Dorian Invasion - Destruction at The End of Mycenaean IIIB

Destruction At The End of Mycenaean IIIB

Meanwhile the archaeologists were encountering what appeared to be a wave of destruction of Mycenaean palaces. Indeed, the Pylos tablets recorded the dispatch of "coast-watchers", to be followed not long after by the burning of the palace, presumably by invaders from the sea. Carl Blegen wrote:

"the telltale track of the Dorians must be recognized in the fire-scarred ruins of all the great palaces and the more important towns which ... were blotted out at the end of Mycenaean IIIB."

Blegen follows Furumark in dating Mycenaean IIIB to 1300-1230 BC. Blegen himself dated the Dorian invasion to 1200 BC.

A destruction by Dorians has its own problems (as discussed in the next section) and is not the only possible explanation. At approximately this time Hittite power in Anatolia collapsed with the destruction of their capital Hattusa, and the late 19th and the 20th dynasties of Egypt suffered invasions of the Sea Peoples. A theory, reported for instance by Thomas and Conant, attributes the ruin of the Peloponnesus to the Sea Peoples:

"Evidence on the Linear B tablets from the Mycenaean kingdom of Pylos describing the dispatch of rowers and watchers to the coast, for instance, may well date to the time that the Egyptian pharaoh was expecting the arrival of foes."

The identity of the foes remained a question. The evidence suggests that some of the Sea Peoples may have been Greek. Michael Wood suggests relying on tradition, especially that of Thucydides:

"et us not forget the legends, at least as models for what might have happened. They tell us of constant rivalries with the royal clans of the Heroic Age – Atreus and Thyestes, Agamemnon and Aigisthes, and so on ...."

In summary, the Mycenaean world disintegrated through "feuding clans of the great royal families". The possibility of some sort of internal struggle had long been under consideration. Chadwick, after following and critiquing the development of different views, in 1976 settled on a theory of his own: there was no Dorian invasion. The palaces were destroyed by Dorians who had been in the Peloponnesus all along as a subservient lower class, and now were staging a revolution. Chadwick espoused the view that northern Greek was the more conservative language, and proposed that southern Greek had developed under Minoan influence as a palace language.