Greece Before History: An Archaeological Companion and Guide

219 Pages·2002·20.32 MB·English

by  Curtis Neil Runnels

GREECE BEFORE HISTORY

G R E E CE
B E F O RE H I S T O RY
AN A R C H A E O L O G I C AL
C O M P A N I ON AND GUIDE
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
•Ö 2001 by the Board of Trustees of the
Leland Stanford Junior University
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Catalogmg-m-Publication Data
Runnels, Curtis Neil
Greece before history : an archaeological companion
and guide / Curtis Runnels, Priscilla Murray,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN ο-Ν047-4036-4 (alk. paper) —
ISBN 0-K047-4050-X (pbk.: alk. paper)
j. Prehistoric peoples—Greece. 2. Antiquities,
Prehistoric — Greece. I. Murray, Priscilla. II. Title.
GNN15.RN5 2001
937.6 — dc2i 00-05 NN35
Designed by Eleanor Mennick
Typeset by G&S Typesetters 111 1 1 /14 Monotype Bembo
Original Printing 2001
Last figure below indicates year of this printing:
10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01
Contents
List of Illustrations vu
Preface and Acknowledgments xi
Chronological Table xm
One Ail Introduction to the Prehistory of Greece I
First Things 5 The Plan of This Work 7
Two The Old Stone Age: How It All Began 9
The Palaeolithic Period 12 The Mesolithic Period 31
Three The New Stone Age: The Earliest Greek
Civilization 41
The Origins of the Greek Neolithic 45 Neolithic
Civilization 52
Four The Bronze Age: "Savage Virtues and Barbarous
Grandeur'' 65
Life in the Early Bronze Age 71 Crete and the Minoan
Civilization 76 Distinctive Features of Minoan Culture 87
The Mycenaeans 95
Five The End of the Bronze Age World 115
The Collapse of a Civilization 116 A Catalogue
of Disasters 117 Rumors of War 121
Six Santonin and the Legend of Atlantis 129
The Minoan Eruption of Santorim 134
A Tour of the Principal
Grecce 139
The Palaeolithic 139 The
Last Reflections
A A Note on the Dates Used 111 This Work 159
Β On the Schlieniann Trail 163
an Archaeological Tour of Greece 173
Bibl i 00 rapt 1 ic Ess a y 181
Index 195
List o f Illustrations
1.1 The Greek countryside. 3
1.2 A Byzantine church. 4
2. ι Map of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic sites. 10
2.2 Tools from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic. 13
2.3 The fossilized cranium from Petralona. 14
2.4 Making a stone tool. 17
2.5 The archaeological site of Rodia, 111 Thessaly. 18
2.6 A hand-axe from Kokkmopilos. 18
2.7 A Palaeolithic forager. 20
2.8 Vanished prehistoric lake m Epirus. 22
2.9 Middle Palaeolithic stone tools. 23
2.10 Tools of anatomically modern Homo sapiens. 25
2.11 Palaeolithic rock shelter. 27
2.12 F ranch thi Cave m the southern Argolid. 29
2.13 The coastline 11ear Franchthi Cave. 32
2.14 The evolution of Palaeolithic stone tools. 34
2.15 Mesolithic tools. 35
2.16 Mesolithic burial site at Franchthi Cave. 35
2.17 Papyrus reed bo at. 37
3.1 Map of Neolithic sites. 42
3.2 Typical Neolithic artifacts. 44
3.3 Wheat introduced from the Near East. 47
3.4 Sheep and goats introduced from the Near East. 47
3.5 A Neolithic terra-cotta anthropomorphic figurine. 51

4·23
4.25
4-27 The
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