THE END OF THE MYCENAEAN WORLD

Disaster and partial recovery

The evidence of archaeology shows that in the period known as Late Helladic III b, roughly the thirteenth century B.C., there was a remarkable material uniformity throughout the Mycenaean world. As a man travelled from district to district, each centred on its palace, he would find the same kind of architecture and would use the same kind of pottery, apart from some minor local variations; he would find that the men favoured similar weapons, and that the women used the same variety of ornaments to adorn their dress. He would notice other general tendencies: the same types of tomb for burial, inhumation the general custom, with many burials in each family tomb. The little terracotta ‘goddess’ figurines would suggest some conformity in worship as well. He would find the standard of life reasonably high, and many districts fairly thickly populated.

This Mycenaean world was one of considerable extent: it included the whole Peloponnese, though the western and north-western areas, as also the islands to the west, were not strongly settled; the area from the isthmus of Corinth to the mountains of Phocis; much of Thessaly; all the islands of the central and south Aegean with the exception of Crete, which though possibly under Mycenaean sway nevertheless retained its own characteristics (see below, pp. 675 ff.); even a settlement at Miletus on the coast of Asia Minor. The whole area is to be identified with that kingdom of Ahhiyawa which was so well known to the Hittites. It would then have been a powerful state, embracing lesser kingdoms, whose rulers acknowledged a single overlord.