CLASS280 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Grave Goods, Mycenaean Greece

• School: University of Alberta
• Department: Classics
• Course: CLASS280
• Professor: Frances Pownall

Document Summary

The collapse of the mycenaean world results in return to small communities without a single dominant culture. Generally isolated form one another and outside world. Fresh slate: greece does not return to its former rigidly hierarchical, highly centralized palace state. Dark age: not so much cultural decline as archaeological obscurity. Drastic decline in population (except in athens) and number of settlements. Gold, silver and bronze metals almost venice (supply of metals disappear with trade routes) Technology for luxury crafts casino: no supply or market for them. No monumental architechture (no places, forti cations, or elaborate tombs) Limited contact with the outside world: both external and within greece (roads between settlements disappear) Pottery gradually increases in size and sophistication, signifying luxury markets for the elite. Increasing use of iron (collapse of trade cuts of bronze supplies) Transition to polis (characteristic civic institution of classical greece): change in power structure with collapse of mycenaean kingdoms to local chieftains.