The Early Bronze Age Aegean: An Introductory Chronology

In this new series of posts, I'll be exploring the archaeology of Greece through its core periods, from the Minoans up to the Hellenistic Period in the hope to provide a solid historical context, rooted in archaeology. Over the next few months, we'll also look at some key themes and debates in Classical Archaeology like notions of power, economy, gender, religion and multiculturality in an attempt to fill out the picture of the ancient Greek world, which I hope will give you a good foundation for understanding historical developments, periods & texts. I’ll also be using literature to support and illustrate things, and will always provide a reading list, citations & some questions for you to think about below.

In the next few posts, we’ll be covering the Bronze Age, primarily the Minoan civilization, before moving to the Myceaneans and early Iron Age, taking a special look at the archaeology of Troy & Homer. First, let’s talk about some chronology so we can situate ourselves. There is considerable debate around when exactly the Bronze Age started, and it is not a linear thing in all societies, different cultures entered their respective Bronze Ages at different times. The Aegean generally follows the Near East in terms of chronology, and can be said to enter its Bronze Age around 3100 BCE. We can further subdivide the Bronze Age periods in the Early, Middle & Late Bronze, each of which are populated with further divisions such as EB I, II & III. 

In the EB I Aegean for example, the predominant cultures at play are the Early Minoan, Early Helladic & Early Cycladic. These were centred in different regions, but all are situated in the Early Bronze Mileu. In this environment, the first complex states -arguably the oldest in Europe, arose on the island of Crete around 1900 BCE towards the end of the EB III. It was common in 20th century archaeology to believe that Minoan palaces came in waves or phases, and especially by the Middle Bronze III period, usually later more advanced palaces were being built on top of older ones, however, with new recent studies and re-excavation it seems something more organic is going on and the continuity between periods is greater than we thought.

It is really around this time in the MB III that Minoan culture seems to peak, in terms of trade, exports and the exchange of artistic motifs across the Mediterranean world outside of Crete, even as far as Egypt. This expansive movement lasts until roughly the Late Bronze I period. The Late Bronze Age was a pivotal time of change in the Ancient World, famous for the collapse of the wider city state system, and for Aegean Prehistory we divide it into the LB I-III.  Around 1600 BCE we have the hypothesised eruption of Thera, which causes -along with other factors, the Minoan material record to shift dramatically, not necessarily collapsing, but entering a steep decline. 

Following this, around 1500 BCE, we begin to see early evidence of Myceanean culture & palaces, as well as mainland Greek culture influencing the island of Crete.

To put it simply, during the Early & Middle Bronze, Crete is the centre of the Mediterranean world, influencing the rest of Aegean from its highly developed and centralised palaces, but entering the Late Bronze Age, this is reversed, and we see Myceanean & mainland Greek influence being exerted on Crete instead. The evidence for Mycenaean Palaces is patchy before the LB III, but they gradually exploded in popularity, with places like Mycenae & the original Minoan palace at Knossos being inhabited by Myceaneans. During the end of the Late Bronze Age, likely as a result of the Collapse of the City State system, we see the destruction of the Mycenaean Palaces, moving into the Early Iron Age -also called Subminoan, around 1100 BCE.

Having said that, here is a more absolute, localised chronology for the Minoans. Rather than referring to subcategories of Bronze Age periods, we can use what’s called Relative Chronology to chart the development of the predominant cultures in the area. Here we can divide the Bronze Ages into Early, Middle & Late Minoan. Alongside this, we can group the architectural styles in terms of palace development to see what was being done in each period for greater accuracy. As for the Cyclades, 20th century convention was to name a period, especially during the EB after the site in which its predominant culture was found, largely differentiated through pottery types, hence names like Grotta Pelos, Keros Syros & Phylakopi, however since many of these cultures overlap & intersect in reality, the labels are not as useful anymore. 

You should however be aware of the complexity & the general chronology. The Late Helladic labels roughly correspond to what is going on in Mainland Greece.

Beginning in the EB II (2500 BCE) we see the Cyclades becoming very important. We see a great deal of trade and the movement of goods, as well as art. There is a heavy focus on longboats and early depictions of seafaring, probably paddaled.. Bronze especially is a common commodity that we find moving around quite frequently, but also things like figurines. Even new crops are being cultivated in this period, such as grapes & olives, and we find some of the earliest evidence for wine & olive oil, giving precedence to certain regions over others. The famous House of Tiles at the site of Lerna in the Peloponnese was built during this period, but it is a bit of an enigma. We have no archaeological evidence to suggest people were living there domestically. 

