Medium brightadic

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Middle Helladic is the middle phase of the Helladic period , as the Bronze Age is called on the Greek mainland. The Middle Helladic spans approximately the period from around 2050 to around 1700/1600 BC. Until now, comparatively little is known about the developments of that epoch. The ceramic styles characteristic of the epoch were matt-painted and Miny ceramics .

chronology

For the Aegean Bronze Age, since data for the Bronze Age volcanic eruption on Thera were obtained using scientific methods from the end of the 1980s , which deviate greatly from the data determined by synchronisms with the Egyptian chronology , there are basically two different absolute chronology systems , between which a distance of up to around 100 years. The debate between the supporters of the two different dates has not yet been brought to a conclusion. Although both sides have approached each other in recent years and respect the arguments of the other side, no satisfactory explanation for the strong deviation of the data or a bridging of the same has yet been found.

The older dating ( low , short or traditional chronology ) goes back in principle to Arthur Evans , who constructed the first chronology of the Minoan culture during his excavations at Knossos . He mainly orientated himself on the stratigraphy - the successive settlement layers, which should indicate the order for the ceramic styles. Evans, who thought that the Minoan culture had developed similarly to the Egyptian (which is considered refuted in today's research), therefore divided the Minoan culture into three phases in analogy to the Old , Middle and New Kingdoms: Early Minoan, Middle Minoic and Late Minoan . This relative chronology has basically survived to this day - refined in many phases - and was also transferred to the mainland and the Cyclades (see Cycladic culture ), although this turned out to be not entirely unproblematic. Evans was ultimately also the first to establish an absolute chronology through the historiographical-archaeological analysis of finds, which was refined over the years, including in 1986 by Peter Warren and Vronwy Hankey, who coherently included this in their basic publication Aegean Bronze Age Chronology linked to the well-established chronology of Egypt. The absolute dates are based above all on the socialization of Minoan and - because of the Egyptian chronology, which is considered to be relatively reliable - quite well absolutely datable Egyptian artefacts (this method is also called "cross-dating").

More recent scientific investigations, which are mainly based on the radiocarbon method and dendrochronology , have shown that the Thera volcanic eruption has been dated around 100 years from the classical dating, leading to publications of new, coordinated, absolute chronologies ( high , long or new chronology). which, if correct, cause major problems for the dating obtained using the archaeological-historiographical method (mostly via cross-dating). While Warren and Hankey reported the eruption to around 1520 BC. The scientific results speak for the beginning to the middle of the 17th century BC. In addition to the advocates of one or the other chronology, there are also proponents of a compromise solution that is still just compatible with the scientific results and does not clash too much with traditional synchronisms.

In any case, according to traditional chronology, the Middle Helladic epoch covers the period from 2000 to 1600 BC. According to the chronology based on scientific data, the period from 2000 to 1700 BC. BC or 2100 to 1700 BC Chr.

Debate about Indo-European immigration

In his work The Coming of the Greeks , published in 1928, Carl Blegen was the first to propose the thesis that Indo-Europeans immigrated to Greece in the transition phase between the Early and Middle Helladic periods . At the time, u. a. the fact that innovations such as the horse and carriage were only proven for the Mycenaean period.

As early as 1896, the linguist Paul Kretschmer pointed out in his introduction to the history of the Greek language that some place names in Greece with the endings “-nthos” and “-ssos” could not be understood as Indo-European and thus not originally Greek, but pointed rather a commonality with Anatolian and thus non-Indo-European language endings; therefore, according to Kretschmer, it has been proven that a Pro-Hellenic language substrate is contained in Greek, which points to the presence of a non-Indo-European population in ancient Greece.

Until the British excavations of Lerna in the 1950s under the direction of John Langdon Caskey , these theses were generally recognized in the professional world. Caskey, on the other hand, dated a first wave of immigration to the time between FH II and FH III, while he set another turning point in central Greece for the end of FH III. For a long time this opinion was predominant among archaeologists, but it has recently been questioned. Some researchers consider Indo-European immigration to be likely as early as the Neolithic or FH I. According to recent research, the tamed horse appeared for the first time in the early Helladic III in Lerna, which supports this assumption.

Settlement structure

Most of the settlements known so far were fortified and mostly situated on hills. The residence of the leader was in the center of the settlement. Buildings were usually built in the shape of a rectangular house, sometimes in a megaron shape. Apsidal and oval buildings are also known. In the course of time, many of the places that were of great importance in the following centuries were occupied: z. B. Mycenae , Tiryns and the island of Aegina . Among the well-excavated and therefore well-known places are Malthi in Messenia (ancient Dorion ) and Lerna (layer V). Other places of the Early Helladic were left deserted for the time being and possibly only repopulated in the Late Helladic . The settlement method of the Middle Helladic shows no fundamental differences to that of the Early Helladic.

Other locations were:

Art and ceramics

In this epoch the art was still little developed, but in many regions a type of fine, polished ceramics worked on the turntable, the monochrome, mostly gray, but often also black (especially in the Argolis ), rarely red or colored yellow. Heinrich Schliemann already called it Miny ceramic - after the legendary Minyans , who, according to Homer, were the inhabitants of Orchomenos in Boeotia. Contrary to earlier opinions, the Miny ceramic was apparently not introduced by immigrants at the beginning of the Middle Helladic in Greece, because early forms of this type of ceramic have recently come to light in contexts of finds that date from the late phase of the Early Helladic (FH III) (e . in Tiryns). In addition to the Miny ceramics, there is also the so - called matt-painted ceramics ("matt-painted"), which, according to the current state of research, has no forerunner in the Early Helladic era.

