Introduction

In the Late Helladic period the Mycenaeans established an extraordinary network of overseas contacts, which stretched the length of the Mediterranean and beyond. A prime motive will have been the acquisition of crucial raw materials that Greece lacked, but it is clear that there were other contributory factors, especially at the elite and palatial levels of society. A number of key questions therefore must be addressed. Was there trade and, if so, in what, for whose benefit and by whom? Were political alliances negotiated with foreign states? Did the Mycenaeans conduct military campaigns or settle overseas? What, if any, influence did they have on other societies? This chapter first looks at the evidence provided by texts from the Aegean, the Near East, and Egypt for the organization of trade at this time, and then uses the evidence of shipwrecks in particular to consider what was traded. The regions that came into contact with the Mycenaeans - the Cyclades, the Dodecanese, Macedonia, Troy and the Black Sea, Anatolia, Cyprus, Syria-Palestine, Egypt, and Italy - are each treated separately, because the evidence cannot be satisfactorily interpreted unless it is put into context. Finally, the key questions are reviewed in the Conclusions.

Introduction

As one moves through a Cretan museum, with its galleries arranged chronologically, the material culture of the Protopalatial bursts onto the scene. This is not to say the preceding room did not contain some striking Prepalatial artifacts; or that stunning finds displayed in the following Neopalatial halls will not also fire the imagination; but arguably the material culture from the Protopalatial period has the most profound aesthetic impact. Kamares ware pottery in particular, with its white and red painted designs set against a lustrous black ground, somehow presents a more vibrant and varied overall impression than what comes before or after (Fig. 9.2; Pl. 8.9). Other periods may offer more stunning individual pieces, but in terms of the overall “assemblage,” the Protopalatial can make a strong claim to primacy.

There are attendant dangers to this kind of sweeping characterization. Material from different parts of Crete may be arranged side by side, and may in fact derive from different phases (MM IB, MM IIA, MM IIB) in the 150-year span of the period. It is important to take these temporal and regional variations seriously; as we shall see, the end of the Protopalatial period does not much resemble its beginning.

This approach has not often been taken, though, in part because it is difficult to isolate each phase securely. For example, we do not have much of an idea what the palace at Knossos looked like in MM IB, IIA, and IIB, respectively. In the east of the island, the MM IIA phase has barely been differentiated at all. The weight of evidence is concentrated in the destruction horizons at the end of the period. A more significant obstacle is the abiding focus on the origins of Protopalatial Crete, to the detriment of a proper understanding of its actual character and internal development.

Introduction

Mainland Greece in the Early Mycenaean period (LH I-II) was home to a number of political centers competing for resources, power, and territorial control (Ch. 10, pp. 242- 51). By the beginning of LH III the most successful developed into full-fledged states, political structures administered from central places of power. These central places are marked archaeologically by the monumental buildings we call palaces (Fig. 11.1; Ch. 11, pp. 261-4), and in most cases by administrative records inscribed on clay tablets in an early form of Greek. Recent scholars prefer “state” or the even more neutral “polity” (politically organized society) to the older term “kingdom,” to avoid possibly misleading presumptions about internal political organization. Palace-centered states were not universal in Mycenaean Greece; regions such as Achaea and Laconia apparently never developed a monumental center like Mycenae or Pylos. These areas may have continued to operate at the level of the Early Mycenaean village-centered societies, outside the control of any particular center; and indeed they benefited from the collapse of the palatial administrations ca. 1190 bce, at the end of LH IIIB (Ch. 15, pp. 395, 397-9, 405-6). We do know something about a number of Late Mycenaean states, however, particularly those controlled from Mycenae and Tiryns in the Argolid, Thebes in Boeotia, Pylos in Messenia, and Knossos on Crete.