It dates roughly to the corresponding Early Helladic II period on the mainland and is notable for several of its architectural features that were advanced for its time, notably its roof covered by baked tiles, which gave the building its name. It has been interpreted as a proto-palace, or an administrative centre, on account of numerous seal impressions being found in the vicinity. These seal impressions point to an increasingly developed economy centred around trade & exchange. Alternatively, it has also been considered to be a communal structure, since the level of organisation must have meant it was important.

Alongside this we have the early layers of Troy, which is right in the middle and connecting a large part of the Early Bronze Mediterranean. 

Troy at this point is connecting Anatolia with land routes that are going into Mesopotamia & the Aegean. As a site, it seems to have had two peaks in terms of its importance, one is the EB II, which we see now, where the gold objects found by Schlieman date to, and the second peak is toward the end of the Bronze Age, related to Homer’s Ilium. For the 2-300 years of the EB II, Troy was a very important site, with monumental walls & extensive gold artefacts. It is really during this time period that we see increasing evidence of interconnection between regions through increasingly complex networks of distribution. 

Here’s a map showing the scale of exchange across the Mediterranean & Levantine world during this time period. While this is a good example, the date range (2800-1950 BCE) is incredibly large, which isn't ideal because it doesn’t show regional or temporal variation. In the EB, it appears most of the networks of exchange were in land, likely making heavy use of Anatolian pathways through Troy, with the Cyclades forming a major distribution network, hence Troy’s importance as a gateway to the entire Aegean. By 2000 BCE, these land pathways were not the only ones in use, as the trade networks seem to move south via the coast and into Crete. 

This was because this shift of networks is contemporaneous with developments in naval technology that allowed for the use and invention of sailing boats. Here, Crete takes new focus in terms of how we understand Prehistoric Mediterranean connectivity over and above Troy. So during the EB II we have an earlier phase and a later phase, during the early phase the Cyclades predominate trade networks connected with Anatolia via Troy, heading into the Peloponnese. In the second phase, the focus of networks shifts south to Crete, and everything begins to expand through there, while other regions decline. 

The Minoan States

Around 2000 BCE we see numerous innovations from Crete. The biggest innovation post 2000 BCE is state formation, characterised by large settlements of 10,000 + people. Communities on this scale necessitate social organisation, and to an extent a hierarchy. This social stratigraphy manifests as monumental architecture, most famously as palaces. Ironically however, the word “palace” being used for the early Minoan monumental architecture is misleading as some of them do not fit the standard definitions of what we know as palaces. We still do not know if someone specific was living in them as a domestic dwelling, or they had other communal or perhaps religious roles. Nevertheless, this First Palace Period from 1950-1800 BCE is defined by these very different and centralised buildings. They tell us primarily about differentiation in the community & a level of administration. 

Administration again comes in the form of seal stones from Crete. While the mainland Aegean had seal stones in Lerna, they disappear during the Minoan transition, but reappear on Crete. The other major innovation of Minoan culture is its script. 

For reasons still unclear -but likely administrative, the Cretans developed a writing system to codify their language, along with other innovations like wheel made pottery. We also see major Eastern Mediterranean imports such as scarab rings from Egypt. What’s really interesting though, is that while there are antecedents of all of these innovations from earlier periods on the mainland & wider Eastern Mediterranean, Crete doesn’t seem to copy any of them. Cretan hieroglyphs are almost entirely different to Egyptian Hieroglyphs or writing systems from the Levant, and even the pottery -while wheel made, is made entirely uniquely. Their usage of seal stones is different to that found in the Levant or Anatolia at major EB sites such as Megiddo, and we still don’t understand their system exactly.

The Cretans therefore seem to be picking up ideas through their trade networks, but never copying them exactly, instead being inspired to create their own unique examples.

This brings us to a major focus of research during the period. A major question right now is why do we have the development of the first politically complex societies in the whole of Europe appear on Crete around 2000 BCE? 20th century archaeology was proponent of cultural diffusion hypotheses that tended to argue that the influence was coming from outside of the Aegean, perhaps from Egypt, Mesopotamia or the Levant, which were already sophisticated centres during this period. 

In this view, the Minoan elites were thought to simply be copying their exotic foreign neighbours and asserting power through the trade and acquisition of elite goods from such places to augment their prestige. One concrete example of this is that the early palaces appear to follow eastern models such as the boardroom in-antis temple at Ugarit on the Syrian coast and Mari on the upper Euphrates. 

