Collapse and Transformation

The Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age in the Aegean

Guy D. Middleton

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781789254266
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

The years c. 1250 to 1150 BC in Greece and the Aegean are often characterised as a time of crisis and collapse. A critical period in the long history of the region and its people and culture, they witnessed the end of the Mycenaean kingdoms, with their palaces and Linear B records, and, through the Postpalatial period, the transition into the Early Iron Age. But, on closer examination, it has become increasingly clear that the period as a whole, across the region, defies simple characterisation – there was success and splendour, resilience and continuity, and novelty and innovation, actively driven by the people of these lands through this transformative century. The story of the Aegean at this time has frequently been incorporated into narratives focused on the wider eastern Mediterranean, and most infamously the 'Sea Peoples' of the Egyptian texts. In twenty-five chapters written by 25 specialists, Collapse and Transformation instead offers a tight focus on the Aegean itself, providing an up-to date picture of the archaeology 'before' and 'after' 'the collapse' of c. 1200 BC. It will be essential reading for students and scholars of the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean regions, as well as providing data and a range of interpretations to those studying collapse and resilience more widely and engaging in comparative studies. Introductory chapters discuss notions of collapse, and provide overviews of the Minoan and Mycenaean collapses. These are followed by twelve chapters, which review the evidence from the major regions of the Aegean, including the Argolid, Messenia, and Boeotia, Crete, and the Aegean islands. Six chapters then address key themes: the economy, funerary practices, the Mycenaean pottery of the mainland and the wider Aegean and eastern Mediterranean region, religion, and the extent to which later Greek myth can be drawn upon as evidence or taken to reflect any historical reality. The final four chapters provide a wider context for the Aegean story, surveying the eastern Mediterranean, including Cyprus and the Levant, and the themes of subsistence and warfare.

1

Introducing collapse

Guy D. Middleton

Readers of this volume should be aware that there are many different ideas of what ‘collapse’ means, as well as theories about what caused any given collapse (see e.g. Middleton 2017a; Storey and Storey 2018). This short review aims to provide an introduction to some of these ideas and related concepts, so that readers may weigh up the evidence presented in the volume and place it in what they feel to be an appropriate context.

What is collapse?

It has been suggested that arguments about collapse, its nature and causes, often stem from different understandings of what is meant by the term and what it is applied to (Demarest 2001; Middleton 2017b; Tainter 2006). Schwartz (2006, 5–6) gives a useful summary of what many archaeologists have in mind: ‘the fragmentation of states into smaller political entities; the partial abandonment or complete desertion of urban centres, along with the loss or depletion of their centralizing functions; the breakdown of regional economic systems; and the failure of civilizational ideologies.’ These are all potentially detectable by archaeologists through changes in material culture and without historical evidence. Inevitably, though, a lack of historical evidence means that narratives of prehistoric collapses are difficult to construct and will tend to lack securely identifiable actors and events. This can increase the tendency for overly neat, simplistic or deterministic explanations (such as ‘megadrought’) to be proposed and found plausible.

Some authors on collapse have focussed on population or the environment – in combination, overpopulation and environmental damage, or climate change, caused apocalyptic collapse, which was characterised in particular by population loss – a neo-Malthusian ‘overshoot’ model. Diamond thus states that collapse is ‘a drastic decrease in human population size and/or political/economic/social complexity, over a considerable area, for an extended time’. Post-collapse periods are then seen as times of environmental regeneration and low population (Chew 2005; Redman and Kinzig 2003).

However, this overshoot model and Diamond’s approach to collapse have been found wanting by Tainter (2006) and others (McAnany and Yoffee 2014; Middleton 2012). The apocalyptic view of collapse – hundreds or thousands dying in a nightmare scenario of chaos and violence – is not what most archaeologists have in mind when they discuss the subject, even though in a number of examples declining population is thought to have accompanied or resulted from collapse. Poverty too can explain the decreased visibility of parts of the population, or why people ‘disappear’ (in some cases, the poorer sections of the population may never have been visible in the first place). Relevant to note here is that the massive population loss caused by the Black Death in Europe did not cause any states to collapse, nor did either the Athenian plague of the late fifth century BC or the Justinianic plague of the sixth century AD bring about Athenian or eastern Roman collapse.

