Mycenaean Greece - Destruction

Destruction

The timing and interpretation of the end Mycenaean period poses an array of questions that have yet to be answered. The end of LH III B1 was marked by some destruction, in particular at Mycenae. By LH III B2, an augmentation of the Mycenaean systems of defense can be seen, a sign of increasing insecurity. But this does not seem to have been a period of crisis, because these levels have yielded archaeological material that bespeaks a degree of wealth in no way inferior to that of previous periods. The end of this period is nevertheless marked by a number of destructions in the greater part of the Mycenaean sites on mainland Greece.

LH III C saw a decrease in the number of sites in Greece, which might have been considerable in certain regions (nine-tenths of the sites in Boeotia disappeared, and two-thirds in Argolis). Yet certain sites such as Mycenae and Tirynth continued to be inhabited, and the material culture found there continues to exhibit Mycenaean traits, such that LH III C is considered to be a level of Mycenaean civilization. However, a new type of ceramic appeared, called "barbarian" because it was formerly attributed to foreign invaders, and there was also a continuing increase in the practice of cremation.

Several explanations have been advanced for the causes of the decline of Mycenaean civilization in this period. Those concerning natural factors (climate change, earthquakes) are considered more controversial. The two most common theories are population movement and internal conflict. The first attributes the destruction of Mycenaean sites to invaders. Sometimes the Dorians are invoked, sometimes the Sea People.

The movements of people occurring from the Balkans to the Middle East at this period, mentioned in Egyptian inscriptions calling the invaders by the name of the "Sea People", are quite real. It is known that these people were responsible for numerous destructions in Anatolia and the Levant. Mention of a people called Eqwesh (which recalls the term Achaean) in an Egyptian text of the 12th century BC has caused specialists to suppose that the Mycenaeans had taken part in these invasions (this is not certain). There is little else to tell us what happened in the Greek world.

There is the second theory, which has the Mycenaean civilization falling in the course of internal societal conflicts brought on by a rejection of the palatial system by the most underprivileged strata of society, who were impoverished at the end of the Late Helladic. This hypothesis is sometimes joined with the preceding one, mingling social divisions with ethnic divisions.

In this context it has to be stressed, that the beginning Iron Age made large numbers of comparatively cheap weapons accessible. An economic factor, that is also seen as a root cause of the apparition of the "sea peoples" in Egypt and the destruction of Ugarit and the Hittite Empire.

Whatever were the causes, the Mycenaean civilization had definitely disappeared after LH III C, when the sites of Mycenae and Tirynth were again destroyed and lost their importance. This end, during the last years of the 12th century BC, occurs after a slow decline of the Mycenaean civilization, which lasted many years before dying out. The beginning of the 11th century BC opens a new context, that of the protogeometric, the beginning of the geometric period, the Greek Dark Ages of traditional historiography.