Instability and Decline

At the end of LH IIIB2 - conventionally dated to ca. 1190 bce - the Mycenaean palatial period came to a dramatic end. The palaces were destroyed and the palace system collapsed, never to be rebuilt. The causes of the catastrophes have long been the subject of controversial scholarly discourse, and consensus is not in the offing. One thing, however, has become increasingly clear: the breakdown of the palace system was the result of a process that had started considerably earlier. It is generally assumed that the decline of the Mycenaean states was triggered by a first series of destructions at the end of LH IIIB1. At Mycenae several palace-related buildings outside of the citadel were destroyed and abandoned. At Tiryns the structures on the knoll below the palace (the Lower Citadel) were destroyed, and the palace of Thebes was also damaged. Nor were nonpalatial communities spared. Earthquakes have been blamed for the destructions at Mycenae and Tiryns. At other sites causes cannot be defined with certainty.

Whatever caused these earlier catastrophes, they seem to have brought to an end the heyday of the Mycenaean palace civilization. The archaeological record of the last decades of the thirteenth century bce (LH IIIB2) reflects instability and decline. Mycenae and Tiryns were damaged by further destruction, and the great citadel of Gla in Boeotia was burnt down and deserted, whereas other settlements were gradually abandoned. The Aegean islands also seem to have undergone a period of insecurity and change.

Introduction

The chronological span of this chapter is the late fourth, the third, and the early second millennium bce, i.e., the Final Neolithic, Early Helladic, and early Middle Helladic periods. The Early Helladic period was approximately 1000-1100 years in length, as long as the Middle and Late Helladic periods combined (Fig. 1.1). During the Early Bronze Age on the Greek mainland, small-scale complex societies emerged in a number of regions. This experiment in complexity held promise, but sweeping changes brought it to an end during the later part of the EH period. These changes have been connected with the “Coming of the Greeks” (that is, Indo-European speakers) as precursors to Mycenaeans of the later Bronze Age. This chapter surveys the archaeological data and interpretations of that data from the Greek mainland for the period spanning from the end of the Neolithic to the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age, including the problem of the “Coming of the Greeks” (below, pp. 38-41).

Study of the EH period began with Carl Blegen’s excavation at Korakou, near Corinth, in 1916-1918. The well-stratified remains allowed him to isolate ceramics of the various periods of the Bronze Age and, along with Alan Wace working at Mycenae, to devise a classification of the ceramics of the pre-Mycenaean period, the Early and Middle Bronze Ages. The excavation of several important sites with EH remains, such as Tiryns, Asea, and Zygouries, contributed additional information, especially about architecture. The picture of the EH period changed fundamentally, however, with the excavation of Lerna in the 1950s.

Introduction

The nature of Minoan involvement in the Aegean islands is an intrinsically fascinating question for a prehistorian of Greece, one that has been debated since the very beginning of our field. It also constitutes an excellent case study of broader interest in world archaeology. What causes promote the cultural assimilation of one group by another? How do the opposing forces of socio-economic domination and resistance manifest themselves in material culture? For at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, the communities of the Cyclades and of other islands of the Aegean Sea were so radically altered by contact with the Minoan civilization that scarcely an aspect of life in them was left unaffected. As for the field of Aegean prehistory in general, fundamental research questions that concern Minoan Crete and the Aegean islands have often been framed in response to testimonia preserved in Greek texts of the historical period. Literary sources are thus an aspect of the problem that deserves attention before we consider archaeological data.

In the following section, therefore, we will first review the ancient written tradition. Then we will examine the actual archaeological evidence, as it has been uncovered at several representative and well known sites in Greece and western Turkey. Finally we will turn to the reasons that Cretans may have been attracted to the Cycladic and Dodecanesian islands, and to their impact on these areas.

Introduction

The archaeology of prehistoric Crete is dominated by the Minoan “palaces”: monumental court-centered building compounds, which first appeared in the early second millennium bce. By the Neopalatial period of the mid-second millennium bce, they are found (or predicted) in various sizes and configurations all over the island. Arthur Evans' uncovering of the 1-hectare (10,000 sq. m. or about 2.5 acres) palace at Knossos startled the Classical world at the beginning of the twentieth century ce, with both its scale and early date (Fig. 6.1). The grand, pre-Classical civilization that could build such an edifice seemed at least a junior member of the great ancient Near Eastern world of palaces and temples that was revealed to the colonial powers during the nineteenth century ce. Evans’s vision of a “priest-king” at the top of a hierarchical theocratic power structure has remained in some form the dominant interpretative paradigm ever since.

