Speak about these subjects and more > History
The Dawn of European Civilization By V. GORDON CHILDE 1923
Prometheus:
Some Early Minoan dagger-blades might really have been mounted
as spear-heads—that must be the case with a two-pronged weapon2
from Mochlos. But the classical Minoan spear-head, going back to
M.M.III, was provided with a socket, once formed by folding a wide,
flat tang into a tube (Fig. 15). This device had been employed by the
Sumerians from the middle of the third millennium, but was replaced
by a cast socket, sometimes split to reproduce the effect of the fold,
even in M.M.III.
Minoan warriors carried armour too. Helmets,3 consisting of rows
of boars’ tushes sewn round a leather cap as described in Homer,
were worn from M.M.III on. In L.M.II a bronze bell helmet, sur-
mounted by a knob carrying a plume, was in use.4 The type was
popular in Central Europe from the Unetician phase on throughout
the Bronze Age; it may have originated there or been inspired from
Crete.
1 Arch., LIX, 105 ff.
2 P. of M., I, fig. 72.
3 Evans, P. of M., IV, 867 ff.; cf. Lorimer, Homer and the Monuments (1950), 211 ff.;
BCH. (1953). 57-
4 Hood, BSA., XLVII (1952), 256-61; infra, p. 132.
30
THE ORIENT AND CRETE
31
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
For removing facial hair Minoans used, in addition to tweezers,
razors, generally leaf-shaped in Late Minoan times.1
Minoan pottery is too rich and varied to be described here in detail.
During Early Minoan times self-coloured burnished wares like the
local neolithic and Early Anatolian and. Cycladic fabrics were current.
They might be decorated by stroke-burnishing1 2 or with channelled
lines that may compose concentric semicircles.3 In E.M.II the potters
of Vasiliki in East Crete covered their vessels with a red ferruginous
wash which they relieved with dark blotches deliberately produced
by the reducing agency of a glowing piece of charcoal.4 But from the
first the Minoan potter could produce a clear buff ware, probably
Fig. 15. Late Mycenaean short sword (Mycenae) and Middle Minoan spear-head (£).
fired in a kiln. By coating the vessel with a lustrous glaze paint he
obtained a surface resembling that of the self-coloured burnished
fabrics upon which patterns were drawn in white paint. Alternatively
the paint was used as medium for producing dark patterns on a light
ground. During Middle Minoan times red and yellow were combined
with white, but the light on dark system was predominant. In Late
Minoan on the contrary this style was abandoned altogether in favour
of dark on light. Spiral patterns appear first in E.M.III under Cycladic
influence (cf. p. 54). Some main forms of Early Minoan pottery have
already been mentioned on p. 19.
Throughout the Minoan epoch vessels of stone, metal, and wood
competed with the potters’ products and reacted upon their forms
and decorations. Indeed, from its inception a wealth of stone vases
distinguishes the Minoan civilization from contemporary Helladic and
Anatolian cultures. Though the Egyptians excelled in transforming
hard stones into vessels, stone vases had been used in Mesopotamia
and Syria too since the fourth millennium and were made in Cyprus
1 Evans, Arch., LIX, 117; Hood, loc. cit., 262.
2 Evans, P. of M., I, 59.
3 Ibid., fig. 22. 4 Frankfort, Studies, II, 90.
32
THE ORIENT AND CRETE
before the oldest pots.1 Of importance for comparison are the block-
vases already mentioned that may have been copied in clay in the
Danube valley and the birds’-nest vases that might be the prototypes
for certain Almerian pots; both forms are Early Minoan.
Metal vessels may have been in use even in Early Minoan times and
were undoubtedly quite common in later periods. But the competition
of plate on the tables of the rich did not involve any degradation of
the ceramic art in Crete as it did in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Two
shapes are noteworthy—a two-handled tankard or cantharos with
quatrefoil lip (represented by a silver specimen from Mochlos allegedly
M.M.I)2 which is known in pottery from Hittite times in Anatolia
Fig. 16. Egyptian representations of Vapheio cups.
and the Middle Bronze Age of Hungary and in alabaster from Shaft
Grave IV at Mycenae, and the so-called Vapheio cup of M.M.III to
L.M.II (Fig. 16),3 the curious handle of which may after all be inspired
by a wooden model; a clay cup with a rather similar handle turned up
at Nienhagen in Saxo-Thuringia apparently in an Early Bronze Age
cemetery.
Minoan costume, like the Egyptian, did not require fastening with
pins, so that, apart from a few hairpins, these toilet accessories, so
common in Mesopotamian, Anatolian, and Central European graves,
are missing in Bronze Age Crete. On the other hand, the Minoans, like
the Egyptians, Sumerians, and Indians, were skilled at shaping and
perforating hard stones for beads. Rock crystal and carnelian were
used from Early Minoan times as well as ivory and fayence. Two
amorphous lumps from the tholos of Porti have been identified as
amber, but Evans has questioned this diagnosis.4 By L.M.I amber
was certainly reaching Crete regularly from the Baltic, and a gold-
bound amber disc from the cemetery of Knossos (L.M.II)5 is almost
1 Dikaios, Khirokitia (London, 1953); so also at Jarmo, Kurdistan.
2 P. of M., I, fig. 139a; cf. van der Osten, The Alishar Hiiyiih (1928-29), Chicago
O.I.C. Publication XIX), pi. XI.
2 P. of M., II, 175.
4 Xanthudides and Droop, 69. 8 Arch., LXY, 42.
C
33
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
identical with six found in Early Bronze Age II graves in Wiltshire.
Segmented beads of fayence, copying stone beads that go back to
E.M.II1 (Fig. 12, 2 (top)), were being manufactured in Crete from
M.M.III. Similar beads have turned up as imports in the Danube valley,
Spain, Poland, and England (p. 336, below). Stone hammer-beads occur
even in the E.M. ossuaries of the Mesara.2
1 U. of Penns., Anthrop. Pubis,, III, 3, 184.
2 Xanthudides and Droop, pi. XXXII, 548.
34
CHAPTER III
ANATOLIA THE ROYAL ROAD TO THE AEGEAN
In the fifth century the Royal Road from Mesopotamia to the Aegean
led not to the Levantine coasts alone but on across the plateau of
Anatolia—a promontory of Asia thrust out towards Europe. Here ran
the route along which Persian armies marched to impose Oriental
culture on Greece, along which diplomatists, scientists, and merchants
travelled to transmit more peacefully and successfully Babylonian
ideas to the young Ionian states. More than a millennium earlier the
plateau was a bridge along which merchant caravans could travel to
transport westward a share of Mesopotamian capital. Between 2000
and 1800 b.c. the region’s wealth in ores had induced a colony1 of
Assyrian merchants to settle at Kanes (Kultepe) in Cappadocia; they
maintained continuous intercourse with the cities on the Tigris and
Euphrates, illustrated by their business archives, the so-called Cappa-
docian tablets. They may have had earlier precursors. In any case they
found, if not a literate civilization, at least some degree of urbanization
and an incipient state organization. Rich “royal tombs” at Alaca
Huyiik2 illustrate the wealth amassed by local princes, several special-
ized crafts, and trade that secured a variety of raw materials. Un-
fortunately these tombs contain no undoubted imports nor even types
that can be dated by reference to Mesopotamian literature. The culture
of the princes’ subjects is reduplicated in many little huyuks (tells),
too small to represent anything but modest villages. In them, copper
was already competing with stone and bone as an industrial material
but without in the least replacing them. This “Copper Age” culture,
as Turkish archaeologists label it, is fairly uniform all over the plateau;
judged by its pottery—self-coloured dark-faced wares, jugs and cups
with true handles and side spouts, corrugated ornament—its prefer-
ence for the sling, the multiplicity of female figurines—it is allied to
the Early Troadic to be described below. It differs sharply from the
latter in burial practice; the dead were regularly interred under the
house floors as in Syria, Assyria, and Iran, and not in distinct cemeteries.
Many of these peculiarities seem to have been inherited from a
1 Tahsim Ozgii?, Kultepe Hafriyati (Ankara), 19; id., Belleten, passim.
2 Remzi Ogiz Arik, Lesfouilles d'Alaca Hoytih (Istanbul, 1937); H. Z. Kosay, Ausgra-
bungen von A. H. (Ankara, 1944); id. Alaca Hoyiih Kazisi (Ankara, 1951).
35
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
previous phase, termed by Turkish archaeologists Chalcolithic because
copper was already in use if mainly for ornaments. It is very imper-
fectly known from the deeper levels of Alisar in the Halys1 basin, and
perhaps from Buyiik Gulliicek2 and Maltepe near Sivas3 farther north.
As compared to the Early iEgean Bronze Age, the Anatolian Copper
Age does not seem early, though the discrepancy may be due to the
more modest guesses of its investigators.4 A seal of Jemdet Nasr type
from the Copper Age strata and a radio carbon date of 2500^250 b.c.5
for layer 14 at Alisar might justify more generous estimates. It does not
seem an apt vehicle for the transmission westward of the cultural
achievements of the Tigris-Euphrates at an early date. Nor does the
so-called Chalcolithic disclose earlier Oriental advances on their way
westward. There are indeed stamp seals and figurines, but painted
sherds are exceptional, the pottery being mostly self-coloured though
comprising fruitstands. Nothing approaching the precocious neolithic
of Kurdistan and Palestine nor yet mesolithic remains have been
found on the plateau so far, but though unrepresented in the tells,
they may still come to light on other sites. Until they do, no recogniz-
able archaeological milestones mark an ancient route across Anatolia
from the Orient to Europe. Nor do the available data disclose there
an ancient cultural centre nor yet a human reservoir from which the
J£gean coastlands could have been populated.
On the other hand, at least in the north-western extremity of Asia
Minor, a vigorous and original culture is documented quite early. The
first settlement in the area is represented by pottery found in the
lowest levels of Rum Tepe, a tell in the Troad.6 Notable are fruitstands
with profiled pedestals, as in Fig. 86, and stroke-burnished ware
which recurs on Samos as well as in Europe.
In the sequel develops a culture which may conveniently be called
Early Troadic, though it is not strictly confined to the Troad. The same
culture is represented at Poliochni on Lemnos,7 Thermi on Lesbos,8 at
Yortan in Mysia and elsewhere. But the classic site remains Hissarlik,
the ancient Troy, a key position on the Hellespont commanding at
once sea-traffic up the straits and a land route’s crossing to Europe.
