The Civilisation of Greece in the Bronze Age. By H. R. Hall. Pp. xxxii + 302, with 370 illustrations and two maps. London: Methuen, 1928.

1929 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-107
Keyword(s):  
Classics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brendan Burke

The history of archaeology of Greece as we know it today begins with prehistoric investigations that took place in the 19th century. Early excavations by Heinrich Schliemann, Arthur Evans, and Wilhelm Dörpfeld, along with Greek colleagues like Christos Tsountas, Panagiotis Stamatakis, Valerios Stais, and Antonios Keramopoulos laid the foundation for systematic, stratigraphic excavations. Research was heavily directed by ancient Greek texts, primarily the epic poems of Homer. Efforts to find archaeological truth to the legendary tales of the ancient heroes continue to be problematic, but, to a degree, early excavations revealed a rich and fascinating period of Greece’s development. Although the archaeological discoveries of Greek prehistory date to an age centuries older than Homer, the discoveries shed light on a vast, rich archaeological history, one upon which the Homeric tales were, at least partially, based. Early discoveries of prehistoric texts, especially on Crete with scripts in Hieroglyphic Minoan, Linear A (non-Greek), and Linear B (Greek), along with the enigmatic Phaistos disc, have expanded our understanding of the history of the Greek language and Greek people.


1928 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-74
Author(s):  
H. R. Hall

In my forthcoming publication of the Rhind Lectures, 1923, on The Civilization of Greece in the Bronze Age I have briefly referred (pp. 225–6) to the remarkable discovery by Dr. Walter Andrae for the Deutsche Orient Gesellschaft, at Ḳala'at Sharḳat, the site of the ancient Assyrian city of Ashur, on the Tigris, of a series of objects in fayence not only of precisely the same type as the remarkable fayence vases and other objects found by the British Museum excavators at Enkomi and Maroni in Cyprus, but some of them, one would think, made by the same hand. These Assyrian objects were among those brought back to England from Mesopotamia after the war, and finally assigned to the British Museum, when eventually a division-was made of the whole between London and Berlin. Before this division was effected I had recognized these particular fayence objects as the counterparts of those already in the British Museum from Enkomi, and Dr. Andrae and I, after I had pointed out the fact to him on a visit made by him to London, agreed that we should publish them separately, he as their discoverer in their context in his full publication of his finds, I in order to emphasize their identity with the Enkomi finds and their Minoan character.


1930 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 397
Author(s):  
Ralph van Deman Magoffin ◽  
H. R. Hall
Keyword(s):  

Antiquity ◽  
1956 ◽  
Vol 30 (117) ◽  
pp. 9-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oscar Broneer

The Athenians of the classical era were deeply conscious of the fact that the history of their city was different from that of the rest of Greece. They were the autochthonous settlers of the land, and their orators and writers kept forever reminding them that Athens and Attica were not subdued when the Dorian invaders gained possession of most of the Peloponnesus at the end of the Bronze Age. Was this an empty boast, the kind of historical error that Thucydides (1, 20) attributes to a people's readiness to accept uncritically the old traditions about their own country or those of others? The historian (1, 2) makes it clear that he himself believed in the tradition that Attica was the original home of the Athenians of his day, and he found an explanation for this phenomenon in the poverty of the soil which made the conquerors pass by Attica for richer sections of the country. Archaeological research has confirmed Thucydides' conclusions.


2012 ◽  
Vol 107 ◽  
pp. 189-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Livarda

Archaeobotanical material was collected from the Bronze Age fill and the Protogeometric phases underneath the Roman Villa Dionysus, Knossos, Crete. The Bronze Age assemblage was poor, representing only accidental intrusions to a tight fill of sherds and stones. The Protogeometric data were more plentiful, providing a rare glimpse into the everyday life of the period. Glume wheat, barley, legumes, fruits, nuts and several wild species were present across two Protogeometric floors. No significant differences were observed in their spatial and temporal distribution. The plant remains, along with other bio-archaeological classes of material, indicated a series of domestic activities, including cooking and consumption events, the remnants of which gradually accumulated in the habitation floors. The archaeobotanical evidence from Villa Dionysus was then compared with other Protogeometric Cretan and Greek mainland sites. An overview of these sites allowed some general trends to be observed, tentatively suggesting a picture more similar to Bronze Age than Iron Age archaeobotanical assemblages. It also highlighted differences, which would both dictate and be shaped by different socio-economic systems, and the need for more contextualised studies.


Antiquity ◽  
1936 ◽  
Vol 10 (40) ◽  
pp. 405-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. B. Wace

The plain of Argos is roughly triangular in shape. The base lies along the sea coast from Lerna to Nauplia and the apex is at Mycenae, which thus overlooks the Argive plain as Deceleia overlooks the Attic. The traveller, who, like Pausanias, approaches Argolis from the northeast by way of Corinth and Nemea and sees, as he emerges from the Tretos defile, the Argive plain opening before him to the southeast, will notice among the foothills to his left a rather inconspicuous, but isolated hill standing out between two steep and rocky conical peaks. This is the citadel of Mycenae. It owes its strength to its natural position, which is easily defensible, and it has an ample supply of fresh water from the spring Perseia running into an underground cistern reached by a secret passage. There were also three wells within the walls and at least one rain-water cistern. No enemy can hope to approach its walls in any force without being observed, and its distance from the coast precludes any danger of surprise from the sea. As a seat of power it is admirably placed. It dominates the Argive plain and it controls the routes that lead northeast to Corinth and the rich districts easily accessible thence, the fertile littoral of Achaia or the Boeotian coast with the central Greek plain behind. The site was thus naturally inhabited early in the Bronze Age, probably from the very beginning of that age on the Mainland of Greece about 2800 B.C., and round it on the outlying hills were neighbouring settlements so that the district even then must have been fairly well populated.


Antiquity ◽  
1960 ◽  
Vol 34 (135) ◽  
pp. 166-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. S. F. Hood

Among the most impressive monuments of the earlier part of the Bronze Age in Crete are the great circular communal tombs which began to be built, notably in the Mesara plain but also in other parts of the island, before 2000 B.C., and flourished in use throughout the first half of the 2nd millennium. Similarly, the most magnificent surviving architectural creations of the Late Bronze Age in the Aegean area are the stupendous beehive or tholos tombs of the chief Mainland centres like Mycenae. Tombs of this type, with corbelled stone vaults sunk in the ground and approached by long entrance passages (dromoi), seem to appear for the first time in the Aegean about 1600 B.C., and reach their finest and grandest expression on the Mainland of Greece in the two centuries between 1500 and 1300 B.C. A map of the Aegean area showing the distribution of these two types of tombs accompanies this article (FIG. I).


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