Several sites, and Mycenae and Lefkandi in particular, allow us to follow pottery development during this period through changes in shapes, decorative technique, and styles.

The short initial phase of Late Helladic (LH) IIIC Early, in the twenty-five years following the destruction of the palaces, sees a temporary impoverishment in decoration (S. Vitale, Hesperia 75, 2006, 177–204). Several shapes disappear, among which were certain types of stirrup jar, vessels used for commerce. Among the new shapes (Figure 54.1), small closed vessels that are common in tombs – lekythoi, small jugs with narrow necks, and globular amphoriskoi – make their appearance alongside ‘deep bowls’ and new types of cup that are carinated with a high handle or hemispherical. Footed goblets with two handles, slender but with a thick foot, sometimes with a medial bulge, have a conical bowl and generally a single simple motif on each side (Demakopoulou 1988, n° 78–9).

In imitation of the knossos palace, mainland Mycenaean palaces had wall paintings (Immerwahr 1990; Brecoulaki 2015). It remains unclear whether frescoes also existed in private dwellings. Beyond the palaces, the structures that are decorated are either sanctuaries or buildings directly tied to the palatial system. In total, a dozen sites have produced fresco fragments: in the Argolid, Midea, Mycenae, and Tiryns; in Messenia, Pylos and Iklaina; in Laconia, Haghios Vasileios; in Boeotia, Gla, Orchomenos, and Thebes; and in Attica, Eleusis.

Mycenaean frescoes were known even before those from the palace of Knossos, from the excavations of Mycenae (Rodenwaldt 1921) and Tiryns (Rodenwaldt 1912). Their novelty then paled by comparison with the Minoan frescoes that are more complete and lively.

Aegean pottery’s most original styles date to this period. Wall paintings undoubtedly played a role in the transformation of pictorial techniques and the repertoire of motifs. Vase painting nonetheless stands apart: it is the only non-figurative art of this period. Octopuses, dolphins, and other marine animals, though present in the Protopalatial period, only feature rarely, or late on (Late Minoan (LM) IB), in the Cretan repertoire. Cycladic pottery, with its depictions of birds, quadrupeds, and sometimes people, is an exception.

Distinct styles are associated with the three main phases of the Neopalatial period. In Middle Minoan (MM) III white-on-dark decoration still predominates, and continues the Kamares tradition, even if the influence of frescoes can already be observed in the development of naturalistic themes. The beginning of LM I is marked by decoration that is now produced in dark on light.

The period of the second palaces on Crete is one of intense architectural activity, both on Crete and on the main Aegean islands. We know more of Minoan and Cycladic architecture from this period than from the entire preceding period. The fact that most sites were destroyed once and for all c.1450 bc, without reoccupation, has facilitated their study. New building programmes testify to the level of economic prosperity; they also tally with the transformations we have already highlighted in social and administrative organisation.

True innovations in building techniques and plans are actually few in comparison to the preceding period: but the architects of the palaces and major villas invent a new monumental style and formalise the innovations of the Middle Bronze Age.

The transition from the Neolithic to the beginning of the Early Bronze Age (EBA) does not see any major change in lifeways. Pottery and other forms of material culture carry on largely as before. The only significant development is in metallurgy, though it had already appeared in the Late Neolithic; and even here progress is somewhat slow, the east Aegean excepted.

Though regional differences were hardly weak in the Neolithic, they do nevertheless intensify from the start of the Bronze Age. Three regions clearly assert their identity – the Peloponnese, the Cyclades, and Crete – through particular characteristics in their architecture, funerary customs, pottery, and figurines. Chronological schemes use the common tripartite divisions (Early Bronze (EB) I, II, and III) but adopt separate terminologies according to region (Early Helladic (EH), Early Cycladic (EC), Early Minoan). The term ‘Early Bronze Age’, without further specification, is used in more peripheral areas such as northern Greece and the northeast Aegean islands.

Small bronze, gold, or silver rings are not rare in tombs, even in the latest contexts – but they are generally simple bands. This is also the period when new types of fibula and pin appear.