There Heinrich Schliemann last century distinguished seven super-
1 van der Osten, Alishar Httyiik (1930-3), OIP, XXIX. Chicago.
2 Belleten, XII (1948), 475-6.
3 Belleten, XI (1947), 659 ff.
* Gotze, Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc., XCVII (1953), 215-20.
6 Libby, Radio Carbon Dating (Chicago, 1950), 71.
6 AJA., XXXIX, 33.
7 Jahrb. d. Inst., LII; Arch. Anz. (1937), 167-70; Bemabo Brea, PPS. XXI (1955),
144-55-
8 Lamb, W., Excavations at Thermi (Cambridge, 1936).
36
ANATOLIA THE ROYAL ROAD TO THE AEGEAN
imposed prehistoric cities, but left a multitude of crucial issues. Re-
excavation of the site by an expedition under C. W. Blegen,1 supple-
mented by the stratigraphy of Thermi and Poliochni, has yielded the
following scheme as the standard for the culture sequence in North-
Western Anatolia:
Troad Greece Lesbos Lemnos Absolute Dates
Troy Vila L.H.IIIb Thermi Poliochni 1275-1200
fLate L.H.IIIa and b — — 1400-1300
Troy VI 1 Middle L.H.I and II = ) VII f1550-1400
(Early M.M.III, M.H. l ? -1550
Troy V Troy IV E.H.III VI
Troy III E.H. — [ V
Troy Ilg to E.H. — J
a 'Late E.H.] Thermi V \ f Thermi / IV
Troy I - Middle E.H.V i 1 to | II-III
Early “ J l iv /
All " cities" can be dated in terms of Aegean chronology by sherds
of actually imported TEgean vases found in the several levels at Troy.
Troy I and the contemporary settlements on Lesbos and Lemnos
consisted of clusters of two-roomed houses (often of the long rectangular
plan), closely juxtaposed along well-defined but crooked and narrow
streets. The mud-brick walls rested on foundations of stones, some-
times (in Thermi I and IV and Troy I) laid not horizontally but
obliquely in herring-bone formation, an arrangement often employed
in the brick architecture of Early Dynastic Sumer. And as in Meso-
potamia the doors were pivoted on stone sockets. Some houses in
Thermi were provided with low domed ovens of clay only 3 ft. high.
Especially in Thermi III pits (bothroi) were often dug in the house
floors and carefully lined with clay.2
But Troy I comprised also a "palace"—a rectangular hall 12*8 m.
long by 5*4 m. wide, entered through a porch at the west end. So Troy
was already ruled by a chief, an institution not yet attested in other
Early Troadic settlements. Moreover, Troy I, at least by the Middle
phase, was girt with a massive stone rampart enclosing some i| acres;
Poliochni was probably fortified at the same time.
Anatolian economy rested on the cultivation of wheats,3 barley,
millet, and presumably vegetables, perhaps also of vines and fruit-trees,
the breeding of cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs, and fishing with hook
and line or with nets. Axes and rare adzes were made from pebbles
1 Blegen, Caskey, etc., Troy, I (1950); II (1951); III (1953), Princeton.
2 On bothroi in general, see JHS., LV (1935), 1-19,
s One-corn is attested, though perhaps later at Troy and Kusura (Arch., LXXXVT,
10), emmer only at Thermi, where there are some traces of vines.
37
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
ground and polished and also from stags' antlers pierced for a shaft-
hole, knives, and sickle-teeth from flint blades simply trimmed. But
stone battle-axes with drooping blade, precursors of ceremonial
weapons like Fig. 21,1, must immediately be copies of metal weapons.
In fact, copper battle-axes of the same pattern have been found at
Yortan as at Polatli on the plateau and in the Royal Tombs of Alaca.1
Bone splinters, pointed at both ends, served as arrow-heads, while the
armoury comprised also sling-stones and maces with spheroid stone
heads.
But trade already brought metal even to Lesbos, and at Thermi I
and Troy I there were specialized smiths available to work it. A
crucible was found on virgin soil at Thermi, and small metal pins and
trinkets were comparatively common at all levels. Most were made
from unalloyed copper, but a pin from Thermi II contained as much
as 13 per cent of tin, and a bracelet of this rare metal was found in
town IV. Indeed, by the time of Thermi II and III metal was common
enough for large implements to be left lying about for modern ex-
vators to find, while at Troy lead rivets were employed for repairing
pots. The smiths produced flat chisels with rounded butts, as in Egypt
and protoliterate Sumer, flat axes and axes with the sides hammered
up to produce low flanges2—implying that celts were mounted as axes
in knee-shafts as in Central Europe—and as weapons flat-tanged
daggers like Fig. 20, 2-4, cast in two-piece valve moulds of stone.
The types of metal daggers and pins suffice to show that Troadic
metal-workers followed Asiatic rather than Egyptian traditions.
Though shaft-hole axes of the normal Mesopotamian pattern were not
manufactured, the earliest dated battle-axes are represented by clay
models from al’Ubaid levels in Babylonia.3
But the most distinctive types and actual imports point explicitly
to intercourse with Greece, the Cyclades, and the Levant coasts.
Emery and marble vases were imported from the Cyclades; bird-headed
pins are common to Thermi I and Syros; polished bone tubes like Fig.
27, 1, from Thermi III-IV and Troy I recur not only on the iEgean
islands but also in Syria and Palestine—in the last-named area in an
E.B.III context (after 2500 B.c.).4
Despite the specialization of the metallurgical industry and the
ramifications of commerce, pot-making was not sufficiently industrial-
ized for the use of the wheel. The self-coloured, burnished vases, vary-
1 Prausnitz, Inst. Arch. AR., XI (1955), 20
8 The same device is seen in the Copper Age township of Ahlatlibel near Ankara,
Turk Tarih Arkeologya ve Etnografya Dergisi, II (Ankara), 1934.
3 Childe, NLMAE., fig. 60.
* Prausnitz, Inst. Arch. AR., XI (1955), 23 and 28; cf. Childe, NLMAE., 231-7.
38
Prometheus:
ANATOLIA THE ROYAL ROAD TO THE AEGEAN
ing in hue from deep black to brick red and often copying gourd or
leather vessels, are representative of a tradition common to the whole
of Anatolia. A conspicuous peculiarity throughout the province is the
popularity of genuine handles in addition to simple lugs. The handles
are often of the “thrust” type—the lower ends being inserted into a hole
at the side of the vessels1—a trick popular in later periods too and in
other parts of Anatolia. Forms distinctive of West Anatolia are bowls with
lugs growing from the inverted rims (Fig. 17, column 1), jugs with cut-
Fig. 17. Pottery from Thermi I-II (A) and III-IV (B). After W. Lamb, BSA., XXX.
away necks (Fig. 17, columns 2-3), tripod vessels, and collared pyxides
with string-hole lugs and lids (Fig. 17, column 4). Significant changes in
form, documented by the stratigraphy of Thermi, are the expansion of
the ends of the tubular lugs on the bowls to “trumpet lugs” in town III
and the contemporary transformation of tripod legs into model human
feet. At Troy the trumpet lugs grew into regular handles, flanged and
angled, quite reminiscent of Cretan neolithic types. Decoration was
effected by bosses, ribs, corrugations, and incisions forming rectilinear
patterns. White paint on the dark ground, quite exceptional at Thermi
and Troy, was very popular at Yortan. The patterns were always recti-
linear.
Spinning and weaving would be domestic arts too. Their importance
is attested by the numbers of spindle-whorls, and clay spools. The
1 Blegen, Troy, I, 65; cf. Frankfort, Studies, ii. 86, n. x.
39
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
weaver may have used, perforated arcs of clay up to 9 cm. in length,
represented in Thermi III, that seem to be forerunners of the narrower
crescentic loom-weights so common in the Hittite levels of Kusura and
Alisar.1
The domestic fertility cults of a superstitious peasantry may be
illustrated by numerous female figurines of stone and clay, the former
Fig. 18. "Megaron” palace, Troy II.
always highly conventionalized in the manner of Fig. 8, 13-162; clay
figurines begin later at Thermi and sometimes indicate the division
between the legs. But at Troy itself the “Mother Goddess” (if such she
be) was represented on a more monumental scale: an owl-like visage
had been carved in low relief on a stone slab, 1*27 m. high, that was
found standing just outside the city gate. But to domestic cult again
1 Arch., LXXXVI, 35, fig. 15; Alishar, fig. 30.
2 Very similar figurines turn up sporadically as if imported in Mesopotamia about
2750 b.c.; Speiser, Tepe Gawra, pi. LIII, b. Frankfort, “Iraq Excavations”, OIC.
Communication, 19, fig. 24.
40
ANATOLIA THE ROYAL ROAD TO THE AEGEAN
belong clay phalli from Thermi and perhaps a homed clay spit-support
(? altar) rather like Cretan horns of consecration. The dead were
apparently buried, if adults, outside the town in regular cemeteries—
enclosed in jars, judging by the case of Yortan.
After the long period of relatively peaceful development repre-
sented by the 4 metres of “Troy I” and the four successive townships
at Thermi, unrest led to a concentration of power and wealth. Though
its population was already dwindling, Thermi V was fortified with a
stout stone wall supplemented by complicated outworks. Even so, the
site was soon deserted; it has yielded vases imported from Troy Ila,
but none of those proper to the later phases of that city. Poliochni in
Lemnos likewise declined. But at Troy potent chieftains had arisen
who exploited to the full the strategic advantages of their site and
concentrated in the city West Anatolian trade to the ruin of their rivals.
Troy II was now encircled with a new stone wall, surmounted with a
parapet of mud-brick. But, though larger than Troy I, the circuit of
Troy II still enclosed only some 7850 sq. metres, or less than two
acres. Its ruler built himself a palace of the f< megaron” plan—a hall
with central hearth, 66 feet long by 33 feet, preceded by a porch 33 feet
long and wide (Fig. 18). The citadel had reached the apex of its glory
in phase lie, but underwent four further reconstructions before it was
taken by hostile assault and burnt. But before the final catastrophe
the defenders had hidden many of their valuables. Our knowledge of
Trojan metal-work and jewellery is mainly derived from these hoards
that the plunderers had missed.