More recent studies and work by people like Dr. Borja Legarra Herrero has drawn attention to native agency however, highlighting how the Cretans are not copying their influences, but doing their own thing with them. While foreign influence certainly does help heavier social hierarchy through trade, the move toward complex palatial centres appears to be much more of a localised and indigenous phenomenon. 

There are two predominant views on the development of palaces in the Minoan periods in light of this. Some scholars ere towards a gradual development of monumental architecture, citing things like Troy & the House of Tiles as precursors of Minoan development, arguing that the palaces emerged at the latter end of a spectrum of innovation. On the other hand, some argue that palatial construction is taking place in a very narrow time window and accelerating very fast, with the years around the earliest palaces showing very rapid development. In reality, it seems like many factors are at work at once, overlapping and working on different parts of society.

Case Studies

An excellent case study for looking at the early Minoan palatial system is the famous site of Knossos. While the central palace is famous as a tourist attraction, it was built on Kephala Hill, about 5 km south of the coast. The site is located at the intersection of two streams called the Vlychia and the Kairatos, which would have provided drinking water to the ancient inhabitants. Though it was surrounded by the town of Knossos, this hill was never an acropolis in the later Greek sense. It had no steep heights, remained unfortified, and was not very high off the surrounding ground.

A major source of excavations at the site was done by the British School at Athens as a collaborative project with the 23rd Ephorate of the Hellenic Archaeological Service, and was funded by Institute of Archaeology in London, along with a few other centres. The project was known as The Knossos Urban Landscape Project and was designed to look backwards, providing a framework to synthesise over a century of archaeological research by both institutions, and forwards, to establish a comprehensive baseline for future research, and aid in the preservation and management of the threatened archaeological heritage of the site.

The main objective of the project has been to systematically survey the Knossos valley, documenting the material record of its occupation from the establishment of the site ca. 7000 BC, down to the early 20th century. In three seasons of fieldwork (2005, 2007 and 2008), about 21,000 collections were made, primarily pottery sherds, in all accessible land within an overall area of 11 square kilometres, encompassing the 1.5 square kilometres of the urban centre, and its extensive surrounding cemeteries. Some 440,000 artefacts have been collected, and hundreds of archaeological features identified.

What this project facilitated was an understanding of the site’s community size over its various periods. Here we see Early Minoan I & II materials, in black pre-excavated deposits & in blue, pottery sherds that we can stylistically date to the EB. From this we can assume the community around Knossos wasn’t large during the early EB, because we don’t have an accumulation of materials in one area. By the time we reach the EB III & MB I, there is much more material across the surface, and noticeable accumulations around the areas that correspond to the palace and hinterland. Therefore the community is much larger, and there appears to be a jump at the end of the EB III, coinciding with the palace centralisation. This transition took place over 200 years, which is rapid in archaeological time scales. We’re talking about a community growing from around 500 people to potentially 10,000. 

In another interesting example, Minoan tombs from Archanes & Mallia have extensive deposits of Egyptian style pottery, especially stone made drinking vessels. A lot of them however, are Egyptian only in motif, having been made or copied locally. These are perhaps ways of local elites exerting their influence and power, and may be related to funeral feasting or drinking, showing an incentive to use foreign vessels to differentiate themselves from local competition. 

Sources

Sherratt, E. S. 1990. Reading the texts: archaeology and the Homeric question, Antiquity 64, 807‑24

Bennet, J. 2013: Bronze Age Greece. In (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the State in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean. Oxford University Press

Legarra Herrero, B. 2016: Primary State Formation Processes on Bronze Age Crete: A Social Approach to Change in Early Complex Societies. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 1-19.

Caskey, J L. 1960: The Early Helladic Period in the Argolid. Hesperia. The American School of Classical Studies at Athens. 29(3): 285–303

Massa, M; Palmisano, A. 2018: Change and continuity in the long-distance exchange networks between western/central Anatolia, northern Levant and northern Mesopotamia, c.3200–1600 BCE. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology , 49 pp. 65-87

The Knossos Urban Landscape Project: 

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/research/directory/knossos-urban-landscape-project#:~:text=The%20principal%20objective%20of%20the,to%20the%20early%2020th%20century.

Whitelaw, T, et al. 2019: Long-term urban dynamics at Knossos: the Knossos Urban Landscape project, 2005-16. Conference: 12th International Congress of Cretan Studies Volume: 12.