EAA2021: Abstract

The breakdown of the seemingly thriving Mycenaean palatial societies on the Greek mainland around 1200 BCE has received a lot of attention, not least because similar processes played out in other areas in the Eastern Mediterranean at roughly the same time. A combination of internal and external drivers been suggested as contributing to the outcome, including a recent focus on the possible negative effects of climate change. However, any effects of climate change, negative or positive, depend on the societal as well as environmental settings in the study area. It is thus crucial to consider a broad spectrum of factors and the co-evolution of changes leading up to 1200 BCE events. Few attempts have been made to understand the breakdown of the Mycenaean palatial societies in view of the preceding periods during which the Mycenaean ways of life first emerged and thereafter consolidated over time into the scenario that can be reconstructed for the final decades of the palatial period, and for its post-palatial repercussions. In this paper, we take on a human-environment perspective, assessing evidence for climate change, in parallel with a discussion of the overall scale of human activity and resourcefulness, socio-political control functions, societal cohesion and land use. Such factors likely contributed to the vulnerability load of these societies, affecting their inherent sensitivity and adaptive capacity and making them more or less able and willing to adapt to and to utilise changing environmental conditions stemming from climate change.

Late Bronze Age, Greece, human-environment interaction, vulnerability, climate change

 Abstract (PDF)

Erika Weiberg¹

Martin Finné¹