Ere its destruction Troy II had become economically, if not physic-
ally, a city. Through its monopoly of Hellespontine trade, its citizens
amassed wealth to support an industrial population and pay for
imported goods. Tin was obtainable in such abundance that bronze
containing the standard proportion of 10 per cent tin and 90 per cent
copper was in general use. Gold, silver, lead, obsidian were also im-
ported; lapis lazuli from Iran and amber from the Baltic are also
represented in hoard L, the date of which is not, however, quite certain.
Specialist jewellers, potters, and other craftsmen, trained in Asiatic
schools, settled in the rich city. The jewellers introduced solder, filagree
work, and the trick of making beads from two discs of gold
soldered together or from two folded tubes each ending in spirals—
all devices employed by Mesopotamian goldsmiths in the third
millennium.1
The potters’ wheel, indicating a further advance in urbanization,
was introduced in the time of Troy lie, but the products, turned out
1 Childe, NLMAE,, 162; cf. Iraq, IX (1947), 171-6.
41
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
3 4
Fig. 19. Pottery from Troy IX (i)-
ANATOLIA THE ROYAL ROAD TO THE AEGEAN
en masse by the new specialist craftsmen, carry on the native traditions
in form and surface treatment and did not replace hand-made vessels.
Shapes easily recognized as emerging during the lifetime of Troy II
are anthropomorphic lids and jars (“face-urns”, Fig. 19, 2 and 6),
jugs with flaring mouths (Fig. 19, 4), and curious two-handled depas
(Fig. 19, 5). But these appear already hand-made in phase lie and are
merely exaggerated expressions of tendencies inherent in the earlier
Fig. 21. Battle-axe (£), gold-capped bead (J), and crystal pommel (£)_from
Treasure L, and stray axe-adze (£). Museum f. Vorgeschichte, Berlin.
and more generalized Anatolian tradition. The representation of the
“Mother Goddess” on the face-urns is significantly like that on the
handles of early Sumerian funerary jars1; but the convention is already
foreshadowed in the stele from Troy I. Side-spouted jugs, multiple
vessels, jugs with double necks, zoomorphic vases are essentially
Anatolian and not confined to Troy II. Improvements in the prepara-
tion of the clay and firing, probably introduced at the same time as
the wheel, allowed the potter to produce harder, paler, and less porous
vessels. But to preserve the effect of the old-self-coloured vases, their
1 Childe, NLMAE., fig. 98.
43
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
surfaces were normally covered with a ferruginous wash that turns
red on firing (red wash ware)—a device popular at Alisar and farther
east, and employed even in the Middle Danube basin.
Despite the abundance of metal, stone, flint, obsidian, bone, and
antler were still freely and almost predominantly employed for axes,
battle-axes, agricultural implements, knives, awls, pins, and combs.
The battle-axes carry on the tradition of Troy I, but include some
superbly polished weapons of semi-precious stones (Fig. 21, 1) (from
Treasure L) that must be ceremonial.
The jewellery from the hoards not only demonstrates the wealth of
Troy but the divergent ramifications of its commerce. Many items are
specifically Eastern; the earrings and lock-rings with flattened ends,
the spiral filagree work (Fig. 22, 3), the gold disc beads, etc., may be
regarded as Sumerian and the technique of the knot-headed pin1 was
known there as in predynastic Egypt. Pins with double spiral heads
(of which Fig. 22, 3, is a glorified version) are found all across Anatolia
and Iran to India and Anau.2 A "spear-head” identical with the
Cycladic specimen of Fig. 23, 1, from Treasure A, belongs to a family
represented also in Central Anatolia, Cyprus, and Iran.3 Earrings like
Fig. 22,1, are worn by foreign dancing girls depicted in an Eighteenth
Dynasty tomb-painting.4 A gold hammer pin from 2g5 is ultimately
a South Russian type, but was familiar also at Alaca. At the same time,
so many types common at Troy recur in Central Europe as to prompt
the suspicion that Trojan tin came from Bohemia, copper from Tran-
sylvania or the Balkans. On the other hand, bossed bone plaques,
like Fig. 115, indicate connections westward as far as Sicily and Malta,
but their stratigraphical position at Hissarlik is a little doubtful and
they have gold analogues to the east at Alaca.6 Ring pendants of stone,
paralleled in gold in Wallachia and Transylvania, might disclose one
source of Trojan gold while copies in Sweden and Sammland may be
counterparts of the amber beads from Treasure L. If Troadic trade
were founded on Oriental demand for metal, Troy II was itself a centre
of accumulated wealth, providing capital for development of industry
and trade in our Continent.
Yet Trojan merchants seem to have managed without writing. They
did not even, like the Minoans, engrave stone seals. Two cylinders were
found at Troy,7 but their attribution is uncertain. But the Trojans did
1 Childe, NLMAE., 63, 196.
2 Ibid., 196; LAAA., XXIII, 119; Alaca (1951), pi. CXII.
3 Alaca (1937), pl* CCLXXV; Schaeffer, Stratigraphie, 38.
4 Aberg, Chron., IV, 11.
s Blegen, Troy, I, 376, and fig. 357, 37.528.
9 Antiquity, XXX, 80-93.
7 Schliemann, IHon, figs. 500-3; cf. PPS., XXI, pl. XVII.
44
ANATOLIA THE ROYAL ROAD TO THE iEGEAN
Fig. 22. 1-2, Gold earring and T: ?, ? sure A, 3, pin from Treasure jD,
4 bracelet from Treasure F, : \ ; .. pins (f). Museum f. Vorge-
schichte, Berlin.
45
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
copy Asiatic seals in clay while an imported sherd from lib bears the
imprint of an Early Minoan seal.
The old native fertility cult continued without any notable changes,
but the figurines, now predominantly of stone, are all highly conven-
tionalized (Fig. 8, 15), and the phalli are made of stone.
After the sack of Troy II a reoccupation of Hissarlik on a smaller
scale is represented by the ruins of towns III, IV, and V,1 each fortified
and each reconstructed several times. All were urban in the sense that
they comprised specialized potters and smiths and relied upon trade,
though a marked increase in the proportion of game bones in the food
refuse from town III may denote a temporary decline in farming.
Throughout the pottery attests unbroken continuity of tradition.
But face-urns are commoner in Troy III than in II. Pots found on
Euboea and at Orchomenos look like exports from Troy III, while a
copper pin from that town is taken for a Cycladic manufacture.2
Domed ovens,3 taller than those from Thermi, appear at Troy for the
first time in IV. In town V iEgean imports are rare. But bowls adorned
with a red cross in the interior that are characteristic of Troy V have
close parallels on E.H.III sites in Greece, while analogous vessels are
found at Gozlii Kale, Tarsus, together with Cappadocian tablets.4
With the sixth settlement5 Troy approximates more closely than
ever before to the dignity of a city. It was girt with a new and more
formidable stone rampart enclosing an area of over five acres. But
revival seems due to the advent of a new people who introduced pottery
foreign to the native tradition, novel domestic architecture, the practice
of cremation and probably the horse, whose presence is osteologically
attested first in Troy VI. The new pottery is termed Minyan ware—
a fine grey ware, owing its colour to the reduction of the iron oxides
in well-selected clay by controlled firing in a kiln—and accompanied
by a red oxidized variant. These are the characteristic native wares
of Troy VII too. The houses no longer conform to the megaron plan,
but are entered through doors in their long sides. No cemeteries of
Troy I to V, nor even of Early and Middle VI, have been located, but
that of Late VI was an umfield in which the cremated bones were
enclosed in cinerary urns. The first Indo-European Hittites at Bogaz
K5y had likewise laid out an umfield and deposited remains of horses
with the urns, while burial in umfields was characteristic of Period VI
in Central Europe and began in Hungary even in Period IV.
Under the new rulers trade and industry flourished luxuriantly once
more. Middle III, Late Helladic I, II, and Ilia—but hardly any Illb—
1 Blegen et al., Troy, II. 2 Ibid., 9. 3 Ibid., 107.
* Ibid., 229. ’ 5 Blegen et al., Troy, III.
46
ANATOLIA THE ROYAL ROAD TO THE AEGEAN
vases were imported from the JEgean, white-slipped ware from
Cyprus, ivory from Syria or Egypt through the iEgean, but not a
single Hittite manufacture. Bronze sickles, of Asiatic looped type,1
show that metal was now cheap enough for use in rough agricultural
work. Smiths produced a chisel provided with a socket formed not
by casting but by hammering a projecting tang of metal round a
mandril as in Hittite cities.2
Judged by the imported iEgean vases, Troy VI should have lasted
from about 1700 to 1300 b.c. Then it fell, overthrown perhaps by an
earthquake, perhaps by the Homeric Achseans under Agamemnon.
In any case the site was reoccupied and Troy Vila—a rather poorer
city—survived for another century, only to be destroyed with obvious
violence. For the last twenty years it has been held that Troy Vila
was Homer’s Ilion, but that view was plausibly challenged in 1955.
In any case, after its destruction barbarians settled at Hissarlik and
introduced a coarse wart-omamented pottery without, however,
exterminating the older population or suppressing the old ceramic
tradition; for grey wares, like Minyan, were still manufactured in
Troy Vllb. On the other hand, socketed bronze celts cast on the spot
by the usual Central European method leave no doubt as to the origin
of these invaders.
1 Childe, “The Balanced Sickle”, in Aspects of Archeology (ed. Grimes; London, 1951),
145-6.
8 OJP., XXIX, fig. 289; this was, of course, the method used for providing spear-heads
with sockets in Crete earlier (p. 30) and in Sumer in the third millennium.
