![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Aegaeum 12
60
ostentation in graves is not so much a way of marking status as of gaining status by the living
mere ownership of wealth is not enough, you have to spend it, like potlatches, religious displays/offerings, or mortuary displays
Maran
changes in settlement structure around the Shaft Grave period (focus on eastern Greece, from Thessaly to NE Pel.)
more fortified areas sought
much abandonment of old settlements for new settlements, and using the old settlement for burials
this leads to "intramuros burial" misnomers
Maran thinks it was nothing violent (no signs of destruction, unlike EH II to EH III Lerna earlier), but a widespread change in socio-economic structure, meaning a rise in elite who can tell their population where to move that allowed this
also that the old settlements were no longer sufficient & did not meet the new layout requirements, which is why the impetus to move in the first place
87
now the discovery of sealings and continuing central storage in the LH IIIB destruction levels of the Menelaion, confirms a continuation of bureaucratic control from that centre.
118
people connected with sheep in the tablets may be mere shepherds, or may have oversight over several flocks
may also be the same people who oversee textile production
173
ships routinely forced to wait at Beṣik Bay, at the mouth of the Dardanelles for days, weeks, or even months. This was particularly so between May and September. brought Troy wealth and power, but also insecurity: always felt a need to defend itself.
Korfmann believes that Troy was abandoned during the Dark Age, maybe a few people living around, esp reusing stones, but not really an occupied site
Romans and Greeks re-excavated nearly every stone from Troy VI and VII, built on limestone bedrock
post holes in a foundation trench, wooden palisade (structure with buttresses and supporting posts) at least 15 m long, Troy VI, far away from the citadel
burnt destruction of citadel and surrounding area provisionally taken to be Troy VIIb2 = settlement of Buckelkeramik people who had probably come from the Balkans, destruction ca 1040
wall left unattended, subject to weather and stone robbing
walls still 8 meters high in Homer's time and visible, impressive looking ruin
despite extensive excavations over twenty-two campaigns, the mound had yielded only the sparsest evidence for long-range weapons such as arrowheads. Moses Finley took this to mean that at this site there was no evidence at all for any war. I, on the other hand, took it to mean that military action with long-range weapons must have taken place outside the citadel, in the area of an outer fortification wall. My argument was based on the limited range of the bow and the sling: usually 80-150 meters. A lower city served as a buffer zone.
differences in architecture although not in finds between Troy VI and VIIa
Blegen took it to mean that that space within the walls was no longer sufficient and they had to enlarge outward, even across walls
Korfmann took it to mean that the normal population always lived outside the citadel. After the earthquake of Troy VIh (if there was such an event), it proved impossible or undesirable to expand the lower settlement into the surrounding fields. So the population of the VIIa lower settlement, and later that of VIIb too, took over the area of the former residential citadel, filling the spaces in, around, and over the "palaces" with structures similar to those in the lower settlement.
U shaped ditch, Troy VI
inner side, toward the city, there was a 2.5 m rise in the level of the rock surface. The bottom of the ditch lay at c. 24 meters above sea level.
This ditch was undoubtedly a defensive ditch, a fosse, not a water channel: the botanical remains, to cite but one argument, are not such as would indicate the presence of flowing water. The ditch was filled, at least in part, towards the end of Troy VI, c 11300 BCE. The fortification wall itself must have lain to the north of the ditch, founded on bedrock. No trace of it remains today, but this is hardly surprising when we consider the need for stone in Greek and Roman times and the fact that modern ploughing has reached almost to the surface of the rock. This ditch now turned the hypothesis of a fortified lower settlement into a fact: we have a lower city.
