Helladic period

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The expression Helladic Period (also Helladikum ) denotes the Bronze Age on mainland Greece. More precisely, the term geographically covers all Greek areas with the exception of Crete and the Cyclades , where independent Bronze Age cultures (the Minoan culture and the Cycladic culture ) existed. Central Greece ( Phocis , Boeotia , Attica ), the Peloponnese ( Corinth , Argolis ), Thessaly and the Greek islands without the Cyclades belong to the Helladic areas .

The Helladic period is divided into

These subdivisions were introduced by Alan Wace and Carl Blegen in 1918 by analogy with Evans ' system of Minoan Crete . The three main levels are usually further subdivided into three sub-levels FH I, FH II, FH III, MH I, MH II, MH III and SH I, SH II, SH III. The real archaeological situation does not always fit into this three-step model. An example of this are ceramic traditions. For this reason, additional sub-sequences are sometimes added, which are marked with letters (e.g. SH III B). Nevertheless, this system has become common and is therefore still used almost exclusively for relative time information.

Agriculture was the basis of life for the early and middle Helladic population. Trade relations with the Cyclades and the Balkans are archaeologically documented for this period. Architecturally outstanding are the early Helladic corridor houses such as the House of Bricks in Lerna and a rotunda in Tiryns . Ceramic was increasingly produced from the Middle Helladic (occasionally even in phase III) with the help of the potter's wheel . In the late Helladic era, the Mycenaean culture was the first advanced civilization on the Greek mainland. In SH III, large palace centers emerged in Mycenae , Tiryns, Pylos , Thebes and Athens . Late Helladic and Minoan documents in Linear B represent the oldest deciphered evidence of the Greek language.

literature

  • Eva Alram-Stern: The Aegean Early Period. 2nd series. Research report 1975-1993 . 1st volume. The Neolithic in Greece with the exception of Crete and Cyprus. Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1996, ISBN 978-3-7001-2280-7 ( online as pdf; 69 MB ).
  • Hans-Günter Buchholz (Ed.): Aegean Bronze Age. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt, 1987, ISBN 978-3-534-07028-2 .
  • Oliver Dickinson: The Aegean Bronze Age. Cambridge University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-521-45664-9 .
  • Oliver Dickinson: The Origins of Mycenaean Civilization. Paul Åström, Göteborg 1977, ISBN 978-91-85058-74-7 .
  • Eric H. Cline (Ed.): The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze age Aegean (ca. 3000-1000 BC). Oxford University Press, Oxford u. a. 2010, ISBN 978-0-19-536550-4 , pp. 53-65. (Good introduction, summarizes the current state of research).
  • Cynthia W. Shelmerdine (Ed.): The Cambridge Companion to the Aegean Bronze Age. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge / New York, 2008, ISBN 978-0-521-81444-7 , pp. 19-46 ( online, accessed April 16, 2016 ). (Very good introduction, summarizes the current state of research).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Dates of the Late Helladic according to Penelope A. Mountjoy : Mycenaean pottery: an introduction. Oxford University Committee for Archeology, Oxford, 1993, ISBN 978-0-947816-36-0 (2nd edition 2001), p. 4, table 1.
  2. ^ Staff Obituaries - Department of Textiles: Alan John Bayard Wace. In: The Times . November 11, 1957, archived from the original on January 16, 2011 ; accessed on February 11, 2020 (English, reproduced on vam.ac.uk ).
  3. ↑ Cynthia W. Shelmerdine : Background, Sources, and Methods In: The Cambridge Companion to the Aegean Bronze Age . 2008, p. 3.