47
CHAPTER IV
MARITIME CIVILIZATION IN THE CYCLADES
The Cyclades are scattered across the iEgean, remnants of a land-bridge
between Anatolia and Greece affording a passage for cultural ideas
from Asia to Europe. To mere food-gatherers or self-sufficing peasants,
the islands, often small and barren, offered no attractions. But to
mariners crossing from Asia to Europe they offer convenient halting
places and lairs to any pirates who might wish to prey on more peaceful
voyagers. Moreover, they contain raw materials of the sort needed by
urban civilizations—copper (Paros and Siphnos), obsidian (Melos),
marble (Paros and others), emery (Naxos). Accordingly, while larger
islands like Chios and Samos seem to have been settled by neolithic
peasants, the little Cyclades were at first passed by, but early colonized
by communities that could find a livelihood in commerce and perhaps
in piracy too. Such communities must have lived near the shore and
presumably in townships. But only at Phylakopi in Melos1 has a
Cycladic settlement been fully explored. There, three consecutive town-
ships could be distinguished, preceded by some earlier occupation
represented by sherds collected beneath the oldest house-floors. The
city has been partially engulfed by the sea, but must have extended
well over four acres. The first town was apparently unfortified, the
second and third girt with strong stone walls, 20 feet thick in the
latest phase. Fortified settlements are also known at Chalandriani2
on Syros, on Paros,3 and elsewhere. But these fortifications seem
relatively late. Soon after the foundation of Phylakopi II, M.M.Ib
polychrome vases were imported from Crete; the city is accordingly
hardly older than the twentieth century b.c.; it is frankly Middle Cycladic.
For the remaining islands and for earlier periods we are reduced
to estimating the size and stability of the settlements from the ceme-
teries. Few have been fully explored, but they were admittedly
extensive. Three on Despotikon comprised 50 to 60 graves each; on
Syros one cemetery at Chalandriani was composed of nearly 500 graves,
a second of more than 50; on Paros, Tsountas mentions nine cemeteries
1 For Phylakopi see Excavations at Phylakopi in Melos (Society for Promotion of
Hellenic Studies, Supplementary Volume, IV, 1904)
2 For tombs on Amorgos and Paros, see Tsountas, KvaXaStKa, in ’E<f>. ’Apx-, 1898;
for Syros and Siphnos, ibid., 1899.
» AM., XLIII (1917), 10 ff.
48
MARITIME CIVILIZATION IN THE CYCLADES
of from xo to 60 graves. Of course, all these burials are not contempor-
ary. While it has been customary to assign most cemeteries to the
Early Cycladic period (before 2000 b.c.), Aberg1 has shown that some
graves must be Middle or even Late Cycladic. Fortunately Cycladic
Fig. 23. Tomb-group. Amorgos (|).
imports in Egypt, in Crete, at Thermi and Troy, and on Mainland
Greece suffice to show that the islands’ culture reached its zenith in
the third millennium. Marble idols like Fig. 23, 2, were imported into
Crete chiefly during E.M.III, a blade like 23, 1, from the same tomb
on Amorgos, was included in Treasure A of Troy II; Cycladic marble
1 Chronologie, IV, 71, 84.
49
Prometheus:
D
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
vases were used in Thermi I-III, and the bird pins of Thermi I recur
on Syros; a pin with double spiral wire head like Fig. 27, 9, was found
in an Early Helladic tomb at Zygouries; “frying-pans” with spiral
decoration like Fig. 24 were found in the oldest Early Helladic town-
ship at H. Kosmas in Attica, and in the E.H.III level at Asine; duck
vases (like Fig. 28, 2) were imported into iEgina in Early Helladic
times though they continued to reach Eutresis in Boeotia during Middle
Helladic I (pp. 70 ff.).
Finally, a zoomorphic vase of Parian marble was recovered from a
predynastic grave in Egypt1 while a cylinder seal of Jemdet Nasr
style2 had been buried in a tomb of the Pelos group on Amorgos.
The inference that the density of population on the islands was
1 Frankfort, Studies, II, 103.
2 Frankfort, Cylinder Seals (London, 1939), 232, 301; the tomb group is in the
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
50
MARITIME CIVILIZATION IN THE CYCLADES
made possible by trade and manufacture is confirmed by the list of
exports just given. And of course that list is by no means exhaustive.
Obsidian was quarried on Melos and exported as nuclei or blades to
Crete, Mainland Greece, and the other islands. The Cycladic grave
goods comprise the products of specialized craftsmen—smiths, jewellers,
lapidaries—and prove the use of copper, tin,1 lead, silver, and other
materials which in some cases must have been imported. The role of
maritime intercourse is further emphasized by the frequent repre-
sentation of boats on the vases (Fig. 24) .1 2 But the islanders do not seem
to have needed writing for their business transactions and did not even
make regular use of seals like the Minoans. The prominence of weapons
in the tombs (especially of Amorgos) and the fortification of the settle-
ments may indicate that piracy was already combined with legitimate
trade. In any case, being dependent on overseas trade, the prosperity
of the islands might be expected to decline when that trade was
“cornered” by monopolistic princes in Crete and the Troad. A real
contraction of population during Middle Minoan II-III and Late
Minoan I-II would be perfectly comprehensible. In that case the bulk
of our material would really be Early Cycladic.
But this Early Cycladic culture was by no means homogeneous.
Culturally the islands fall into a southern and a northern group over-
lapping only on Naxos.3 To the former belong Melos, Amorgos, Des-
potikon, Paros, and Antiparos; to the northern Syros, Siphnos, Andros,
and also Euboea. The contrast is revealed in burial practices as well as
in grave goods. In the southern group, though shaft graves and chamber
tombs of uncertain age are plentiful near Phylakopi,4 the early graves
were normally trapezoid cists. In the oldest cemeteries5 (the Pelos
group), definitely antedating Phylakopi I, the cists served as ossuaries
and contain several skeletons together with vases like Fig. 28, 1, and
“fiddle idols” like Fig. 8, 10-12. The later tombs were individual
graves; they contain idols like Fig. 23, 2, marble vases and weapons.
On Syros6 in the northern group rectangular or oval tombs were built
in excavations in the hillside and roofed by corbelling (Fig. 25). But
these too served as individual graves, and the single body was intro-
duced through the roof. As at Krazi in Crete, the door (only *50 m.
square) was merely a ritual element. In Euboea7 the tomb was a pit-
1 One dagger from Amorgos was of unalloyed copper, but a ring contained I3'5
per cent tin.
2 On iEgean ships see Marinatos in BCH., LVII (1933), 170 ff.
3 Aberg, Chronologie, IV, 59 f.
4 Phylakopi, 234-8.
8 Pelos in Melos, BSA., Ill, 40; Antiparos, JHS., V, 48.
6 ’E0. 'Apx. (1899); cf. p. 23, above.
7 Papavasileiou, TleplrQ/v ev WijSolq. ipxtuwv ratpQv (Athens, 1910).
51
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
cave, excavated in the ground and containing only a single corpse
(Fig. 25). The earliest vases of the Pelos group are mud-coloured, imitat-
ing the shape of marble vessels and are decorated with simple basketry
patterns (Fig. 28, 1). Late pottery from the northern isles includes
dark-faced fabrics often decorated with running spirals and excised
triangles (Fig. 24). Technically it corresponds to the Early Helladic I
of the Mainland, though Cycladic imports at Eutresis1 prove that on
Fig. 25. Tombs on Syros and Euboea.
the islands this fabric remained current in Middle Helladic times.
Favourite forms are the so-called frying-pans and globular or cylindrical
pyxides with lids. In some graves on Syros pottery of this class is
associated with marble idols like Fig. 23, 2, which are common to both
groups of islands.2 Other graves on Syros and Naxos3 contain sauce-
boats, jugs with cut-away necks and other vessels decorated in lustrous
glaze paint in the style of Early Helladic III (p. 69). Finally, Anatolian
forms are common in the northern isles, and one tomb group on Euboea
contained exclusively Troadic vases (like Fig. 19, 3-4) and daggers
(like Fig. 20, 2).
The fish emblem carried by (Northern) Cycladic boats had been the
standard of a predynastic parish in the Delta that did not survive into
historic times in Egypt.4 So Fish-folk from the Nile may have fled to
1 Goldman, Eutresis, 182.
3 Aberg, Chron., IV, 102, nos. 13, 15; in both graves the "frying-pans" were decorated
with concentric circles so that those with running spirals may be earlier.
3 Aberg, Chron., IV, 86; Congris Int. Arch. Athens (1905), 221.
* Evans, P. of M.t II, 26.
52
MARITIME CIVILIZATION IN THE CYCLADES
the Cyclades when Menes conquered the Delta. Other Cycladic traits
—the tweezers (Fig. 26, 2), the popularity of stone amulets and par-
ticularly the type represented in Fig. 27, 4; the use of palettes (though
the Cycladic specimens are generally more trough-like than the
Egyptian and Minoan1) and the preference for stone vases may also
be Nilotic traits.
Metal-work, pottery, and dress, on the contrary, are rather Asiatic
Fig. 26. Slotted spear-head (showing method of mounting), halberd and
tweezers. Amorgos (?§?).
than African. Broad flat celts were used as axe-heads. Shaft-hole axes
are represented only by an axe-hammer and an axe-adze from a hoard
on Cythnos.1 2 Daggers with a stout midrib and rivets, sometimes of
silver as in Crete, are common chiefly on Amorgos. Spear-heads were
slotted for mounting as shown in Fig. 26; the type with hooked-tang,
shown in Fig. 23, 1, has already been connected with Asiatic models
on p. 44.
At least in the northern islands clothing had to be fastened with pins,
as in Anatolia, and the types with double-spiral and bird heads have
already been encountered in that area. Rings, bracelets, and diadems
of copper or silver were also worn as in Asia. The silver diadems
resemble gold ornaments from an E.M.II tomb at Mochlos in Crete
1 These palettes, perforated at the four comers, resemble, but only superficially, the
wrist-guards of the Beaker complex; cf. BSA., Ill, 67.
2 B.M., Bronze, fig. 174.
53
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
and from the Royal Tombs of Ur.1 Some of the beads and amulets
may be Asiatic, notably the dove-pendants that are found even in
the early tombs of the Pelos class.2 The so-called phallic (or winged)
beads (Fig. 27, 3) might be compared with the fly-amulets of Egypt
and Mesopotamia,3 but probably derive from a form fashioned of
deers’ teeth by the mesolithic Natufians of Palestine.4 A speciality
of the northern isles was the decorated bone tube designed to contain
pigments (Fig. 27, 1). But similar tubes have been found in Troy IV
and Va, and at Byblos in Syria5 as well as on Levkas in Western Greece.
Fig. 27. Early Cycladic ornaments: 2-8 Paros; 1, 9, Syros (f).
