A survey of progress in Mycenaean archaeology during the century since Schliemann's address to the Society on 22 March 1877 shows that we now have a coherent picture of material culture and historical events in Late Bronze Age Greece between 1500 and 1100 B.C. Having outstripped Schliemann's faith in Homer and Arthur Evans's hypothesis of a Minoan conquest from Crete, Mycenaean archaeology can now be traced back to the Middle Bronze Age before the introduction of the shaft graves, when the Achaeans had already made contact by sea with Egypt and other advanced centres in the East Mediterranean. The volcanic eruption of c. 1500 B.C, which left the mainland unscathed, enabled them to expand their influence and power to Crete and throughout the Aegean so that by the thirteenth century Mycenaean culture was ubiquitous, though political and territorial divisions remained. Finds of Linear B tablets enable us to form a distinct picture of the political, social, and economic life of the period. The close relationships between Helladic and Minoan art and religion have been systematically studied, while the Homeric poems may describe only one episode, the siege of Troy, in a series of attempts by the Achaeans to establish themselves on the coast of Asia Minor during the temporary collapse of Hittite power. By the end of the thirteenth century Mycenaean centres were being abandoned and destroyed, partly because of the breakdown of their trading links in the East Mediterranean with centres overrun by the Land-and-Sea Peoples, and the civilization as a whole had collapsed.