Troy VI-VII, although smaller, would be closely related to the type of Anatolian citadel which was surrounded by a lower city usually with a fotification. Kultepe, Alisar Huyuk, Bogaskoy-Hattusa
very Anatolian, not Aegean
Mycenaeans don't use ditches, don't have mudbrick superstructure on their fortification walls, don't employ the box pattern except in such modified forms as casemate and gallery, and there was no use of the battered face
defensive ditches at Bogaskoy, and later at Cerablus and Tell Halaf
fortification walls built on the box pattern at Alisar Huyuk and Mersin. In the course of the second millennium they developed into parallel walls connected by baulks as testified, too, in Konya Karahoyuk
amber from the Baltic trade
carnelian from Colchis, Georgia
copper from northern Turkey or central Asia
fish from the shoals regularly passing through the Dardanelles
gold from the Troad or from Colchis
horses from the steppe lands north of the Black Sea
slaves
iron from the Black Sea coast in northeastern Turkey
tin from Bohemia or central Asia
203
handmade dark burnished Jutland pottery, which in its heyday in the 18th to beginning 19th century was traded all over northern Europe as far as to Vienna from its production region in Denmark. This pottery was produced from the medieval period onwards as a household industry by women in an agriculturally poor area of Jutland. The only constructed installation device needed for the production was a smoking chamber; otherwise the workshop consisted of a wooden board over the knees, a cloth for finishing the rims while turning the vessel in the hands and thus giving at a wheel-turned appearance and a fe tools. The pots were fired in bonfires of beat. In more recent times iron pans were used to put over the pots during the firing in order to get a reducing firing condition. Earlier the pots were put inside each other with the largest upside down above the others.
Even the skilled master potters in the workshops at Thrapsano on Crete traditionally combined a few months of potting each year with agriculture which was the base for their economy. Instead we could better define the word "specialist" as a person of uncommon skill in one field, which she uses when appropriate or needed, whether on a full time basis or not.
I am not arguing that all MH pottery production took place in a household industry situation
classifications into handmade vs wheel-thrown say very little, hide a number of techniques that combine them
handmade often a good strategy even when the wheel is known: some clays are better for handmade production than wheel-throwing and are well suited to the function of the pot. To refine them for wheel-throwing would be a wast eof time and energy and give as a result a worse product. Also, to wheel-throw coarse pots must be rather destructive to your fingertips.
210 women destroying well
Palaima: 7-8 year-olds flattening tablets, we can tell from the fingerprints
Weingarten
Minoans adopt Egyptian 18-unit grid for paintings and sculptures, and elongate it to 21
1 unit = 1 fist size
we have one Minoan "kouros" statue in the round, anatomically detailed
Egyptians later also adopt 21-unit system
Cline
266
Tel Kabri, Israel: fragments of floor and wall paintings of Aegean inspiration and/or manufacture
also Alalakh and Qatna in Syria
bronze Mycenaean sword in Hattusas
Minoan inspired and/or manufactured wall paintings at Tell ed-Dab'a, ancient Avaris, capital of the Hyksos
fragments of papyri depicting possible Mycenaean warriors aiding a fallen Egyptian was finally pieced together and reconstructed, after having been originally uncovered during Pendlebury's excavations at Amarna
Avaris fresco depicts Aegaean-looking men leaping over bulls, pictured in front of a labyrinth
271 In theories now usually discounted, Persson, Scachermeyr and Marinatos, among others, originally discussed the possibility of Mycenaean mercenaries having helped the Egyptians to rid Egypt of the Hyksos invaders.
272 not too many swords found, though, so Mycenaeans probably not arms-dealers
273 Mari text found referring to Capthorians (Kap-ta-ra-i-im) acting as merchants and possibly an interpreter (but whether the interpreter mentioned was Minoan or from somewhere else is speculation)
274 Uluburun nationality still not known
crew may have been as diverse as the cargo
275 12th Dynasty (MM I-II) evidence of weaver's waste in 3 three colors
Egyptians were not weaving or dyeing wool or even raising the necessary kind of sheep, so maybe Aegean expat
276 Ugaritic mythology held that the craftsman god Kothar-wa-Hasis resided in Kptr, now identified as Crete. Frequently called upon to build things, e..g palace for Baal.
Egyptian papyrus dating to Amenhotep III and recopied in the time of Tutankhamen , refers to Cretan medical terms
Text from Anatolia records an illness of the Hittite king Mursili II, ca 1330 BCE. The text states that the god of Ahhiyawa, presumably in the form of a cult idol, has been brought to help heal the king. Probably a physician went along.