The self-coloured sepulchral pottery belongs in a general way to
the same Anatolian tradition as the early Cretan, and some vase forms
such as the pyxides are in the same vague way Anatolian. Even the
curious frying-pan form so common in the northern graves recurs, in
copper, in a “royal tomb” at Alaca Hoyiik in Central Anatolia.6 (The
excised decoration and the form of the handles show that these odd
utensils are copied from wooden originals.) On the other hand, the
running spiral design on North Cycladic pottery has generally been
considered a Danubian motive. Weinberg,7 however, suspects inspira-
1 Evans, P. of M., I, 97; Woolley, Ur Excavations: The Royal Tombs, p. 139.
2 Aberg, Ckron., IV, 62-3.
3 Cf. Childe, NLMAE., fig. 36 (Gerzean).
1 Garrod, Stone Age of Mt. Carmel, I, p. XV, 2.
5 Aberg, Chron., IV, 13, 87; AJA., XXXVIII (1934), 229, 231.
6 Hfimit Ziibeyr Kosay, Ausgrabungen von Alaca Hdytik (Ankara, 1944). pi. LXXXIII,
60.
7 In Ehrich, Relative Chronologies in Old World Archceology (1954), 95*
54
MARITIME CIVILIZATION IN THE CYCLADES
tion from the disconnected impressions of spiral shells such as appear
on the early Ghassulian pottery of the Jordan valley while Kaschnitz-
Fig. 28. Cycladic pottery: i, Pelos; 2, Phylakopi I; 3, Phylakopi II (L.C.).
Weinberg1 considers that the incised spirals on the pots copy the wire
spirals of early Sumerian and Anatolian gold-work.
As already indicated, Cycladic culture declined when Minoan palaces
indicate a Cretan grip on maritime trade and the warlike “Minyans'’
1 pz., xxxiv (1950), 196.
55
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
occupied the Helladic townships. On most islands only a few graves
are dated by long rapiers or imported Minyan vases to Middle or Late
Cycladic I—II. The “halberd" of Fig. 26, 3, comes from a M.C. shaft
grave at Akesine on Amorgos.1 Its interpretation as a halberd, imported
or copied from the West, is indeed uncertain, but M.C. pottery like
that from the tomb, turning up in the Western Mediterranean (Fig. 41),
does at least suggest Cycladic enterprise in that direction. But her
resources in obsidian secured to Melos a share in Minoan commerce,
and Thera2 too benefited from her neighbours’ wealth until a volcanic
convulsion overwhelmed her inhabitants. Phylakopi II was a fenced
city with regular streets. Imported M.M.I-II polychrome pottery and
Minyan vases from Greece found together on the earliest house floors
show how close was the island’s connection both with Crete and with
the Mainland. Conversely, the matt-painted Middle Cycladic I pottery
of Melos is significantly like the Early Bronze Age or Cappadocian
ware of Alisar, in Central Anatolia, as if the island had also connections
with the East. At a later stage in Phylakopi II a large building equipped
with pillar-rooms like a Cretan palace and decorated with a frescoe of
flying fishes in M.M.III technique might be the residence of a Minoan
governor or consul. The potters’ craft was industrialized, but the wheel-
made vases were decorated with lovely naturalistic patterns in matt
paint imitating the Minoan style of M.M.III-L.M.I (Fig. 28, 3). But
though ceramic technique and style changed, there is no break in the
tradition; matt paint had replaced the glaze medium at the beginning
of Phylakopi II or even earlier though the patterns at first were
geometric, as in Early Cycladic. In Late Mycensean-L.M.III times
the fortifications of Phylakopi were strengthened; the walls were now
20 feet thick, and near the gate a staircase led up to a tower or rampart-
walk. Most of the other islands have yielded traces of occupation at
this time, but their culture now was just a variant of the Mycenaean
“koine” described on p. 81.
1 Festschrift P. Goessler (Stuttgart, 1954), 26-34.
2 See Aberg, Chron., IV, 127-37.
56
CHAPTER V
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
The southern extremity of the Balkan peninsula, though intersected
by jagged mountain ranges, chasms, and gulfs, yet displayed as much
cultural unity during the prehistoric Bronze Age as it did during the
historical Iron Age. In the Stone Age, though peninsular Greece fell
for a time into two divisions, Macedonia and even Southern Thrace
belonged to the same cultural province. Hence the stratigraphy,
observed at citadels, continuously occupied, and in rural tells, provides
a chronological frame applicable to the whole region with certain
reservations. In Classical times Thessaly, Arcadia, and the mountainous
country of North-West Greece and still more Macedonia were cultur-
ally backward as compared with Bceotia, Attica, and Laconia, while
Thrace was frankly barbarian. A similar retardation can be observed
in the Bronze Age. Then from the beginning of the Bronze Age Mace-
donian culture diverged so far from that of peninsular Greece as to
deserve a different name—Macednic—that may be applied to Thessaly
too.
Subject to these limitations, the Mainland Bronze Age has been
divided into three main periods termed, on the analogy of the Cretan,
"Early”, "Middle”, and “Late Helladic”, and each subdivided. The
preceding Neolithic is similarly subdivided; but Early Neolithic is still
very shadowy, and Middle corresponds to the first or “A” phase in the
old sequence. Absolute dates can confidently be assigned to the Late
Helladic or Mycenaean period by interchanges of goods with Crete and
the literate countries of the East Mediterranean: L.H.I began no later
than 1500 b.c., L.H.IIIb ended just after 1200. The beginning of
Middle Helladic about 1800 b.c. is deduced from the association of
M.H. and M.M.II pottery at Phylakopi on Melos (p. 48). Finally, Minoan
seals and sealings from E.H.III layers demonstrate a parallelism with
E.M.III Crete and Egypt between Dynasties VI-XI. For estimating
the antiquity of earlier periods the relative depths of deposits are at
least suggestive: at Eutresis 4 m. out of 6*5 are composed of E.H.
ruins, at Korakou 2 m. out of 4-5 m. But in the Thessalian tell at
Tsangli, occupied in Early and perhaps Middle TEgean times, 5 m. out
of a total height of 10 m. is attributable to Middle Neolithic debris.
In conclusion, it must be recalled that the Helladic and Neolithic
57
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
periods are generally defined by pottery styles and are in fact usually
treated as the period when pottery of the distinctive style was being
manufactured at a particular site. Now on Levkas, in the backward
north-west, rapiers of L.H. or at least M.M.III type were apparently
associated with good E.H. pottery.1 Hence the absolute dates for Early
and Middle Helladic given above are valid only for the ZBgean coasts
and their immediate hinterland. In peripheral regions a retardation
of several centuries must be allowed for! Moreover, the distinction
between Late Neolithic and Early Helladic I is nowhere very sharp.
In fact, a substantial overlap between some Late Neolithic and E.H.I
is generally admitted. Weinberg2 equates Late Neolithic in Thessaly
with E.H.I in the Peloponnese.
Early and Middle Neolithic
While palaeolithic food-gatherers had reached peninsular Greece, no
remains have yet been found of any mesolithic successors, perhaps
merely because no systematic search for such remains has been made.
In 1956 the archaeological record begins with mature neolithic cultures
characterized by well-made pottery and little else. From Corinthia to
Thessaly “variegated ware”, part pink, part grey,3 seems to character-
ize the earliest levels. But from the next level at Otzaki magoula4
in Thessaly as from the cave of Khirospilia on Levkas5 come sherds
ornamented with the edge of a Cardium shell or by rustication that
we shall find are the symbols of the earliest neolithic farmer-colonists
throughout the Balkans and round the Western Mediterranean too.
With them are associated distinctive female figurines. From the
figurines and from the incipient tell formation it may be inferred that
the rural economy and ideology of these early colonists coincided with
those of still earlier cultivators in South-Western Asia, some of whom
did decorate their pottery with Cardium impressions,6 as of their
better-known kinsmen farther north (p. 86) and of their successors
in the Middle Neolithic phase.7
By the latter a rich culture already ruled throughout the mountain-
ridged peninsula from Servia in Western Macedonia to Asea in Arcadia
and from Levkas on the west to the coasts of Attica. It is best illus-
trated in the fertile valleys of Thessaly and Central Greece and is
1 Dorpfeld, Alt-Ithaka, R. 7 and R. 24.
2 AJA., LI (1947), 172; Miloj&c, Chron., 39.
3 Hesperia, VI (1937). 487-97*
4 Jhb. d. Inst., LXIX. (AA„ 1954), n-23* 5 Dorpfeld, Alt-Ithaka, 335.
8 Childe, NLMAE., 218; Godman, Tarsus, II (1956), 66.
7 Mylonas, 'H veokiducy ’Ettoxv tv 'EM dSi (Athens, 1928). Cf. Weinberg, A JA., LI
(1947), 167-85, and Schacherxneyr, Die altesten Kulturen Griechenlands (1955).
58
Prometheus:
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
Fig. 30. Pottery of Sesklo style, white on red and red on white. After Wace
and Thompson (£).
59
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
usually named after the Thessalian site of Sesklo on the Gulf of Volo.
In Thessaly and Central Greece the peasants found an environment
that they could exploit from self-sufficing hamlets, continuously
occupied. They lived in modest round or rectangular huts of wattle
and daub or of mud-brick on stone foundations. A model from Sesklo
shows a house with gabled roof. The repeated reconstruction of such
dwellings has converted the settlements into little tells (toumba or
magoula). Such mounds are very numerous but generally small: ioo
by 75 m. is an average area for a Thessalian tell, but at Hagia Marina
in Phocis the mound covered 300 by 200 m.
Now tell formation implies a rural economy advanced enough to
maintain the fertility of the fields, if not orchard husbandry that ties
the farmer to his fruit-trees. In phase A the villagers lived by culti-
vating cereals, probably also vegetables and fruit-trees1 and breeding
cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs.2
Unspecialized potters built up by hand delicate vessels, imitating
baskets or perhaps even metal vessels3 in an extremely fine burnished
ware, generally red, in the Peloponnese sometimes black or mottled.4
The pots might be decorated with simple rectilinear patterns formed
by wedge-shaped or round punctuations or by lines in white paint.