A series of rings with oval bezel appears to belong in Late Helladic (LH) IIIC. They are adorned with curvilinear meanders and spirals in gold wire highlighted by granulation lines (Figure 53.1), and come from late Cretan tombs (Mouliana, Praisos), as well as the ‘Tiryns Treasure’ (Pini 2010, n° 70–4). Their decoration could be of Cypriot origin; a ring from Enkomi has the same technique, but on a round bezel. On bronze rings, similar motifs are simply made with dots (Pini 2010, n°. 47–51).

The transition from Early to Middle Bronze Age, around 2100 bc, is characterised by an apparent decline on the mainland and in the Cyclades. By contrast, Crete undergoes a rapid evolution at the beginning of the Middle Minoan (MM) period which results most spectacularly in the appearance of monumental buildings that are seats of political power. At Knossos, Phaistos, and Malia, where urban agglomerations replace the villages of the Early Bronze Age (EBA), buildings of original and complex design – the palaces – are built, probably during MM IA (2100–2000 bc), and in MM IB at the latest. The so-called First Palace period (Protopalatial) thus corresponds to the first phases of the Middle Bronze Age (from MM IB to IIB), from c.2000 to around 1700 bc. Absolute chronology is based on synchronisms with the Egyptian and Anatolian civilisations, dated through texts containing kinglists.

Cycladic marble figurines have generated so much interest that they have become the focus of a separate field of enquiry within Aegean art. This inflated interest is relatively recent: few marble figures were known before the end of the nineteenth century; the first museum acquisitions (British Museum, Dresden, and Karlsruhe) date from the 1840s, and we have to wait until the explorations of the English traveller James Theodore Bent in 1883–4 for a renewed interest (J. Bent, JHS 5, 1884, 42–59). They are first mentioned in studies of Greek sculpture from this period, and are thought of, in comparison to Classical art, as ‘primitive’. For Collignon, ‘these first attempts at sculpture take us back to a distant time when barbarism still held sway in the lands that will one day be Greece.

Ornaments (bracelets, pins, beads) undergo major development in the Neolithic. Aside from clay, stone, and bone, certain imported materials, including shells like Spondylus, and metals such as gold, silver (perhaps coming from Siphnos in the Cyclades), and copper, are used for necklace beads, earrings, or small hammered and polished pendants (Kyparissi-Apostolika 2001; C. Perlès, in Dietz 2018, 331–40).

Metal jewellery appears in the Late Neolithic: a cut-out disc of gold sheet in Volos Museum, topped with a trapezoidal projection pierced with two small holes, forms part of a class of pendants of ring-idol type thought to be highly schematic representations of the human body (AE1, fig. 40; Papathanassopoulos 1996, n° 299). They occur in various other materials (silver, stone, clay, shell) and have a wide distribution in cemeteries from the shores of the Black Sea to central Europe. They are well represented in the cemetery of Varna.

It is paradoxically at the height of the Mycenaean palaces that glyptic art loses its status as the principal form of relief art. The making of gold signet rings, whether on Crete or the mainland, ceases around the moment when the palace of Knossos is destroyed in 1370 bc; that of hard semi-precious sealstones stops shortly after, and does not go beyond the end of Late Helladic (LH) IIIA (J.-C. Poursat, in Driessen and Farnoux 1997, 387–90). No stylistic evolution can be discerned on seals discovered in later contexts.

Admittedly, palatial administrations still use sealing systems to manage what goods come in and out. At Knossos, the latest of its archival documents could date to c.1300 bc; subsequently, only a few sealings on jars exist (Krzyszkowska 2005, 216–17, 223–31).

The Second Palace period runs from the widespread destructions around 1700 bc, which bring an end to the Protopalatial period, to another major destruction horizon at the end of Late Minoan (LM) IB, c.1450 bc. The latter destructions, often accompanied by fire, have most often been attributed to war-like incursions linked to the arrival on Crete of Mycenaeans, but earthquakes could also have contributed. A combination of these two factors is probable, with natural disasters encouraging hostile actions. Most Cretan sites are then left in ruins, and notably the palaces of Malia, Phaistos, and Zakros definitively so. It is the end of the second palaces. In terms of relative chronology, the period covers both the end of the Middle Minoan (MM III) and the beginning of LM I.

