Social Change across the End of the Aegean Bronze Age

For a long time, scholarship on the end of the Aegean Bronze Age has been preoccupied with political, ethnic/racial, economic, environmental, and other change; however, it has rarely centered the discussion on social change. This Element compares the Greek archaeological record before and after the collapse of 1200 BCE.

For a long time, scholarship on the end of the Aegean Bronze Age has been preoccupied with political, ethnic/racial, economic, environmental, and other change; however, it has rarely centered the discussion on social change. Drawing from anthropological and sociological critiques of social change, the Element compares the Greek archaeological record before and after the collapse of 1200 BCE, focusing on developments in the 12th to early 10th centuries, which are examined against the background of the Mycenaean palatial system of the 14th and 13th centuries. The seven sections of the Element cover the reasons for the collapse of the Mycenaean palaces; socio-political, demographic, and socio-economic change after the collapse; and the manifestation of this change in settlements, burials, and sanctuaries. The Appendix offers a discussion of the relative and absolute chronologies of the period, with emphasis on recent important but debatable suggestions for revisions.