Commerce was practiced to some extent in very early times, as is shown by the distribution ofMelianobsidian over all the Aegean area. Cretan vessels appeared to be exported toMelos, Egypt, and the Greek mainland. In particular, Melian vases, eventually, found their way to Crete. After 1600 BC, there was commerce with Egypt, and Aegean goods found their way to all coasts of the Mediterranean. No traces of currency have come to light, excluding certain axeheads. These axeheads were too small for practical use.[citation needed] Standard weights have been found, as well as representations of ingots.[citation needed] The Aegean written documents have not yet been proven (by being found outside the area) to beepistolary (letter writing) correspondence with other countries. Representations of ships are not common, but several have been observed on Aegean gems, gem-sealings, frying pans, and vases. These vases feature ships of low free-board, with masts and oars. Familiarity with the sea is proved by the free use of marine motifs in decoration.[6] The most detailed illustrations are to be found on the 'ship fresco' atAkrotiri on the island of Thera (Santorini) preserved by the ash fall from the volcanic eruption which destroyed the town there.
Discoveries, later in the 20th century, of sunken trading vessels such as those atUluburun andCape Gelidonya off the south coast of Turkey have brought forth an enormous amount of new information about that culture.[7]
For details of monumental evidence the articles onCrete,Mycenae,Tiryns,Troad,Cyprus, etc., must be consulted. The most representative site explored up to now isKnossos (seeCrete) which has yielded not only the most various but the most continuous evidence from theNeolithic age to the twilight of classical civilization. Next in importance comeHissarlik, Mycenae,Phaestus,Hagia Triada, Tiryns, Phylakope,Palaikastro andGournia.[8]
Structures: Ruins of palaces, palatialvillas, houses, built dome- or cist-graves andfortifications (Aegean islands, Greek mainland and northwesternAnatolia), but not distincttemples; smallshrines, however, and temene (religious enclosures, remains of one of which were probably found at Petsofa near Palaikastro by J. L. Myres in 1904) are represented onintaglios andfrescoes. From the sources and from inlay-work we have also representations of palaces and houses.
Structural decoration: Architectural features, such ascolumns,friezes and variousmouldings;mural decoration, such as fresco-paintings, colouredreliefs andmosaic inlay. Roof tiles were also occasionally employed, as at early HelladicLerna and Akovitika,[9] and later in theMycenaean towns ofGla andMidea.[10]
Furniture: (a) Domestic furniture, such as vessels of all sorts and in many materials, from huge store jars down to tinyunguent pots; culinary and other implements; thrones, seats, tables, etc., these all in stone or plasteredterracotta. (b) Sacred furniture, such as models or actual examples of ritual objects; of these we have also numerous pictorial representations. (c)Funerary furniture, for example, coffins in painted terracotta.
Art products: for example, plastic objects, carved in stone, orivory, cast or beaten in metals (gold, silver, copper and bronze), or modelled in clay,faience,paste, etc. Very little trace has yet been found of large free-standing sculpture, but many examples exist of sculptors' smaller work. Vases of many kinds, carved inmarble or other stones, cast or beaten in metals or fashioned in clay, the latter in enormous number and variety, richly ornamented with coloured schemes, and sometimes bearing moulded decoration. Examples of painting on stone, opaque and transparent. Engraved objects in great number for example, ring-bezels and gems; and an immense quantity of clay impressions, taken from these.
Weapons, tools and implements: In stone, clay, and bronze, and at the last iron, sometimes richly ornamented or inlaid. Numerous representations also of the same. No actual body armour, except such as was ceremonial and buried with the dead, like the gold breastplates in the circle-graves at Mycenae or the full length bodyarmour fromDendra.
Articles of personal use: for example, brooches (fibulae), pins, razors, tweezers, often found as dedications to a deity, for example, in theDictaean Cavern of Crete. No textiles have survived other than impressions in clay.
Written documents: for example, clay tablets and discs (so far in Crete only), but nothing of more perishable nature, such as skin,papyrus, etc.; engraved gems and gem impressions;legends written withpigment onpottery (rare); characters incised on stone or pottery. These show a number of systems of script employing eitherideograms or syllabograms (seeLinear B).
Excavated tombs: Of either the pit,chamber or thetholos kind, in which the dead were laid, together with various objects of use and luxury, withoutcremation, and in either coffins or loculi or simple wrappings.
Public works: Such as paved and stepped roadways, bridges, systems of drainage, etc.[8]
Monuments and records of other contemporary civilizations: for example, representations of alien peoples in Egyptian frescoes; imitation of Aegean fabrics and style in non-Aegean lands; allusions to Mediterranean peoples in Egyptian,Semitic orBabylonian records.
Literary traditions of subsequent civilizations: Especially the Hellenic; such as, for example, those embodied in theHomeric poems, the legends concerning Crete, Mycenae, etc.; statements as to the origin of gods, cults and so forth, transmitted to us by Hellenic antiquarians such asStrabo,Pausanias,Diodorus Siculus, etc.