With the exception of ceramics, the arts and crafts in the Middle Helladic era fell in terms of quality compared to the art of the Early Helladic era.

literature

  • Hans-Günter Buchholz (Ed.): Aegean Bronze Age. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1987, ISBN 3-534-07028-3 ( collection of articles )
  • RJ Buck: The Middle Helladic Period. In: Phoenix. Volume 20, N. 3, pp. 193-209, Classical Association of Canada 1966 ( online, accessed April 16, 2016 ).
  • John L. Caskey: Greece and the Aegean Islands in the Middle Bronze Age. (= Cambridge Ancient History. 45 = Volume 2, Chapter iv (a)). revised edition. Cambridge University Press 1966.
  • Sofia Voutsaki: Mainland Greece. In: Eric H. Cline (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze age Aegean (approx. 3000-1000 BC). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2010, ISBN 978-0-19-536550-4 , pp. 99-112.
  • Oliver Dickinson: The Origins of Mycenaean Civilization. Gothenburg 1977, ISBN 91-85058-74-2 .
  • Oliver Dickinson: The Aegean Bronze Age . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1996, ISBN 0-521-45664-9 .
  • Wolfgang Schiering : Greece, II. Prehistoric Cultures, [4] Middle Bronze Age. In: Lexicon of the Old World. Artemis-Verlag, Zurich / Munich 1990, ISBN 3-7608-1034-9 , pp. 1142–1143. (Unchanged reprint of the original one-volume edition from 1965)
  • Helène Whittaker: Religion and Society in Middle Bronze Age Greece. Cambridge University Press, New York 2014, ISBN 978-1-107-04987-1 .
  • James Clinton Wright: Early Mycenaean Greece . In: 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 )
  • Nicholas I. Xirotiris: The Indo-Europeans in Greece: An Anthropological Approach to the Population of Bronze Age Greece . In: Journal of Indo-European Studies. 8 (1-2), 1980, pp. 201-210.
  • CW Zerner: The Beginning of the Middle Helladic Period at Lerna. 1978. (University Microfilms 79-04772).

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ J. Lesley Fitton: The Minoans. Theiss, Stuttgart 2004, pp. 22-32.
  2. ↑ See table in Eric H. Cline (Ed.): The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean. Oxford University Press, 2012 pp. XXX.
  3. ↑ After Sofia Voutsaki: Mainland Greece. In: Eric H. Cline (Ed.): The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2012, p. 100 begins the Middle Helladic "around 2100 BC or somewhat earlier".
  4. ^ John Evander Coleman: An Archaeological Scenario for the "Coming of the Greeks" approx. 3200 BC In: The Journal of Indo-European Studies. Volume 28, No. 1 & 2, Spring / Summer 2000, pp. 101–153 ( online as PDF file, accessed April 17, 2016 ), here p. 104.
  5. ^ Paul Kretschmer: Introduction to the history of the Greek language. Vandenhoeck, Göttingen 1896, p. 401 as a PDF file online, accessed on April 17, 2016 .
  6. ^ John L. Caskey: The Early Helladic Period in the Argolid. In: Hesperia . Volume 29, Issue 3, 1960, pp. 285–303, (online as a PDF file, accessed on April 13, 2016) , here pp. 301 f.
  7. ↑ Compare Jeremy B. Rutter: Review of Agean Prehistory II: The Prepalatial Bronze Age of the Southern and Central Greek Mainland. In: American Journal of Archeology . Vol. 97, No. 4, 1993, pp. 745-797, here: p. 766 ( online, accessed April 17, 2016 ); Malcolm H. Wiener: "Minding the Gap". Gaps, Destructions, and Migrations in the Early Bronze Age Aegean. Causes and Consequences. In: American Journal of Archeology. Vol. 117, No. 4, 2013, pp. 581-592 ( online, accessed April 16, 2016 ); Daniel Pullen: Ox and Plow in the Early Bronze Age Agean. In: American Journal of Archeology. Vol. 96, No. 1, 1992, pp. 45-54, here: p. 48 ( online, accessed April 22, 2016 ).
  8. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wolfgang Schiering : Greece, II. Prehistoric Cultures, [4] Middle Bronze Age. In: Lexicon of the Old World. Artemis-Verlag, Zurich-Munich 1990, ISBN 3-7608-1034-9 , p. 1142.
  9. ↑ Wolfgang Schiering: Greece, II. Prehistoric Cultures, [4] Middle Bronze Age. In: Lexicon of the Old World. Artemis-Verlag, Zurich / Munich 1990, ISBN 3-7608-1034-9 , p. 1142: "Settlement and construction methods as well as house forms [...] differed little from FH [...]"
  10. ↑ Wolfgang Schiering: Greece, II. Prehistoric Cultures, [4] Middle Bronze Age. In: Lexicon of the Old World. Artemis-Verlag, Zurich / Munich 1990, ISBN 3-7608-1034-9 , p. 1143.