In Northern Greece the vase surface was more often covered with a
white slip on which designs were painted in red; in Central Greece and
the Peloponnese the white slip is often omitted. The patterns, often
very elaborate, are clearly derived from basketry originals, but each
hamlet developed its own distinctive style of painting. Ring bases
and genuine handles betoken an unusual degree of sophistication,
while an imitation of a leather bottle from Nemea approximates to the
Early Helladic askos (like Fig. 36, 2).
Simple stone vases too were found at Sesklo, but a bone spatula like
Fig. 45 must come from an unrecognized Early Neolithic settlement.
Though self-sufficing communities, the neolithic hamlets were not
mutually isolated; they exchanged pots5 and doubtless other com-
modities. War is not attested; the only definite weapons found were
sling-stones, probably used by hunters. Peaceful commerce outside the
province is disclosed by the general use of obsidian. At Tsani a stone
button seal bearing a cruciform design was found, and clay models of
1 Barley is attested for period A at Tsani, wheat, barley, figs, pears, and peas for
period B at Sesklo and Dimini, vulgare wheat from Rakhmani IV (D). Triticum dwum
from Servia I in Macedonia.
2 BRGK., 36 (1955), 1-50.
3 Forsdyke, British Museum, Catalogue of Greek and Etruscan Vases, I, pp. xvi and 23.
* The surface colour is determined by the firing, an oxidizing atmosphere yielding
red, a reducing black. See Blegen, Prosymna, 368-9; Hesperia, VI, 491-6.
5 Wace and Thompson, 241.
60
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
seals are reported from Sesklo, Hagia Marina, and from Nemea in the
Peloponnese. The type is certainly at home in Hither Asia1 and there
generally occurs in a “chalcolithic” milieu, and copper may well have
been known to the “neolithic” Greeks. Some of their pots seem to
imitate the shape and even the rivets of metal vases, and at Hagia
Marina Soteriadhes1 2 claims to have found riveted copper daggers on
virgin soil in a Sesklo settlement. Still, no sustained effort was made
to secure regular supplies of metal.
Surplus energies were devoted rather to domestic fertility cults.
i 24
3
Fig. 31. Neolithic figurines, Thessaly. After Wace and Thompson. (1, f;
3-4- 2, i-.)
For these figurines (Fig. 31) were modelled in clay, depicting, often
with considerable verisimilitude, a female personage, standing or
seated, or, in one example from Chaeroneia, nursing an infant (the
“kourotrophos”). Model thrones or altars (Fig. 32) were also manu-
factured. As ornaments and charms the peasants wore bracelets of
stone or Spondylus shells (as on the Danube), and stone nose-plugs as
in the al’Ubaid culture of Sumer.
In its rural economy and ideology and in more specific items of
equipment—mud-brick architecture, use of the sling instead of the
bow as well as the shape of the clay missiles, familiarity with stamp
1 Childe. NLMAE., 112, 120, 139, 195, 219, but at Byblos clay stamps are neolithic.
2 Mylonas, op. cit., fig. 64.
6l
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
seals, the decoration of kiln-fired pots with basketry designs in dark
paint—the Sesklo culture reveals just the westernmost outpost of the
South-West Asiatic province, extending from the Mediterranean coasts
to Iran and Turkmenia. Peculiarities of the pottery alone connect it
Fig. 32. Miniature altar or throne. After Wace and Thompson (£).
more specifically with Syria than with the Anatolian plateau. Technic-
ally the chalcolithic pottery of Cyprus1 is very like the red-on-white
ware described above and may constitute a link with the Hassuna-
Halaf complex farther east. At the same time connections with the
cultures of the Lower and Middle Danube valley are already discernible;
significant common elements are shoe-last adzes, triangular altars,
and shell bracelets.1 2
The Sesklo culture endured for a long time: at Tsangli five out of
ten metres of settlement debris are attributed to it, and four out of
eight occupational levels at Zerelia. But eventually the continuity
of tradition was interrupted. Changes in ceramic technique, in art,
in architecture, and even in economy not only define a new period, the
Late Neolithic, but also may betoken an infiltration of new colonists.
Among these two groups at least may be distinguished—Dimini folk
in Eastern Thessaly and Corinthia, and Larisa people in Western
Macedonia and Thessaly, Central Greece, and Corinthia. But the break
is nowhere complete. Thus female figurines were still modelled in clay;
in Eastern Thessaly the kourotrophos survived, painted in Dimini
style, and later a very schematized type emerged in which the head
is a stumpy cylinder of stone or clay, fitted into a legless torso
1 Dikaios, Khirokitia (London, 1953), 314-24; Schaeffer, Missions en Chypre, no.
The chalcolithic and proto-chalcolithic of Mersin in Cilicia provide even better analogies,
Garstang, Prehistoric Mersin (Oxford, 1953), 54-124.
2 AM., LVII (1932).
62
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
Fig. 31, 4)—a type that recurs beyond the Danube in the Gumelnita
culture.1 Hence it may be assumed that the old population absorbed,
or was subjugated by, the new settlers. The latter’s cultural affinities
seem to lie in the Balkans, but the manifestations of their advent
differ in different regions.
Late Neolithic
At Dimini near the Gulf of Volo a completely new settlement was
founded. In contrast to the earlier open hamlets it was defended by a
complex of stone walls (Fig. 33). Sesklo was probably fortified at the
® 1 i« 10 M
Fig. 33. Plan of fortified village of Dimini. After Tsountas.
same time.2 In both citadels houses of the megaron type with porch
and central hearth were erected. At Dimini and Sesklo the bevelled
1 Dacia, VTI-VIII (1940). 97-
2 It is possible that the fortifications and megara at both sites are Middle Helladic
and so unconnected with the Dimini culture.
63
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
adze (D) went out of use, and axes (Fig. 29, C) were employed for the
first time. Adzes were hafted at Dimini with the aid of perforated
antler sleeves. Copper and gold were now imported; they are repre-
sented respectively by two flat celts and a ring-pendant (Fig. 34, 2),
all from Dimini. In East Thessaly the vases were now decorated with
spirals and mseanders normally combined with the older basketry
patterns; the designs may be incised or painted in white or warm black
on a buff, red, or brown ground, and may then be outlined with a
second colour—black or white; the fruitstand—a dish on a high
pedestal—is an important innovation. Similar pottery turns up in
Corinthia and the Argolid, again in a Late Neolithic context.1
Technically Dimini pottery is inferior to that of Sesklo; ring-bases
were abandoned, true handles give place to pierced lugs, though some
of these are horned or elaborated into animal heads. So Dimini ware
cannot be treated as an autochthonous development of the native
Middle Neolithic tradition. It was surely introduced by a new people,
come most probably from the Danube valley; for there spiral and
mseander patterns were always popular and antler was extensively
used in industry. Technically Dimini ware is identical with the painted
ware of the Balkan Starcevo culture, where, however, it is associated
with rusticated ware such as we have already met in Early Neolithic
Greece. The patterns, however, whether painted or incised, can best
be matched in the Tisza-Maros region.2
1 At Gonia and the Argive Heraeum.
2 Cf. Schachermeyr, MAGW., LXXXI-LXXXIII (1953-4). i-39.* below, p. ira.
64
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
In Thessaly the Dimini culture is confined to the east. To the west
its place is taken by the Larisa culture, found also in Central Greece
and Western Macedonia. In the latter region the Late Neolithic phase
began with the violent destruction of the Sesklo village of Servia. The
site was reoccupied by a new people whose Larisa culture is as different
from that of Sesklo as is Dimini, at least judged by its pottery. The
commonest ware is self-coloured, generally black and highly burnished,
but sometimes at least in Macedonia parti-coloured—black inside and
round the rim, elsewhere red like the grey and pink variegated pottery
of the Early Neolithic. Vessels no longer stand on ring bases, handles
are replaced by lugs that may be homed.1 Decoration is effected by
stroke-burnishing, shallow fluting or channelling, incisions, or rarely
by thin fines of white paint. (Crusted ware occurs in Eastern Thessaly,
but in a later horizon.) The patterns are generally rectilinear, but
include occasional spirals. Besides self-coloured wares a light fabric
was made and covered all over with shiny brown or black paint. This
ware, termed ” neolithic urfirnis”, looks like an attempt to reproduce
the appearance of black burnished ware in kiln-fired vases, but is said
to begin in Middle Neolithic times in Corinthia.1 2
As at Dimini, adzes were mounted in perforated antler sleeves, the
sling was still preferred to the bow, but an arrow-head was found at
Servia. Personal ornaments include bracelets of Spondylus shell and
of marble and bone combs rather like those of the Danubian Vinca
culture (Fig. 47).
Larisan ideology was still expressed in the production of female
figurines, now very conventional, but one burial was found in the
settlement at Servia.
All the new ceramic fabrics and shapes found at Servia (except
white painted ware) recur in the Vinca culture on the Danube and Tisza,
as do bone combs, shell bracelets, and other traits. Hence Frankfort,3
Grundmann,4 and Heurtley5 have deduced an invasion from beyond
the Balkans. On the other hand, many of the ceramic innovations can
be paralleled equally in Crete and in Hither Asia. Agreements between
Cretan neolithic and Mainland Greek black-polished wares have already
been noted. Stroke-burnishing decorated one E.M.I fabric (p. 32) but
was also applied in the chalcolithic of Kum Tepe in the Troad (p. 36).
White painting on polished black ware was also later popular at Yortan
1 True handles are attached to jugs at Olynthus and a few other Macedonian sites,
but Heurtley believes they are influenced by Early JEgean models and not truly
"neolithic”.
2 Hesperia, VI, b, c.; AJA., LI, 174.
3 Studies, II, 40-5.
4 AM., LVII (1932), X02 ft, LXII, 56-69.
E 65
6 PM., 115-20.
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
and in South-Western Asia Minor,1 while parti-coloured wares are
characteristic of central Anatolia and Cyprus, but not before the time
of Troy I. Finally, black polished wares, sometimes decorated by
stroke-burnishing, in North Syria2 precede the painted fabric with
which Sesklo pottery has been compared. If the inference drawn from
this comparison be correct, it would be chronologically impossible to
attribute this Syrian neolithic to any Danubian inspiration. Hence,
as Milojcic has argued most cogently, the Larisa culture should mark
not a transplantation of the Vinca culture from north of the Balkans
but a stage in the spread of an Asiatic-JEgean culture thither or at
least a parallel emanation of the latter. That would further accord
with Weinberg’s3 equation of the Late Neolithic of Thessaly and
Macedonia with Troy I and E.H.I. Nevertheless, these archaeological
arguments are not so conclusive as to exclude absolutely the idea of
an invasion from the Danube valley, should other, e.g. philological,
considerations make that imperative.
