EAA 2022: Abstract

The archaeology of Greece in the Late Bronze Age is dominated by the glory of the illustrious Mycenaean palaces and the rich warrior burials. The role of non-elites remains at large an enigma. Previous reconstructions of the Late Bronze Age supported a model of a central redistributive economy, reflecting the role ascribed to the palatial centres by the cultural historical paradigm. Recently, the exact extent of ‘state control’ has been re-addressed, but a strong tendency remains to model the entire political economy from the viewpoint of the palaces.
Our contribution discusses two weaknesses of the current research agenda: (i) the massive bias towards the palatial centres and the elite burials, that masks the strong effect of regional polities in the development of social complexity; and (ii) the inherent limitations of existing analytical approaches in subsistence studies, that mask the critical role of the variable Greek landscape in the development of economic advantages and behaviours.
With a regional focus on Western Greece and a local viewpoint, we employ a novel combination of stable isotope measurements (bulk and compound-specific) to reconstruct the daily economic activities as recorded in subsistence practices, in order to shift the attention from elite burials to non-elite lifeways and propose a more nuanced narrative of the political economy, that comprehends the role of peripheral communities in the development of social complexity.

Late Bronze Age, Greece, isotopes, subsistence economy, political ecology

Oral presentation

  Abstract (PDF)

Efrossini Vika²

Silvia Soncin¹
Helen Talbot²
Oliver Craig²
Matthew VonTersch²
Samantha Presslee²
Michelle Alexander²