Age Civilizations • Mesopotamia (Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Kassites, Elamites, Assyrians, Hittites) • Egypt (Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms) • Central Asia Minor (Hittites)

5. Mesopotamia and Fertile CrescentModern-Day Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and Lebanon

6. Hittite Empire, Egypt, and Major Destructions(around 1200 BCE)

7. Crete and Bronze Age Civilizations • Trading Contacts With Egypt and Mesopotamia • Trading Emporia Established on Coastlines and Islands • Crete on the Fringes of the Near Eastern Bronze Age World • Palace Centers as Redistributive Economies

8. Dating Scheme after J.-B. Bury (following Evans)

9. Alternative Dating Scheme (after Biers)

10. Archaeological Method and Interpretation • Choosing the Archaeological Site • Ground-Level Inspections (Sherds) • Clues from Literary Texts (Schliemann, Homer, and Troy) • Aerial Photography • Resistivity Surveys

11. Archaeological Method • Stratigraphical Analysis: “Peeling the Onion” • Law of Superposition and the Problem of Contamination • Relative Chronology • Ceramics: shape, decoration • Architectural evolution • Absolute Chronology • known dates from literary sources • historical records and coins • fixed dates for imported/exported objects (Egypt) • scientific dating--radiocarbon, thermoluminescence, dendrochronology

12. Cross Section of Archaeological Trench Cartography

13. Bronze Age Crete

14. Historical Reconstruction of Bronze Age Crete • First Palace Complexes (built ca. 2200 BCE): Knossos, Mallia, Phaestos, Zakro; flourish ca. 1900-1700 BCE. WRITING: Linear A Script (undeciphered). Palaces destroyed ca. 1700 BCE (earthquake?) • Second Palace Complexes (ca. 1700-1450 BCE) • Flourish ca. 1650-1450 BCE • Second Destruction ca. 1450 BCE, later than Theran (Santorini) eruption (1650 BCE?) • Knossos: Mycenaean (mainland) occupation in palace’s last phase? • Later destruction (after 1400 BCE) • Linear B script (identified as early form of Greek; only at Knossos and Greek mainland)

15. Plan of Palace at Knossos

16. Palace at Knossos:North Entrance

17. Throne Room at Knossos

18. Miniature Replicas of Minoan Houses

19. Arthur Evans and Minoan Crete • Late nineteenth-century prototype of the Greek basher? • archaeology as the fledgling hand-maiden of Classics • the young Arthur Evans as renegade • Reconstruction of Knossos: going beyond the evidence

20. Arthur Evans and D.G. Hogarth

21. Modern Uses of Minoan Crete • Marija Gimbutas, The Civilization of the Goddess: “Although this culture is called Minoan, its flowering in the early 2nd millenium B.C. had nothing to do with king Minos, whose legendary appearance actually came during the demise of this great culture. The palaces were not built by kings and were not administrative centers for a ruler, but were palace temples where elaborate religious rituals took place within a theacratic system….Minoan culture was primarily feminine inspired.” (pg. 345)

22. Bull’s Head Rhyton

23. Bull-Leaping Fresco: Knossos

24. Vegetation Motifs in Pottery ArtMiddle Minoan

25. Wealth of Minoan CreteGold Pendants of Middle Minoan Period (1700-1550 BCE)

26. Ubiquitous Snake Goddess

27. Thalassocracy of Minoan Crete • Homer’s Description: “Idomeneus the spear-famed was leader of the Cretans, those who held Knossos and Gortyna of the great walls, Lyktos and Miletus and silver-shining Lykastos, and Phaistos and Rhytion, all towns well established, and others who dwelt beside them in Crete of the hundred cities” (Iliad 2.645-9) • Thucydides’ account: “Minos…was the first person to organize a navy. He controlled the greater part of what is now called the Greek sea; he ruled over the Cyclades, in most of which he founded the first colonies, putting his sons in as governors after having driven out the Carians. And it is reasonable to suppose that he did his best to put down piracy in order to secure his own revenues” (1.4) • Archaeological Evidence: new palatial contacts in Egypt and the Near East • Athenian Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur

28. Thucydides, Histories, 1.8 • “But as soon as Minos had formed his navy, communication by sea became easier, as he colonized most of the islands, and thus expelled the evil doers. The coast populations now began to build themselves walls on the strength of their newly acquired riches. For the love of gain would reconcile the weaker to the dominion of the stronger, and the possession of capital enabled the more powerful to reduce the smaller cities to subjection.” • Questions of Trade, Piracy, and Centralized Control

29. Major Destructions, Minoans, and Mycenaeans(around 1200 BCE)