The Early AEgean Bronze Age
The influx of new settlers in Late Neolithic times had not involved
an immediate transformation of the economic structure of Hellas;
despite its copper axes, the Dimini culture can be termed neolithic
as legitimately as its Sesklo precursor. The succeeding period witnessed
a real advance towards the Urban Revolution and the nuclei of the
classical City States were founded in peninsular Greece.
Not only there, but also in Macedonia and even in Thrace (at least
at Mikhalic4 on the Maritsa close to its junction with the Tundja), the
Mainland Bronze Age is marked by innovations in domestic architec-
ture and in pottery that find precise parallels on the eastern coast of
the iEgean. Architectural tricks such as herring-bone masonry (in
Boeotia and Attica, cf. p. 37) and bothroi in house floors (in Macedonia
and, by E.H.III, in peninsular Greece) and ceramic novelties—“thrust
handles”, pyxides, jugs with cut-away necks, bowls with tubular or
trumpet lugs growing from the inverted rims—suggest a transfer of
Anatolian culture across the .ZEgean and the Dardanelles. A closer
study of the pottery, however, shows that no one known Anatolian
culture was reproduced on the European shores. If a migration from
Asia Minor be assumed, it will be necessary to postulate several streams
1 Anatolian Studies, IV. (1954), 202-5.
2 Childe, BSA., XXXVII (1936-37), 31-5.
3 AJA., LI (1947). *70-4-
4 Razkopki i Prou&vaniya, I, Naroden Arkh. Muzei (Sofia, 1948), 8-20; cf., Anatolian
tudies, VI (1956), 45-8.
66
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
with different starting-points. Only the Early Aegean pottery from
Thrace and Macedonia is explicitly Troadic, while the local post-
neolithic Thessalian pottery seems derived from the Early Macednic.
In Macedonia and Thrace stone battle-axes occur at the same time,
but they are not distinctively Troadic. In the Peloponnese and Attica
Cycladic features in pottery and burial rites are prominent, as if the
islands had been at least stepping-stones on the way from Asia. At
Asine the best analogy to one of the earliest E.H. pots is to be found
in the Copper Age of Ali$ar in Central Anatolia.1 On the West Coast
Ithaka seems to have been colonized from Corinthia.1 2 Even in Thrace
and Macedonia horses’ bones occur on Early Aegean sites, while on the
Troad that animal appears first in Troy VI.
Perhaps, then, the striking agreements could be explained as parallel
adjustments of related cultures when visiting merchants and prospectors
from the Levant and the Nile introduced metallurgical and other
techniques and opened up opportunities for securing a share in the
surplus accumulated in Sumerian and Egyptian cities.
All Early Helladic, Macednic, and Thracic societies of course still
lived mainly by farming, though viticulture is now deducible from
grape seeds at H. Kosmas in Attica, while in Thrace and Macedonia
horses’ bones occur. The early ABgean settlements in Thrace and
Macedonia indeed remained simple villages, as did those at most inland
sites in Central Greece and the Peloponnese (e.g. Asea in Arcadia).
Many had already been occupied by neolithic peasants. Both in Mace-
donia and peninsular Greece Late Neolithic sherds are found on the
oldest Bronze Age floors. But at least in peninsular Greece new settle-
ments were established on sites chosen with a view to trade or piracy
rather than agriculture. These, though often of no larger size physically,
approximate to fenced cities in their location on naturally defencible
sites and their protection by ramparts of stones, combined on iEgina
with timber beams as at Troy.
Prometheus:
The townsmen lived in long two-roomed houses, closely grouped
along narrow lanes, as at Troy and Thermi. But in the more rustic
villages houses were oval or apsidal and more scattered. At Tiryns
and Orchomenos monumental circular structures were built, probably
to serve as granaries.3 By E.H.III tiles were already used for roofing.
Finally, by that phase the town of Lema4 at least comprised a regular
palace of several rooms grouped about a spacious court or hall and
roofed with tiles and slates. So in at least one Mainland centre the
1 Fr6din and Persson, Asine, 204.
2 Heurtley, BSA., XXXV (1934-35), 39-
8 Marinatos, BCH., LXX (1946), 337 fi.
67
Hesperia, XXIII (1954), 21-4-
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
social surplus was being concentrated and communal activity directed
by a chief as at Troy.
Stone was still employed for axes, adzes, and knives even in the
Peloponnese, and so extensively farther north that Thessalian and
Thracian villages look positively neolithic. Obsidian was used for
knives, sickle teeth, and hollow-based arrow-heads; for the bow is
now attested for the first time, without, however, ousting the sling.
In Thrace and Macedonia, but not in pensinsular Greece, stone battle-
axes were now being made as in the Troad; one from H. Mamas in
Macedonia (Fig. 35), though in course of local manufacture, repro-
Fig. 35. Axe and battle-axes from H. Mamas. After Heurtley, BSA., XXIX (§).
duces a South Russian type. At Mikhalic in Thrace miniature battle-
axes were modelled in clay as toys or votives.
But copper, tin, lead, silver, and gold were everywhere imported
or distributed and worked. Close to the shore at Rafina in Attica,
a convenient port for Cycladic or Cypriote ores, were found two large
furnaces for smelting copper surrounded by quantities of slag and
broken moulds. At Cirrha on the Gulf of Corinth, Davies1 reported a
crucible with tin oxide adhering to it in an open working from which
all ore had been extracted, but tin ore in this context is almost incon-
ceivable. Even in Macedonia2 gold slag and a crucible have been described.
At least south of Thessaly the distribution of metal was so well
organized that copper could be freely used for craftsmen’s tools.
Though most have been melted down in prehistoric times, an axe-
adze and a flame-shaped knife like Fig. 20, 1, survived in the E.H.II
level at Eutresis.3
1 JHS., XLIX (1929), 93-4. 8 Vardaroftsa and Saratse, Heurtley, PM,
3 Two copper battle-axes found stray in peninsular Greece and now at the British
School in Athens may well be Early Helladic.
68
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
Whether or no the techniques of metallurgy were implanted by
immigrant prospectors or itinerant artificers from Asia, the capital
for industrial development was secured in the last resort by supplying
the demand of cities on the Nile and the Euphrates. As in Crete and
the Cyclades, the coastal populations of peninsular Greece had now
turned to trading. Perhaps they colonized the Ionian Islands and the
west coasts to extend their commerce as the Dorians colonized Corfu
in historical times.
The importance and wide ramifications of Early Helladic commerce
are illustrated not only by the materials used but by actual foreign
manufactures imported or copied locally: leg amulets as in Crete and
Egypt (Zygouries,1 Hagios Kosmas2), Cycladic bone tubes (Hagios
Kosmas and Levkas), frying-pans (Hagios Kosmas, Eutresis,8 Asine),
marble idols and palettes (Hagios Kosmas), and a double-spiral pin
like Fig. 27, 9 (Zygouries). From Asia came an arm-cylinder of twisted
silver wire (like a gold one from Troy II) found in a grave on Levkas.
In the E.H.III level at Asine lumps of clay stamped with E.M.III-
M.M.I seal-impressions must have sealed bales of merchandise or jars
of oil brought from Crete. And the Early Helladic merchants themselves
felt the need of seals; seals, probably imported, have been found at
Hagios Kosmas, Asine, and other sites. One from Asine is almost
identical with a Sixth Dynasty Egyptian seal. The counterbalancing
exports may possibly have included tin from Cirrha. Early Helladic
vases were certainly exported to Troy from peninsular Greece (p. 37).
A depas found near Mikhalic in Thrace, and another from Orchomenos
as well as some other vases from that site and Eutresis may well be
Troadic imports.
The ceramic industry was not industrialized, since Early Helladic
vases are all hand-made. The fabrics that appear first (from E.H.I
onwards) are dark and self-coloured, burnished and decorated with
incised and excised patterns. In a later phase (E.H.II) begins in penin-
sular Greece a buff ware which is covered with a dark glaze paint to
reproduce the effects of the old burnished fabric. It is generally known
as Urftrnis and probably denotes Cretan influence4 though red wares
had been coated with a rather similar “glaze” in Late Neolithic times.
In E.H.III the glaze paint is used as the medium for producing dark
geometric patterns on a light ground—chiefly in the Peloponnese—or
as a ground on which similar patterns are drawn in white—in
Central Greece. The rectilinear light-on-dark designs recall Cretan
1 Blegen, Zygouries (Cambridge, Mass., 1928).
* AJA., XXXVIII (1934). 259 ff-
3 Goldman, Excavations at Eutresis in Bceotia (1931).
4 Frodin and Persson, Asine, 433.
69
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
E.M.II-III patterns, but are also foreshadowed on the black neolithic B
vases of the Mainland. Distinctive Early Helladic II-III shapes are
sauce-boats (also manufactured in gold1), hour-glass tankards, askoi and
globular water-jars, at first with ring-handles,2 later with flat vertically
pierced lugs, on the belly (Fig. 36).
North of Othrys in Thessaly, Macedonia, and Thrace, Early iEgean
3 4
Fig. 36. Early Helladic sauce-boat (1), askos (2), tankard (3), and jar (4) (£).
potters did not use a kiln that would produce clear ware and so did
not manufacture Urfirnis ware. Its place was taken by self-coloured
wares as in Early Helladic I and Early Troadic. Save for "sauce-boats’',
most of the forms popular in peninsular Greece were reproduced in
local variations looking rather more Troadic than the latter (Fig. 37,
1, 2, 6). Even horned handles had been current at Troy, but in Mace-
donia a distinctive development was the wish-bone handle (Fig. 37,
1 JHS., XLIV (1924), 163.
2 This form resembles the Corded Ware amphora, Fig. 84 (cf. Fuchs, Die griechische
Fundgruppen der friihen Bronzezeit, 1937), but also good Anatolian forms (Germania,
XXIII, 62).
70
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
3, 5), analogies to which have met us in neolithic Crete. In Thrace the
vases from Mikhalic, where askoi are missing, look more Troadic still.