277 Bietak's suggestion of a Minoan princess at the Hyksos court in Avaris cannot be proved yet, or perhaps ever, but the hypothesis may not be as farfetched as might be supposed.
280 cites Odyssey 17.382-388 "who would approach and invite a wandering stranger in unless he were a craftsman who worked for the whole community, a prophet, a physician, a carpenter or even a divine minstrel..."
281 similarities among frescoes and building styles (e.g. treasury of Atreus and of Minyas) *might* reflect exchange of craftsmen
Egyptians had names for Keftiu (Crete) and Tanaja (Mainland Greece)
Cline talks about state workers and state-less workers, seems to believe in both
284 location of Ahhiyawa may have changed over time, originally mainland, then includes SW Anatolia, then maybe Rhodes
Fresco technique invented in Crete. Only Alalakh, El Kabri, and Tell ed-Dab'a use al fresco technique, other Egyptian & NE wall paintings use al secco.
Gates
291 3 well-attested LB levels marked by Minoan and then Mycenaean pottery and by architecture
MMIII-LMIB
LM II/IIIA:1, destroyed by fire, of unknown cause, in LH IIIA2
LH IIIB/C marked by an impressive fortification wall, ca 1100 m in length, constructed of stone foundations with a mudbrick superstructure, with bastions regularly spaced every 14 m. This wall enclosed an area of five hectares (compared with the 2 hectares of the inner citadel of Troy VI, and the nearly 4 hectares of the citadel at Mycenae) with houses.
1.5 km to the south at Degirmen Tepe is a necropolis of chamber tombs that contained IIIB/IIIC pottery. The town was destroyed during LH IIIC. Subsequent reoccupation is uncertain.
pottery types, chamber tombs, female figurines, and writing strongly Aegean
walls more like Hattusas, and non-Mycenaean/Minoan pottery
293
colonization model
imitation model
indigenous eastern Myceanaean model, Mycenaean culture originated in West Anatolia as well as in southern Greece. smitten by Minoan fashions, then give it up and produce their own wares
Hittites speak of an Ahhiyawan king
Geschnitzer says Miletus was Mila:tos, never had a digamma
ostentation in graves is not so much a way of marking status as of gaining status by the living
mere ownership of wealth is not enough, you have to spend it, like potlatches, religious displays/offerings, or mortuary displays
Maran
changes in settlement structure around the Shaft Grave period (focus on eastern Greece, from Thessaly to NE Pel.)
more fortified areas sought
much abandonment of old settlements for new settlements, and using the old settlement for burials
this leads to "intramuros burial" misnomers
Maran thinks it was nothing violent (no signs of destruction, unlike EH II to EH III Lerna earlier), but a widespread change in socio-economic structure, meaning a rise in elite who can tell their population where to move that allowed this
also that the old settlements were no longer sufficient & did not meet the new layout requirements, which is why the impetus to move in the first place
87
now the discovery of sealings and continuing central storage in the LH IIIB destruction levels of the Menelaion, confirms a continuation of bureaucratic control from that centre.
118
people connected with sheep in the tablets may be mere shepherds, or may have oversight over several flocks
may also be the same people who oversee textile production
173
ships routinely forced to wait at Beṣik Bay, at the mouth of the Dardanelles for days, weeks, or even months. This was particularly so between May and September. brought Troy wealth and power, but also insecurity: always felt a need to defend itself.
Korfmann believes that Troy was abandoned during the Dark Age, maybe a few people living around, esp reusing stones, but not really an occupied site
Romans and Greeks re-excavated nearly every stone from Troy VI and VII, built on limestone bedrock
post holes in a foundation trench, wooden palisade (structure with buttresses and supporting posts) at least 15 m long, Troy VI, far away from the citadel
burnt destruction of citadel and surrounding area provisionally taken to be Troy VIIb2 = settlement of Buckelkeramik people who had probably come from the Balkans, destruction ca 1040
wall left unattended, subject to weather and stone robbing
walls still 8 meters high in Homer's time and visible, impressive looking ruin
despite extensive excavations over twenty-two campaigns, the mound had yielded only the sparsest evidence for long-range weapons such as arrowheads. Moses Finley took this to mean that at this site there was no evidence at all for any war. I, on the other hand, took it to mean that military action with long-range weapons must have taken place outside the citadel, in the area of an outer fortification wall. My argument was based on the limited range of the bow and the sling: usually 80-150 meters. A lower city served as a buffer zone.