Furthermore, the Minoan palace was seen from its creation as the centralized redistributive authority for a wider territory. This was an anachronistic inference from the Late Bronze Age palaces. The decipherment in 1952 of Linear B records recovered from the Late Minoan II–IIIA2 palace of Knossos, and also Pylos and Mycenae in mainland Greece, seemed to show that the Minoan–Mycenaean palaces were the centers of elaborate palace economies like those in the Near East, with goods redistributed through or by rulers and officials at the palaces (Chs. 1, pp. 12–14; 12, pp. 291–2).

The Significance of Early Cycladic Prehistory

The Early Bronze Age of the Cycladic islands occupies a remarkable place in Aegean prehistory, out of all proportion to the modest numbers of people who inhabited them. Why have these 30-odd islands enjoyed so much attention? Their average size is a mere 75 sq. km., many are far smaller, and the largest island, Naxos, is hardly a giant in Aegean terms. Even if all the Cyclades are added together, the resultant ca. 2,580 sq. km. is a fraction of Crete or the Peloponnese. Nor, under Early Bronze Age conditions, did these islands offer obviously inviting opportunities for settlement. Despite their popularity today as a tourist paradise, the rugged masses of rock that make up the Cyclades are (save in a few fertile valleys and coastal plains) thinly covered with soil and short of water; they occupy the poorest end of the spectrum of viable environments for farming communities. These features were crucial in shaping the small-scale societies that inhabited these islands in the Early Bronze Age, but can hardly explain the prominence of early Cycladic prehistory in archaeological literature and the popular imagination.

To understand this significance, we need to look elsewhere. One obvious factor is that the Cyclades lie at the heart of the southern Aegean. The northernmost islands brush the coasts of Attica and Euboea, the eastern islands glance back to the southeast Aegean and Anatolia, the dark volcano of Thera (also known as Santorini) stands sentinel over the open sea toward Crete and, to the west, Melos lies midway between Crete and the Peloponnese.

Sources for Reconstructing Ancient Religion

Reconstructing the religion of an ancient culture is hard work. Religious beliefs and practices consist of things thought, said, shown, and done. In the material record, we look for the locations where rituals were performed, the objects and materials used in ceremonies, and artistic representations (iconography) of such activities. If we are lucky, we will have written religious texts containing sacred myths that serve both as the “verbalization of ritual” and as a record of a culture’s religious belief system, their thoughts about how human beings relate to supra-human powers. Depending on how a religion is structured within a given society, such written documents can be fixed and canonical, or they can vary according to time and place. We may also have other texts (mainly inscriptions) that reflect what people are doing or are expected to do as forms of religious practice (often grouped together as “sacred laws”), who those people are (their religious titles, occupations, personal names), where they are doing these things, what they are using, and the obligations and benefits that motivate them.

The Nature of Written Sources for Mycenaean Religion

For Mycenaean religion, we have a limited amount of clear archaeological, iconographical, and artifactual data, and we have the information contained in the Linear B records. These tablets were produced, however, by anonymous tablet-writers in order to keep track of economic information related to the operation of the Mycenaean palatial centers (Chs. 1, p. 13; 12, pp. 291–2). We find in the Linear B tablets no myths, hymns, prayers, ritual prescriptions or laws, or sanctuary regulations; nor are there any inscriptions written by or for dedicators upon dedicated objects. The limitations and peculiarities of our archaeological and inscriptional data thus present interesting challenges.