Traces of customs,creeds, rituals, etc.: In the Aegean area at a later time, discordant with the civilization in which they were practiced and indicating survival from earlier systems. There are also possible linguistic and even physical survivals to be considered.
Mycenae andTiryns are the two principal sites on which evidence of a prehistoric civilization was remarked long ago by theancient Greeks.[8]
The curtain-wall and towers of the Mycenaeancitadel, itsgate with heraldic lions, and the great "Treasury of Atreus" had borne silent witness for ages beforeHeinrich Schliemann's time. However, they were regarded as a crude precursor of later Greek culture. It was not until Schliemann's excavations that Mycenaean culture attracted serious scholarly attention.[11][better source needed]
There had been, however, a good deal of other evidence available before 1876, which, had it been collated and seriously studied, might have discounted the sensation that the discovery of the citadel graves eventually made. For instance, scholars had noted that tributaries appearing in Egyptian art resembled modern Greeks, but were unable to definitely recognize them as such. Nor did the Aegean objects which were lying obscurely in museums in 1870, or thereabouts, provide a sufficient test of the real basis underlying the Hellenic myths of theArgolid, theTroad andCrete, to cause these to be taken seriously. Aegean vases have been exhibited both atSèvres andNeuchatel since about 1840, the provenance (i.e. source or origin) being in the one case Phylakope inMelos, in the otherCephalonia.[11]
Ludwig Ross, the German archaeologist appointed Curator of the Antiquities ofAthens at the time of the establishment of the Kingdom ofGreece, by his explorations in the Greek islands from 1835 onwards, called attention to certain earlyintaglios, since known as Inselsteine; but it was not until 1878 that C. T. Newton demonstrated these to be no strayedPhoenician products. In 1866 primitive structures were discovered on the island of Therasia by quarrymen extracting pozzolana, asiliceousvolcanic ash, for theSuez Canal works. When this discovery was followed up in 1870, on the neighbouringSantorini (Thera), by representatives of the French School atAthens, much pottery of a class now known immediately to precede the typical late Aegean ware, and many stone and metal objects, were found. These were dated by the geologist Ferdinand A. Fouqué, somewhat arbitrarily, to 2000 BC, by consideration of the superincumbent eruptive stratum.[11]
Meanwhile, in 1868, tombs atIalysus inRhodes had yielded toAlfred Biliotti many painted vases of styles which were called later the third and fourth "Mycenaean"; but these, bought byJohn Ruskin, and presented to theBritish Museum, excited less attention than they deserved, being supposed to be of some local fabric of uncertain date. Nor was a connection immediately detected between them and the objects found four years later in a tomb at Menidi inAttica and a rock-cut "bee-hive" grave near the Argive Heraeum.[11]
Even Schliemann's initialexcavations at Hissarlik in theTroad did not excite surprise. However, the "Burnt City" now known as Troy II, revealed in 1873, with its fortifications and vases, and a hoard of gold, silver, and bronze objects, which the discoverer connected with it, began to arouse curiosity both among scholars and the general public. With Schliemann's excavations at Mycenae, interest in prehistoric Greece exploded. It was recognized that the character of both the fabric and the decoration of the Mycenaean objects was not that of any previously known style. A wide range in space was proved by the identification of the Inselsteine and the Ialysus vases with the new style, and a wide range in time by collation of the earlier Theraean and Hissarlik discoveries. Many scholars were struck by potential resemblances between objects described byHomer and Mycenaean artifacts.[11]
Schliemann resumed excavations at Hissarlik in 1878, and greatly increased our knowledge of the lower strata, but did not recognize the Aegean remains in his "Lydian" city now known asLate Bronze Age Troy. These were not to be fully revealed until Dr. Wilhelm Dorpfeld, who had become Schliemann's assistant in 1879, resumed the work at Hissarlik in 1892 after Schliemann's death. But by laying bare in 1884 the upper stratum of remains on the rock ofTiryns, Schliemann made a contribution to our knowledge of prehistoric domestic life which was amplified two years later by Christos Tsountas's discovery of the palace at Mycenae. Schliemann's work at Tiryns was not resumed till 1905, when it was proved, as had long been suspected, that an earlier palace underlies the one he had exposed.[11]
From 1886 dates the finding of Mycenaeansepulchres outside the Argolid, from which, and from the continuation of Tsountas's exploration of the buildings and lesser graves at Mycenae, a large treasure, independent of Schliemann's princely gift, has been gathered into theNational Museum at Athens. In that year tholos-tombs, most already pillaged but retaining some of their furniture, were excavated at Arkina andEleusis in Attica, atDimini nearVolos inThessaly, at Kampos on the west of MountTaygetus, and at Maskarata inCephalonia. The richest grave of all was explored atVaphio inLaconia in 1889, and yielded, besides many gems and miscellaneous goldsmiths' work, two golden goblets chased with scenes of bull-hunting, and certain broken vases painted in a large bold style which remained an enigma until the excavation ofKnossos.[11]