A bogey word in collapse studies is ‘civilisation’, on which Yoffee and Cowgill, and the other authors in their 1988 volume, provide useful guidance. Both Yoffee (1988) and Cowgill (1988) suggest separating consideration of states, or political units, which can and do collapse, from civilisations or ‘great traditions’, which do not. Civilisations, if the word must be used, are distinct constellations of material and non-material ‘phenomena’, constantly transforming, and the collapse of political states embedded in them usually – and unsurprisingly – involves some visible changes to the civilisation, especially in elite material culture and practices. Cowgill (1988, 256) also argues that neither the term collapse or fall should be used to describe the political fragmentations of states or empires into smaller parts, because there might be no reduction in complexity in those parts. In practice this is what the term is usually used for, though, but Cowgill’s point about complexity in the remaining parts should be held in mind.

We can consider the changing material, and political and social culture of the Roman Republic and Empire over centuries as a clear example of ‘civilisational’ transformation; when the last western emperor died, the western Empire fell and was succeeded by ‘barbarian’ kingdoms and post-Roman enclaves; it was the collapse of a political unit. In this instance, material culture and established traditions did not come to an abrupt end, despite significant economic and material repercussions from the events around the collapse (compare Brown 1971 and Ward-Perkins 2005). The Hittite collapse too was political, but much of established elite Hittite culture continued in the Neo-Hittite kingdoms, if not in the old Hittite heartland (the capital Hattusa having been gradually abandoned – what happened to the king and inhabitants is unknown). The Classic Maya collapse involved the end of many independent city-states at different times (the end of royal lines and the abandonment (total or partial) of urban areas) within the three-century Terminal Classic period, with a long transformation in the totality of Maya material culture observable between, say AD 800 and 1100. Neither the Maya nor their culture disappeared. A political collapse, the collapse or failure of a state, whilst certainly having knock-on effects, need not result in an allout loss of culture and traditions, or a sudden mass die-off of people (Middleton 2017b).

More widely referred to in the archaeological literature, though not always followed, is the definition of Tainter in his classic work on collapse (Tainter 1988). He suggested that collapse is when a society ‘displays a rapid, significant loss of an established level of socio-political complexity’ (Tainter 1988, 4). In this clear and helpful view collapse is a political process in which a society becomes less complex and its hierarchy and parts are reduced. This simplification may also affect other aspects of life, such as the ability of a power to organise groups, a reduction in the level of investment in monumental architecture and art, a reduction in socio-economic differentiation, stratification, and general stability, and may result in the appearance of smaller post-collapse polities. As for causes, Tainter (1988, 38) adopts an economic perspective; he argued that ‘declining marginal returns’ were key – an increase in complexity to solve problems at some point stopped paying off, leaving structures to decomplexify over perhaps two or three decades. Issues that arises here concern the role of people and events in collapse – how did a process of simplification actually play out ‘on the ground’?

Tainter’s views owe something to Renfrew (1984, 367– 369), who provided an outline of the features of ‘system collapse’. These are worth reproducing in full (in Table 1.1), not least because they are in great part influenced by the circumstances of the Mycenaean collapse and Early Iron Age Greece (Renfrew 1984, 367). In Renfrew’s view, collapse could take around a century to fully complete, and would affect the political, social, and economic worlds as well as population and settlement. It would be followed by a dark age that displayed elements of continuity and that was at least partly constructed by post-collapse origin myths and the tastes of modern archaeologists. The collapse would not have an obvious cause.

Table 1.1 Features of collapse identified by Renfrew (1984)