differences in architecture although not in finds between Troy VI and VIIa
Blegen took it to mean that that space within the walls was no longer sufficient and they had to enlarge outward, even across walls
Korfmann took it to mean that the normal population always lived outside the citadel. After the earthquake of Troy VIh (if there was such an event), it proved impossible or undesirable to expand the lower settlement into the surrounding fields. So the population of the VIIa lower settlement, and later that of VIIb too, took over the area of the former residential citadel, filling the spaces in, around, and over the "palaces" with structures similar to those in the lower settlement.
U shaped ditch, Troy VI
inner side, toward the city, there was a 2.5 m rise in the level of the rock surface. The bottom of the ditch lay at c. 24 meters above sea level.
This ditch was undoubtedly a defensive ditch, a fosse, not a water channel: the botanical remains, to cite but one argument, are not such as would indicate the presence of flowing water. The ditch was filled, at least in part, towards the end of Troy VI, c 11300 BCE. The fortification wall itself must have lain to the north of the ditch, founded on bedrock. No trace of it remains today, but this is hardly surprising when we consider the need for stone in Greek and Roman times and the fact that modern ploughing has reached almost to the surface of the rock. This ditch now turned the hypothesis of a fortified lower settlement into a fact: we have a lower city.
Troy VI-VII, although smaller, would be closely related to the type of Anatolian citadel which was surrounded by a lower city usually with a fotification. Kultepe, Alisar Huyuk, Bogaskoy-Hattusa
very Anatolian, not Aegean
Mycenaeans don't use ditches, don't have mudbrick superstructure on their fortification walls, don't employ the box pattern except in such modified forms as casemate and gallery, and there was no use of the battered face
defensive ditches at Bogaskoy, and later at Cerablus and Tell Halaf
fortification walls built on the box pattern at Alisar Huyuk and Mersin. In the course of the second millennium they developed into parallel walls connected by baulks as testified, too, in Konya Karahoyuk
amber from the Baltic trade
carnelian from Colchis, Georgia
copper from northern Turkey or central Asia
fish from the shoals regularly passing through the Dardanelles
gold from the Troad or from Colchis
horses from the steppe lands north of the Black Sea
slaves
iron from the Black Sea coast in northeastern Turkey
tin from Bohemia or central Asia
203
handmade dark burnished Jutland pottery, which in its heyday in the 18th to beginning 19th century was traded all over northern Europe as far as to Vienna from its production region in Denmark. This pottery was produced from the medieval period onwards as a household industry by women in an agriculturally poor area of Jutland. The only constructed installation device needed for the production was a smoking chamber; otherwise the workshop consisted of a wooden board over the knees, a cloth for finishing the rims while turning the vessel in the hands and thus giving at a wheel-turned appearance and a fe tools. The pots were fired in bonfires of beat. In more recent times iron pans were used to put over the pots during the firing in order to get a reducing firing condition. Earlier the pots were put inside each other with the largest upside down above the others.
Even the skilled master potters in the workshops at Thrapsano on Crete traditionally combined a few months of potting each year with agriculture which was the base for their economy. Instead we could better define the word "specialist" as a person of uncommon skill in one field, which she uses when appropriate or needed, whether on a full time basis or not.
I am not arguing that all MH pottery production took place in a household industry situation
classifications into handmade vs wheel-thrown say very little, hide a number of techniques that combine them
handmade often a good strategy even when the wheel is known: some clays are better for handmade production than wheel-throwing and are well suited to the function of the pot. To refine them for wheel-throwing would be a wast eof time and energy and give as a result a worse product. Also, to wheel-throw coarse pots must be rather destructive to your fingertips.