But here, as in Chalcidice, trumpet lugs grow out of the inverted rims of
bowls. Now in Lesbos this type of lug appeared first in Thermi III,
having grown up out of the simpler tubular lugs of Thermi I (Fig. 17).
For once pottery discloses an irreversible relation. Finally, a few sherds
Fig. 37. Early Macednic pot-forms. After Heurtley, BSA., XXVIII.
from Mikhalic in Thrace, from H. Mamas in Macedonia, and from
E.H.III levels at Eutresis and H. Marina in Central Greece are decor-
ated with cord imprints. This “corded ware” has usually been con-
nected with the battle-axes and horses’ bones from the Thracic and
Macednic sites as evidence for an invasion from Saxo-Thuringia1 or
at least from somewhere north of the Balkans. The forms of most vases
have however nothing in common with Saxo-Thuringian corded ware,2
while the similarities of the amphorae are due at most to a common
pre-ceramic prototype (p. 173).
Imported marble figurines of Cycladic type may have been used in
domestic fertility rites, but clay figurines do not seem to have been
manufactured unless the “anchor ornaments” (Fig.
38) be really ultra-conventionalized versions of such.
They constitute one of the most distinctive type
fossils of the Early Aegean Bronze Age, being
found—in E.H.II-III layers—from Asea in Arcadia
to Servia in Macedonia and Mikhalic in Thrace,
and from Rafina and Asine on the east to Levkas
and Ithaka on the west.3 Really they are no more
likely to be ritual than the clay hooks common to
Early Thracic, Macednic, and Troadic. Clay horns
of consecration from Asine on the other hand
point to rites like the Minoan and Anatolian. But the principal super-
stitious impulse to accumulation of wealth was supplied by the desire
for a good burial. In the Peloponnese and Attica the dead were buried
1 So Fuchs, Die griechische Fundgntppender friihen Bronzezeit (1937).
3 MilojCid, Germania, XXXIII (1955), 151-4.
3 Listed by Weinberg, A JA., LI, p. 168, n. 26; add Mikhalic and Rafina,
7*
Fig. 38. E. H. An-
chor Ornament,
Kritsana (£).
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
in family vaults outside the settlements. At Zygouries the tombs were
pit-caves or shafts cut in the rock, one of which contained fourteen
skeletons. At Hagios Kosmas in Attica, the earlier ossuaries were cists
with a false door facing the township. The cists were later replaced
by built ossuaries like Fig. 25, 1, but still used as collective tombs;
in each case the bodies, in the contracted attitude, had been introduced
through the roof. Such cemeteries of family vaults show that in
peninsular Greece quite a number of lineages or clans lived together
in a single township. Out of six skulls measured from H. Kosmas three
were long-headed, but two round-headed.1
In the north-west quite different burial practices prevailed. On
Levkas Dorpfeld described a so-called royal cemetery of thirty-three
round tombs. Each "tomb” was a circular platform of stones defined
by a built wall and suggesting a denuded cairn, in or on which were
burial pithoi, cists, or shaft-graves—each containing a single corpse
(allegedly roasted)—and the ashes of a "pyre”. Among these lay burnt
human and animal bones and remains of metal ornaments and weapons.
The pottery from the graves is typically Early Helladic, but the metal
gear from the "pyres” includes besides good Early iEgean types a
couple of rapiers and gold hilt mounts2 that elsewhere would be
Mycenaean or at least M.M.III. The cemetery must be a whole period,
perhaps four centuries, later than that of H. Kosmas in Attica. The
burial rites are equally abnormal. Cremation in situ must have taken
place on the pyres, a rite otherwise unknown in Bronze Age Greece.
The platforms sound like cairns, and in 1955 a cairn with pithos burials
very like our round tombs was found in Messenia, but was M.H. in
date. So the warriors and rich women buried on Levkas did not possess
the standard Early Helladic culture though they used Early Helladic
pots and Early J2gean weapons and ornaments.
The standard Early Helladic burial practices are in sharp contrast
to the Troadic, but conform rather to Cycladic, Minoan, Cypriote and
Levantine traditions. They cannot have been introduced from the
Troad. But no Early iEgean burials have been recognized where
Troadic parallels are clearest—north of Attica and Euboea or in Mace-
donia and Thrace.
In peninsular Greece, Early Helladic societies had created a polity
and an economy under which some at least of the peasant’s younger
sons might find a livelihood in industry or commerce, but only in
reliance on Oriental markets opened up by maritime transport. Remote
from access thereto, the contemporary inhabitants of Macedonia had
1 Coon, Races, 144.
2 Dorpfeld, Alt-Ithaka, 229 (R. 7), 237 (R. 17), 241 (R. 24).
72
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
no alternative but to occupy fresh land. So they filtered southward
into Thessaly. The culture that used to be attributed to Neolithic III
and IV there was in fact basically Early Macednic.1 But local Late
Neolithic traditions were blended with the Anatolian. So clay figurines
were still manufactured, but now male as well as female. At Rakhmani
in Eastern Thessaly spiral patterns were applied in crusted technique.
Middle Helladic
The Middle Helladic period is ushered in by the violent destruction
of Orchomenos and other sites. Many were reoccupied. But abrupt
changes in architecture, pottery, burial rites, and general economy
indicate the dominance of new and warlike settlers. The latter can be
most easily recognized by their pottery—the reduced grey ware
Fig. 39. Spear-head, knives, and dagger from M.H. graves in Thessaly.
After Tsountas ($).
described on p. 46 and unhappily termed Minyan by archaeologists—
and by the practice of burying the dead contracted in small cists or in
jars among the houses. The martial character of the invaders is dis-
closed by the deposition in the graves of metal weapons (Fig. 39)—
knives, ogival daggers, and spear-heads with a socket, cast like a shoe
on one or both faces of the blade (Sesklo, Levkas, Mycenae). Hollow-
1 BSA., XXVIII (1926-27), 180-94.
73
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
based obsidian arrow-heads were still used, but now the archer used
also grooved stone arrow-straighteners like Fig. 113 (Asine, Levkas,
Mycenae). Perforated stone axes appear for the first time at Eutresis
and Asine and antler axes and sleeves at Asine. On the other hand, such
craft tools as saws and gouges are first found in a Middle Helladic
grave (on Levkas).
The Minyan invaders did not exterminate the older inhabitants or
Fig. 40. Minyan pottery from Thessaly (£), and imitations from Thermon,
iEtolia (TV).
destroy their economy, but added to the population and accelerated
the accumulation of wealth. Malthi now attained its maximum popu-
lation; the walls comprised, within an area of 3f acres, 305 rooms, while
the citadel was supplied with spring water by an aqueduct. The houses
are more often agglomerations of rooms than long rectangular halls.1
Tin-bronze was now worked by the smiths, and stone moulds for
casting spear-heads like Fig. 39,1, and Minoan double-axes were found
even at Dimini in Thessaly.
The potters’ craft was soon industrialized. The grey-ware vases were
fired in a closed kiln and either formed in a mould or thrown on the
2
4
1 AJA., XLVIII (1944), 342.
74
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
wheel. A family of Minoan potters settled on TEgina, bringing with
them their clay wheel as used in Crete.1 Perhaps such immigrant
craftsmen were responsible for introducing the wheel from Crete every-
where, but there is nothing Minoan about their products. The favourite
“Minyan" forms are ring-stemmed goblets, high-handled cups (Fig. 40),
craters, and amphorae. Both in hue and form such Minyan vases imitate
silver models. Indeed, in one Late Helladic grave the silver originals
Fig. 41. Matt-painted bowl and pithos, iEgina (TV); and Middle Cycladic jugs from
Marseilles harbour and Phylakopi (A).
were actually found together with the clay skeuomorphs.2 On the other
hand, the influence of woodwork is patent—notably in the homed
handles from JEtolia (Fig. 40, 3), which are repeated in good Minyan
ware at Troy but have a long Balkan ancestry. But grey Minyan
vases had to compete with hand-made vessels of the same shapes in
polished brown or black and vitreous red wares.
Perhaps later, pithoi, bowls, and other shapes were built up by hand
in clear wares and decorated with geometric patterns in matt paint (Fig.
41). In form and decoration these matt-painted vessels agree precisely
1 Jhb. d. Inst., LII, A A. (1937). 20-5.
2 Persson, New Tombs at Dendra (Lund, 1942), 87.
75
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
with Middle Cycladic pots from Melos and show the same Central
Anatolian affinities (p. 56). A M.H.III beaked jug from Asine1 looks like
an imported “Early Hittite” manufacture. On the other hand, at Liano-
kladhi in the Spercheios valley the Macedonians, who had occupied the
site in Early iEgean times, now learned to make in matt-painted ware
jars, tankards, and bowls with wish-bone handles of good Macednic or
Early Helladic shape, and decorate them with Macednic patterns,
including pot-hook spirals, in Middle Helladic technique (Fig. 42). A
Fig. 42. Matt-painted jar, Lianokladhi III. After Wace and Thompson (£).
similar fabric appears at Thermon in iEtolia together with “imitation
Minyan’’ vases, but not before L.H.II (fifteenth century) and also in
Levkas. This Lianokladhi painted ware thus illustrates people of
Macednic-Middle Helladic traditions surviving into Late Helladic times
whom Heurtley plausibly identifies with the Dorians’ ancestors.2
In peninsular Greece trade with Crete was at first interrupted by
the invasion, but obsidian was still secured from Melos and the metal
trade was unimpaired. Soon Middle Minoan II polychrome pottery
was being imported into iEgina and imitated at Eutresis. A bossed
1 Frodin and Persson, Asine, 286; cf. van der Osten, AHshar, 1928-Q, OIP., XIX,
pi. IV, b 1671.
2 BSA„ XXVIII (1926-27), 179 ff.
76
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
bone plaque like Fig. 115 and a hammer pin,1 from M.H. layers at
Lerna, illustrate connections at once with Anatolia and with Sicily.
The dead were generally interred in cists or jars under or between
the houses within the settlements. But on Levkas ten or twelve such
burials might be grouped together in rectangular or circular "platforms”
(cf. p. 72). In Messenia2 Middle Helladic pithos burials lay on the
periphery of a regular cairn 14 m. in diameter.
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