General features of system collapse
1 Collapse of central administrative organisation of the early state	a) Disappearance or reduction in number of levels of central place hierarchy. b) Complete fragmentation or disappearance of military organisation into (at most) small, independent units. c) Abandonment of palaces and central storage facilities. d) Eclipse of temples as major religious centres (often with their survival, modified, as local shrines. e) Effective loss of literacy for secular and religious purposes. f) Abandonment of public building works.
2 Disappearance of the traditional elite class	a) Cessation of rich, traditional burials (although different forms of rich burials frequently emerge after a couple of centuries). b) Abandonment of rich residences, or their re-use in impoverished style by ‘squatters’. c) Cessation in the use of costly assemblages of luxury goods, although individual items may survive.
3 Collapse of centralised economy	a) Cessation of large-scale redistribution or market exchange. b) Coinage (where applicable) no longer issued or exchanged commercially, although individual pieces survive as valuables. c) External trade very markedly reduced, and traditional trade routes disappear. d) Volume of internal trade markedly reduced. e) Cessation of craft-specialist manufacture. f) Cessation of specialised or organised agricultural production with agriculture instead on a local ‘homestead’ basis with diversified crop spectrum and mixed farming.
4 Settlement shift and population decline	a) Abandonment of many settlements. b) Shift to dispersed pattern of smaller settlements. c) Frequent subsequent choice of defensible locations – the ‘flight to the hills’. d) Marked reduction in population density.
Aftermath
5 Transition to lower (cf. ‘earlier’) level of socio-political integration	a) Emergence of segmentary societies showing analogies with those seen centuries or millennia earlier in the ‘formative’ level in the same area (only later do these reach a chiefdom or ‘florescent’ level of development). b) Fission of realm to smaller territories, whose boundaries may relate to those of earlier polities. c) Possible peripheral survival of some highly organised communities still retaining several organisational features of the collapsed state. d) Survival of religious elements as ‘folk’ cults and beliefs. e) Craft production at local level with ‘peasant’ imitations of former specialist products (e.g. in pottery). f) Local movements of small population groups resulting from the breakdown in order at the collapse of the central administration (either with or without some language change), leading to destruction of many settlements. g) Rapid subsequent regeneration of chiefdom or even state society, partly influenced by the remains of its predecessor.
6 Development of romantic Dark Age myth	a) Attempt by new power groups to establish legitimacy in historical terms with the creation of genealogies either (i) seeking to find a link with the ‘autochthonous’ former state or (ii) relating the deeds by which the ‘invaders’ achieved power by force of arms. b) Tendency among early chroniclers to personalise historical explanation, so that change is assigned to individual deeds, battles, and invasions, and often to attribute the decline to hostile powers outside the state territories. c) Some confusion in legend and story between the Golden Age of the early vanished civilisation and the Heroic Age of its immediate aftermath. d) Paucity of archaeological evidence after collapse compared with that for preceding period (arising from loss of literacy and abandonment or diminution of urban centres). e) Tendency among historians to accept as evidence traditional narratives first set down in writing some centuries after the collapse. f) Slow development of Dark Age archaeology, hampered both by the preceding item and by focus on the larger and more obvious central place sites of the vanished state.
Diachronic aspects
7	The collapse may take around 100 years for completion (although in the provinces of an empire, the withdrawal of central imperial authority can have more rapid effects).
8	Dislocations are evident in the earlier part of that period, the underlying factors finding expression in human conflicts – wars, destructions, and so on.
9	Boundary maintenance may show signs of weakness during this time, so that outside pressures leave traces in the historical record.
10	The growth curve for many variables in the system (including population, exchange, agricultural activity) may take the truncated sigmoid form.
11	Absence of a single, obvious ‘cause’ for the collapse.

More recent contributions have produced somewhat different or extended definitions, owing something to the development of the archaeological and wider discourses of collapse (Middleton 2017a). Johnson (2017), for example, dislikes the term ‘collapse’:

What archaeologis...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Contributors
• Note on terms and chronology
• Further reading
• Map of Greece and the Aegean
• 1. Introducing collapse
• 2. Mycenaean collapse(s) c. 1200 BC
• 3. The destruction of Mycenaean centres in eastern Thessaly
• 4. Mycenaean Achaea before and after the collapse
• 5. Chaos is a ladder: first Corinthians climbing – the end of the Mycenaean Age at Corinthia
• 6. LH IIIC and Submycenaean Laconia
• 7. Collapse at the end of the Late Bronze Age in the Aegean
• 8. Messenia
• 9. The Euboean Gulf
• 10. Growth and turmoil in the thirteenth century in Crete
• 11. East Lokris-Phokis
• 12. Glas and Boeotia
• 13. The Argolid
• 14. Collapse and transformation in Athens and Attica
• 15. Continuities and changes in Mycenaean burial practices after the collapse of the palace system
• 16. The irrelevance of Greek ‘tradition’
• 17. Continuity and change in religious practice from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age
• 18. LHIIIC pottery and destruction in the East Aegean–West Anatolian Interface, Cilicia, Cyprus and coastal Levant
• 19. The changing economy
• 20. Late palatial versus early postpalatial Mycenaean pottery (c. 1250–1150 BC): ceramic change during an episode of cultural collapse and regeneration
• 21. Beyond the Aegean: consideration of the LBA collapse in the eastern Mediterranean
• 22. Catastrophe revisited
• 23. Cyprus: Bronze Age demise, Iron Age regeneration
• 24. Economies in crisis: subsistence and landscape technology in the Aegean and east Mediterranean after c. 1200 BC