210 women destroying well
Palaima: 7-8 year-olds flattening tablets, we can tell from the fingerprints
Weingarten
Minoans adopt Egyptian 18-unit grid for paintings and sculptures, and elongate it to 21
1 unit = 1 fist size
we have one Minoan "kouros" statue in the round, anatomically detailed
Egyptians later also adopt 21-unit system
Cline
266
Tel Kabri, Israel: fragments of floor and wall paintings of Aegean inspiration and/or manufacture
also Alalakh and Qatna in Syria
bronze Mycenaean sword in Hattusas
Minoan inspired and/or manufactured wall paintings at Tell ed-Dab'a, ancient Avaris, capital of the Hyksos
fragments of papyri depicting possible Mycenaean warriors aiding a fallen Egyptian was finally pieced together and reconstructed, after having been originally uncovered during Pendlebury's excavations at Amarna
Avaris fresco depicts Aegaean-looking men leaping over bulls, pictured in front of a labyrinth
271 In theories now usually discounted, Persson, Scachermeyr and Marinatos, among others, originally discussed the possibility of Mycenaean mercenaries having helped the Egyptians to rid Egypt of the Hyksos invaders.
272 not too many swords found, though, so Mycenaeans probably not arms-dealers
273 Mari text found referring to Capthorians (Kap-ta-ra-i-im) acting as merchants and possibly an interpreter (but whether the interpreter mentioned was Minoan or from somewhere else is speculation)
274 Uluburun nationality still not known
crew may have been as diverse as the cargo
275 12th Dynasty (MM I-II) evidence of weaver's waste in 3 three colors
Egyptians were not weaving or dyeing wool or even raising the necessary kind of sheep, so maybe Aegean expat
276 Ugaritic mythology held that the craftsman god Kothar-wa-Hasis resided in Kptr, now identified as Crete. Frequently called upon to build things, e..g palace for Baal.
Egyptian papyrus dating to Amenhotep III and recopied in the time of Tutankhamen , refers to Cretan medical terms
Text from Anatolia records an illness of the Hittite king Mursili II, ca 1330 BCE. The text states that the god of Ahhiyawa, presumably in the form of a cult idol, has been brought to help heal the king. Probably a physician went along.
277 Bietak's suggestion of a Minoan princess at the Hyksos court in Avaris cannot be proved yet, or perhaps ever, but the hypothesis may not be as farfetched as might be supposed.
280 cites Odyssey 17.382-388 "who would approach and invite a wandering stranger in unless he were a craftsman who worked for the whole community, a prophet, a physician, a carpenter or even a divine minstrel..."
281 similarities among frescoes and building styles (e.g. treasury of Atreus and of Minyas) *might* reflect exchange of craftsmen
Egyptians had names for Keftiu (Crete) and Tanaja (Mainland Greece)
Cline talks about state workers and state-less workers, seems to believe in both
284 location of Ahhiyawa may have changed over time, originally mainland, then includes SW Anatolia, then maybe Rhodes
Fresco technique invented in Crete. Only Alalakh, El Kabri, and Tell ed-Dab'a use al fresco technique, other Egyptian & NE wall paintings use al secco.
Gates
291 3 well-attested LB levels marked by Minoan and then Mycenaean pottery and by architecture
MMIII-LMIB
LM II/IIIA:1, destroyed by fire, of unknown cause, in LH IIIA2
LH IIIB/C marked by an impressive fortification wall, ca 1100 m in length, constructed of stone foundations with a mudbrick superstructure, with bastions regularly spaced every 14 m. This wall enclosed an area of five hectares (compared with the 2 hectares of the inner citadel of Troy VI, and the nearly 4 hectares of the citadel at Mycenae) with houses.
1.5 km to the south at Degirmen Tepe is a necropolis of chamber tombs that contained IIIB/IIIC pottery. The town was destroyed during LH IIIC. Subsequent reoccupation is uncertain.
pottery types, chamber tombs, female figurines, and writing strongly Aegean
walls more like Hattusas, and non-Mycenaean/Minoan pottery
293
colonization model
imitation model
indigenous eastern Myceanaean model, Mycenaean culture originated in West Anatolia as well as in southern Greece. smitten by Minoan fashions, then give it up and produce their own wares
Hittites speak of an Ahhiyawan king
Geschnitzer says Miletus was Mila:tos, never had a digamma