Bronze Age Flashcards
BRONZE AGE - CRETE vs MAINLAND
- period BEFORE PALACES and EARLY HELLADIC
CRETE
- new settlers with new weapons
somebody moved there (maybe from Asia); brought with themselves the knowledge of the use of metal (1st – started with copper; later – with bronze (harder tools; weapons).
- The treasures also start to accumulate
- LIVING: in towns - four large settlements that stand out (took the adjacent territories and farmed them):
Knossos (Cnossos), Malia, Phaistos, Zakro.
- FOOD: the Mediterranean triad: olive, grape and grain. << the emergence of higher civilization.
- Herding animals: bones has butchering or burnished marks (boiling marks – the bone rotes in the pot and gets smoother).
MAINLAND
- **LIVING: **architecture – massive walls.
In Lerna (had fortification) – THE HOUSE OF TILES:
· Big square house.
· It has corridors and the staircase to go to the second floor.
· Also – projecting bastion (to attack the people).
· Probably made out of the mud-brick and the roof – tiles.
· Very important because it was on the site of the other important house.
· Eventually it was destroyed completely.
- Pottery - nothing much; no sculpture: they were slow to come into all that.
BRONZE AGE - CRETE vs MAINLAND
- period FIRST PALACES and MEDDLE HELLADIC
CRETE
2000 BC – started to built palaces (aka Administrative places).
the first great palaces were build on Crete.
Before
– sites as Myrtos, at Crete, - free-flowing, lots of rooms – typical Minoan architecture.
(ARTH 360):
Some of the earlier sites had already had paved courtyard. Now the palaces are starting to be build which indicates political and social changes. With the coming of the palaces, there is a main area where the control resided.
However, there are no written evidences of that era. There are hieroglyphic scripts – Linear A – which has not been deciphered yet; was used in the first palace phase ß destroyed by an earthquake (around 1700 BC) >> they were rebuilt.
So palaces were the places where the power resided >> tighter control on the agriculture and economy.
In Crete, there are several palaces meaning that the seed of power was dispersed.
Also villages like Myrtos where in MM were complexes that looked like palaces minus the central court.
Around 2000 BC - the first great palaces at Knossos and Phaistos. And in Later Minoan there were palaces very similar to that at Mallia and Zakro.
There also was trading: they had a thalassocracy – controlled the sea << found artifacts from other civilizations >> there was trading.
Palaces themselves:
There are no fortress walls on Crete >> they appear to be people who were not scared of envasions.
Variety of purposes: dozens of rooms; workshops; storage areas for food (normally, they are long with pithos [large clay containers]; religious rooms (where were found religious paraphernalia); manufacturing centers; weaving areas.
Each palace controlled and exploited its geographical region. They were self-contained.
It is hard to say if there was one entity that ruled the palace, could have been several people.
There probably was a hierarchy within the palace.
Plan:
Large courtyard with rooms around it + one large entrance. Some had a theater outside.
The architecture (because there was no fortress) was much more free and easily expandable.
Lustral basins - a small square or rectangular space within the stoned wall accessed by a small rectangular staircase within Minoan architecture only.
Light wells - small shaft to let the air and light in.
Main feature – INTERIOR COURT.
(ARTH 360):
WHAT CHARACTERIZED EARLY PALACES:
the first use of column in the southern Aegean (columns were already used in Troy).
great central court – the major feature of Minoan architecture – which could have been accessed from several ways + NO fortifications >> a free flow of air + an easy access to the expansion >> the architecture there was almost like a labyrinth.
Some of the palaces of Near East have central court being very prevalent but there were fortifications –therefore there were no room for expansion.
MAINLAND
