Import consumption in the Bronze Age Argolid (Greece): Effects of Mediterranean trade on Mycenaean society.

Abstract

This dissertation considers the consumption of imported commodities in one region of Mycenaean Greece as a means of assessing the effects of interregional contact. The evidence of long-distance exchange between the Late Bronze Age Argolid (ca. 17th--12th centuries BCE) and contemporary cultures of the eastern Mediterranean consists predominantly of the imported artifacts. Recognized as a particular class of material culture, imports played an ideological or communicative role in their new cultural context. Contextual study of foreign-made items and the local products of exotic materials demonstrates that imported goods were subject to a number of processes after their transport across the Mediterranean. The analysis begins with a survey of the Mycenaean context, especially the economic and administrative structures described by Linear B texts. The bulk of the dissertation, however, focuses on the uses of foreign-made items, ivory and glass objects in the Argolid. The distributions of these three classes of objects, as well as typological and iconographic analyses, was accomplished through the compilation of all published examples from the sites of the Mycenaean Argolid, as documented in the appendices. I argue that the great quantities of imported goods in the Argolid, and especially at the site of Mycenae, are correlated to the intense competition between the sites and people of the region. The distinct patterns of import acquisition and consumption of imports, as preserved in settlement and burial contexts, are interpreted as representing divergent social strategies. Workshops at Mycenae, for example, transformed the exotic materials ivory and glass into objects with a local iconographic style. The concentration of these goods at Mycenae and controlled distribution to other sites were means of attempting to extend centralized power over the region. At the same time this wealth-finance system was in operation, however, items that were recognizably foreign served to undermine the role of any single administrative power through their consumption by a number of elite groups who sought to demonstrate their connection with external sources of power.