Considerable quantities of human and animal figurines have been found on the peak sanctuaries of Crete. They are sometimes accompanied by clay models of anatomical parts, arms, and legs – healing offerings that occur in cult places of many periods. The peak sanctuary of Petsophas, next to Palaikastro, is one of the best known for this period (Rutkowski 1991). Cult caves, like those of Arkalochori, or Psychro on the Lasithi plateau (Watrous 1996), have produced similar finds. Figurines and zoomorphic vessels also come from urban sanctuaries and burials (Jones 1999).

During the neopalatial period, many stone vases are produced, much more elaborately than before, by highly specialised artisans working for the palatial elites, whether it is to do with prestige objects or vases for cult use, as with the zoomorphic rhyta mentioned in Chapter 23. This change is clear in the choice of materials, in the making of complex forms, and in their decoration, which sees the addition of carved relief scenes. Those from the villa of Haghia Triada, like the group of stone vases found in the Sanctuary Treasury of the Zakros palace, are among the best examples of this expertise.

The establishment of a sedentary way of life in permanent villages; the beginnings of agriculture (cultivation of cereals and pulses) and animal domestication, which together replace hunting and gathering; and, not long after, the use of pottery: these are the profound changes that mark the shift from the hunter-gatherers of the Mesolithic to Neolithic culture. The Neolithic developed gradually from c.10,000 bc, initially in the ‘Fertile Crescent’ from Mesopotamia to northern Syria, then across the entire Near East. In Europe it established itself first in the Balkans, along the Danube, before reaching the Aegean world around 7000 bc.

The conditions under which this process of ‘Neolithisation’ occurred are still hotly debated. The Neolithic was in all likelihood introduced into Greece by an influx of farmers from the Levant and Anatolia – small groups ended up mixing with local populations, bringing their animals, cereals, and new practices.

Forgers of antiquities have been active across all domains of archaeology ever since artefacts unearthed through excavation, whether legal or illegal, generated publicity and attained significant market value. This happened very rapidly in the case of Aegean art (H.-G. Buchholz, Acta Praehistorica et Archaeologica 1, 113–35). Very shortly after Schliemann’s excavations at Mycenae, from 1883, reports appeared of a workshop making fake Mycenaean signet rings in the Peloponnese (Milchhöfer 1883, 59, n. 1). Evans’s work at Knossos from 1900 gave a major boost to the manufacture of fake Minoan antiquities.

Such discoveries took place in conditions especially favourable to forgery. The looting in Greece and Turkey of Hellenistic cemeteries at Tanagra (near Thebes in Boeotia) and at Myrina (near Izmir) released numerous terracotta figurines (the ‘Tanagras’) onto the market from the 1880s onwards. Several workshops made multiple copies, especially on Crete.

On the mainland it is the palatial sites of the previous period that we know most about. Recent excavations have shown that, at least in the Argolid, at Mycenae, Tiryns, and Midea, fortifications were repaired and citadels continued to be occupied. At Tiryns, Building T, an assembly hall for the community, replaces the grand palatial megaron on the upper citadel (J. Maran, AA 2000, 1–16; J. Maran, in Laffineur and Hägg 2001, 113–22); it is built on the spot where the Throne Room was previously. It consists of two rooms, a vestibule to the south and an elongated room to the north, divided by a row of columns (AE2, fig. 338); the central hearth has gone. In the great court, a platform replaces the old circular altar. At Midea, the new structure that replaces the old megaron also has a central row of columns (G. Walberg, Aegean Archaeology 2, 1995, 87–91).

Who were the mycenaeans? Bronze Age Greeks. Conventionally, this name is given to the inhabitants of mainland Greece in the Late Bronze Age: it’s the period during which, following the apparent poverty of the preceding period (Middle Helladic (MH)), the Argolid (around Mycenae), but also other regions such as Messenia (around Pylos), sees a spectacular development and tries to compete with the Crete of the Second Palaces.

Still, this definition calls out for nuance and precision. The adjective ‘Mycenaean’ was first applied to the ‘pre-Homeric’ remains found at Mycenae and neighbouring sites; that’s to say, to its material culture. It then took on a chronological meaning (the ‘Mycenaean period’) insofar as these remains belonged to an historical period thus far unknown (other than through the Homeric poems).