Introduction

Cretans have always looked to the sea. Crete is the largest of the Aegean islands, and it has many fine harbors. The mountainous landscape that causes the many indentations at the coast and creates the favorable shelters for shipping also makes travel by land difficult, especially for the transport of heavy goods. As a result, even trade within Crete itself has often used the sea instead of moving overland.

The predecessors of the people we call the Minoans had to travel by sea to settle the island. They found ample room for agriculture and for the raising of animals, but their new homeland lacked many of the natural resources they required; maritime commerce to acquire needed commodities was an easy solution for people who were already seafarers. It is not surprising that the Cretans began obtaining raw materials and other items overseas almost immediately, and that they would continue to regard seafaring as an integral part of their lifestyle.

The Neolithic and Early Minoan Periods

The earliest known evidence for settlement on Crete comes from Knossos, from the Early Neolithic period (Ch. 4, p. 80). The site in northcentral Crete was first settled in the seventh millennium bce, and it was already an important town during the Neolithic period; in the Late Bronze Age, it would become the largest palatial center in Crete. Obsidian from the island of Melos was well known to the Neolithic Knossians, and it was regularly brought into Crete either by exchange or by voyaging to the Cycladic island to obtain pieces of the useful volcanic glass.

General Outline of the Period

The Neopalatial (or New Palace) period followed the fire destructions at the end of the Protopalatial period (MM II) and continued until the fire destructions at the end of LM IB, which destroyed almost all administrative sites in Crete (the central palace building at Knossos was spared) and changed Minoan culture. The period is conventionally divided into a short MM III period, which is difficult to characterize, and a long LM IA period and LM IB that together may have been the highpoint of the Minoan civilization.

Early in the Neopalatial period the Minoans extended their cultural and administrative influence beyond Crete. By LM IA we see their presence in the Cyclades (especially Thera, Keos, and Melos; Ch. 8, pp. 189-97), in other islands such as Kythera and the northern Aegean island Samothrace, and on the west coast of Anatolia (Miletos; Chs. 8, pp. 198-200; 9, p. 217). Besides being long and rich, LM IA also saw the eruption of the Thera volcano late in the period (Ch. 1, p. 6). Theran pumice has been found at many Cretan sites, where sometimes it had been carefully collected and stored, and several sites were wrecked by earthquake and either remodeled (Petras east of Siteia) or abandoned (the farm complex at Vathypetro). Other sites were simply abandoned, such as Galatas in the Pediada plain southeast of Knossos. More material dates to LM IB, simply because the fire destructions that closed the period were nearly total and apparently sudden; although no people were burned to death in the buildings, they left behind just about everything except their personal jewelry.

Critics of medieval drama locked into an evolutionary thesis of dramatic development that valued ‘realism’ and ‘comedy’ as marks of later and more highly developed dramatic ‘organisms’ found Chester's less exuberant style reflective of a primitive, undeveloped form of drama characteristic of an early date of composition. They were strengthened in this view by a persistent tradition in Chester that the plays were the oldest in England. Since the 1960s, however, the myth of early composition has been exposed and, after re-examining the internal and external documentary evidence relating to the plays, recent critics believe that Chester's cycle in its present form was the product of the sixteenth century and hence probably the latest of the English cycle texts. Moreover, there are indications in the prefatory Banns of the post-Reformation period that the cycle was even then self-consciously different both from ‘sophisticated’ contemporary drama and from the cycle plays of other towns that were falling under disapproval because of their association with Roman Catholic doctrine.

Chester's distinctive interpretation of cyclic form and function should therefore be recognised as a conscious creation with its own goals and strengths. Freed from the condescension of earlier critics, Chester's achievement can now be appreciated as an attempt to articulate the mystery cycle as a coherent dramatic genre rather than as a conveniently loose chronological framework for the containment of dramatic and thematic diversity. In contrast to the sometimes urgent demands for empathetic response made by York and Towneley, Chester holds its material at a contemplative distance, inviting its audience to ponder its plays calmly and thoughtfully.

