Introduction to Pre-Hellenistic Greece - Part 4

As we saw last week, pottery has been invaluable in aiding archeologists in developing a scenario of what Mycenae looked like. Along with the pottery, there have been other important finds, leading to a more complete picture of what Mycenaean society was like.

The Middle Helladic period seems to be the wealthiest period in Mycenae and neighboring sites. Graves IV and V (Late Helladic I period) show a vast accumlulation of precious objects that would fill pages and pages of inventory. Among the objects were a silver bowl inlaid with gold heads, daggers made from bronze depicting hunting and animal life scenes, a lion's head in gold leaf, and many other items. Since Graves IV and V are places of burial, several death masks were found made from hammered gold. In a slightly later Grave III, two children's bodies were wrapped in gold foil. Obviously, Mycenaeans were wealthy judging from the finds archeologists have made.

Pottery has helped date a tomb near a small town called Vaphio in central Peloponnesus as between 1550 BC and 1425 BC. The tomb's contents, among them two gold cups with men wrestling and tying bulls, show the great wealth of Mycenaean tombs. It stands to reason that if the tombs and their inhabitants were so richly decorated, then Mycenaean society itself was wealthy and had the resources to trade for precious metals.

How did the Mycenaeans accumulate such wealth when they were poor in precious metals? I touched upon this last week when I wrote that the Mycenaeans traded with many other civilizations. One of the most ovewhelming discoveries was of a trading ship found off the southwestern coast of Turkey. A ship had sunk there around 1200 BC. It carried copper in the form of buns and ox hides, tin ingots, bronze implements and proved that ancient Greece imported raw metal to make tools.

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As a somewhat sociologist, I've learned that a wealthy society is often a complex and, wouldn't you know, a bureaucratic one as well. Linear B was deciphered by a British architect shortly after World War II and historians were offered a view of the Mycenaean world that had been lost for well over two thousand years. The records at Pylos (in southwestern Peloponnesus) show a heavily organized administration in which our own would, quite possibly, be less overwhelming. Forty examples of different handwriting has been identified on unbaked clay tables. This find is only a small portion of the work that had been done by civil servants for what was an extremly complex administration. There was a central staff at Pylos while the surrounding large villages had subordinate staffs. The administration was all-encompassing, with all levels flowing from one to the other, from high levels to low.

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