In 1890 and 1893, Staes[who?] cleared out certain less rich tholos-tombs at Thoricus inAttica; and other graves, either rock-cut "bee-hives" or chambers, were found at Spata and Aphidna in Attica, inAegina andSalamis, at theArgive Heraeum andNauplia in the Argolid, nearThebes andDelphi, and not far from theThessalianLarissa. During theAcropolis excavations in Athens, which terminated in 1888, many potsherds of the Mycenaean style were found; but Olympia had yielded either none, or such as had not been recognized before being thrown away, and the temple site atDelphi produced nothing distinctively Aegean (in dating). The American explorations of the Argive Heraeum, concluded in 1895, also failed to prove that site to have been important in the prehistoric time, though, as was to be expected from its neighbourhood to Mycenae itself, there were traces of occupation in the later Aegean periods.[12]
Prehistoric research had now begun to extend beyond the Greek mainland. Certain central Aegean islands,Antiparos,Ios,Amorgos,Syros andSiphnos, were all found to be singularly rich in evidence of the Middle-Aegean period. The series of Syran-built graves, containing crouching corpses, is the best and most representative that is known in the Aegean. Melos, long marked as a source of early objects but not systematically excavated until taken in hand by theBritish School at Athens in 1896, yielded at Phylakope remains of all the Aegean periods, except theNeolithic.[8]
A map ofCyprus in the laterBronze Age (such as is given by J. L. Myres and M. O. Richter in Catalogue of theCyprus Museum) shows more than 25 settlements in and about the Mesaorea district alone, of which one, that atEnkomi, near the site ofSalamis, has yielded the richest Aegean treasure in precious metal found outside Mycenae. E. Chantre in 1894 picked up lustreless ware, like that of Hissariik, in central Phtygia and at Pteria, and the English archaeological expeditions, sent subsequently into north-westernAnatolia, have never failed to bring back ceramic specimens of Aegean appearance from the valleys of the Rhyndncus, Sangarius and Halys.[8]
InEgypt in 1887,Flinders Petrie found painted sherds of Cretan style atKahun in theFayum, and farther up theNile, atTell el-Amarna, chanced on bits of no fewer than 800 Aegean vases in 1889. There have now been recognized in the collections atCairo,Florence, London, Paris andBologna several Egyptian imitations of the Aegean style which can be set off against the many debts which the centres of Aegean culture owed to Egypt. Two Aegean vases were found atSidon in 1885, and many fragments of Aegean and especially Cypriot pottery have been found during recent excavations of sites inPhilistia by the Palestine Fund.[8]
Sicily, ever since P. Orsi excavated the Sicel cemetery near Lentini in 1877, has proved a mine of early remains, among which appear in regular succession Aegean fabrics and motives of decoration from the period of the second stratum at Hissarlik. Sardinia has Aegean sites, for example, at Abini near Teti; and Spain has yielded objects recognized as Aegean from tombs nearCádiz and fromSaragossa.[8]
One land, however, has eclipsed all others in the Aegean by the wealth of its remains of all the prehistoric ages— Crete; and so much so that, for the present, we must regard it as the fountainhead of Aegean civilization, and probably for long its political and social centre. The island first attracted the notice of archaeologists by the remarkable archaic Greek bronzes found in a cave onMount Ida in 1885, as well as byepigraphic monuments such as the famous law of Gortyna (also calledGortyn). But the first undoubted Aegean remains reported from it were a few objects extracted from Cnossus by Minos Kalokhairinos of Candia in 1878. These were followed by certain discoveries made in the S. plain Messara by F. Halbherr. Unsuccessful attempts at Cnossus were made by both W. J. Stillman and H. Schliemann, and A. J. Evans, coming on the scene in 1893, travelled in succeeding years about the island picking up trifles of unconsidered evidence, which gradually convinced him that greater things would eventually be found. He obtained enough to enable him to forecast the discovery of written characters, till then not suspected in Aegean civilization. The revolution of 1897–1898 opened the door to wider knowledge, and much exploration has ensued, for which seeCrete.[8]
Thus the "Aegean Area" has now come to mean theArchipelago with Crete andCyprus, the Hellenic peninsula with theIonian islands, and WesternAnatolia. Evidence is still wanting for theMacedonian andThracian coasts. Offshoots are found in the westernMediterranean area, in Sicily, Italy, Sardinia and Spain, and in the eastern Mediterranean area inSyria and Egypt. Regarding theCyrenaica, we are still insufficiently informed.[8]
The final collapse of the Mycenaean civilisation appears to have occurred about 1200 BC. Iron took the place of bronze, cremation took the place of burial of the dead, and writing was lost.
^Joseph W. Shaw, The Early Helladic II Corridor House: Development and Form,American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 91, No. 1. (Jan. 1987), pp. 59–79 (72).
^Ione Mylonas Shear, "Excavations on the Acropolis of Midea: Results of the Greek-Swedish Excavations under the Direction of Katie Demakopoulou and Paul åström",American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 104, No. 1. (Jan. 2000), pp. 133–134.