Critical approaches

Nineteenth- and twentieth-century outlines

The English drama that preceded Shakespeare was held in such disrepute for four centuries that it became necessary for the twentieth to invent the concept ‘medieval drama’. Both words show the needs and aspirations of the time, the adjective reflecting a concept of medieval society which need not be either romanticised or patronised, and the noun embodying the profound experiences of the twentieth-century theatre. The latter was influential in both the performing of the early plays and the redefinition of drama.

The invention of the term ‘medieval drama’ cannot be attributed to one person, but it is the business of the first part of this guide to consider a number of authors whose work forced a revaluation of the plays and made them seem, as they now do, one of the riches of English culture in spite of their rather chancy survival. The second part deals with a number of special topics indispensable to the study of the plays, and embracing in differing ways the changing corpus of ideas which forms the basis of our understanding and appreciation of the early plays. There follows a brief review of some of the main developments in the study of early drama since the first edition of this book was published in 1994.

Writers before the twentieth century were often antiquarian in stance, and as such they left us much valuable material; often they were so overpowered by Shakespeare, and indeed so ‘literary’, that they condemned the material before them even as they studied it. However, the judgement of Robert Dodsley (101) upon the moralities and interludes was not shared by William Hone (45) and Thomas Sharp (59), whose work remains indispensable to the study of mystery plays. As J.W. Robinson (57) noted, Hone, a bookseller interested in popular art, became embroiled in a charge of blasphemy because of parodies he had published, but defended himself by showing that parody does not debase its subject.

Traditionally only five medieval English morality plays survive: The Pride of Life (122, pp. 90–105), The Castle of Perseverance, Wisdom, Mankind (120) and Everyman (123, 124), to give them their common titles, together constitute the entire corpus of an apparently influential native dramatic genre. The identification of the genre has been retrospective, and depends largely on the perceived influence of these plays on the more abundantly surviving Tudor interlude. A working definition of a characteristic dramaturgy for the morality play can, therefore, be constructed on the basis of these few surviving texts. Their absolute cohesion as a group is a different matter, however, and is bound to be questioned in any attempt to define that form in its individual manifestations and theatrical contexts, particularly as The Pride of Life is a fragmentary Hiberno–English text and Everyman a (Tudor) translation from a Dutch original. All except Everyman survive in manuscript, all but Wisdom in one copy only, so their status and authority is also provisional, bearing imperfect witness to ephemeral theatrical events which cannot be perfectly retrieved.

What these plays have in common most obviously is that they offer their audiences moral instruction through dramatic action that is broadly allegorical. Hence they are set in no time, or outside historical time, though their lack of historical specificity is generally exploited by strategically collapsing the eternal with the contemporary. The protagonist is generally a figure of all men, reflected in his name, Everyman or Mankind, and the other characters are polarised as figures of good and evil. The action concerns alienation from God and return to God, presented as the temptation, fall and restitution of the protagonist.

Medieval plays were not written for the theatre. They were put on in city streets, in churches, on playing fields, in college halls and in private houses, and they exploited each of these venues in its own distinctive way. The shape and acoustics of the venue, the skills of the actors, the nature of the audience and of the occasion, all presented certain constraints and certain opportunities. Add to this a variety of types of subject matter, and we have not one but a whole range of theatricalities.

Plays are for performing, and one recent branch of medieval theatre research has specialised in the informed ‘recreation’ of medieval performance conditions. This has been an eye-opening and salutary exercise. Because medieval theatre is so different from modern commercial theatre both in setting and intention, we modern investigators have had to break down our prejudices about the practical limits of staging and acting style. We have discovered, among other things, that actors can perform on a stage eight feet by ten feet; that twenty-foot-high pageant wagons are not necessarily doomed to overbalance; that long rhetorical speeches are not by definition ‘boring’; that spectacle can speak more strongly than words; that it is possible to look the audience full in the face. Above all we have learnt to trust the plays themselves: that if we take them seriously as theatre, they will work. Medieval theatre has emerged not as childlike or primitive, but as different, and often highly sophisticated.