Bronze Age Interactions between the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean Revisited Mainstream,...

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In a recent paper concerned with Greeks in the Eastern Mediterranean

during the Iron Age, Alexander Fantalkin stated:

From an epistemological point of view, I am on the side of many

who argue that among the three main polesrealism, positivism

and idealismit is usually realism that offers the most useful

point of departure for any archaeological reconstruction, espe-

cially when this realism is combined with a healthy dose of skep-

ticism and a pinch of imagination. (Fantalkin 2006:199; see also

Joffe 2003:83)

Much the same can be said concerning interactions between the Aegean

and the Eastern Mediterranean during the Bronze Age.

As our understanding grows of the political, military, and economic

intricacies of the second millennium bc in both the Aegean and the

Eastern Mediterranean, the clearer it becomes just how dangerous it is totry to create grand, sweeping narratives, especially those that contain a

dose of imagination. However, the alternative, which consists of being

reduced to producing studies of minutia, is not a long-term solution either;

7Bronze Age Interactions between the Aegean

and the Eastern Mediterranean Revisited

Mainstream, Periphery, or Margin?

Eric H. Cline

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nor is simply falling back upon theory in the absence of additional data.

Scholars are left wondering how best to answer future questions about therelations between the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean during the

Late Bronze Age, including whether the Aegean was in the so-called main-

stream in terms of interacting with the Near East and Egypt during this

period or was on the periphery, or perhaps even the margin, of the

Egyptian and Near Eastern world-systems.

In considering the material evidence for physical contacts between the

Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean during the Bronze Age, there are

still only two main groups and five distinct categories of data available:

I. Artifacts

1. Orientalia (Egyptian and Near Eastern objects) found in Bronze Age

contexts on the Greek mainland, Crete, and the Cycladic islands

2. Mycenaean, Minoan, and Cycladic pottery and other artifacts found in

Bronze Age contexts in the Eastern Mediterranean

II. Pictorial and Textual Evidence

3. Bronze Age paintings in the Eastern Mediterranean that may show or

mention Aegean goods or people or that indicate some sort of inter-

action with the Aegean area

4. Bronze Age texts from the Eastern Mediterranean that may mention

Aegean goods or people or that indicate some sort of interaction with

the Aegean area

5. Linear B tablets found at Knossos, Pylos, Mycenae, and Thebes thatcontain textual references possibly resulting from contact with the

Eastern Mediterranean

The data that fall into the first of these categories, that is, the

Orientalia in the LBA Aegean, were first compiled and considered in

Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: International Trade and the Late Bronze Age Aegean

(Cline 1994; hereafter SWDS). The point of that volume was to collect all

the available data essentially for the first time (a similar volume by

Lambrou-Phillipson, published in 1990, contains a number of problematic

entries and will not be further discussed here) and to put these data out

into the realm of public discourse so that othersincluding those of a

more theoretical inclinationcould use them in their research and thus

further the field. The database, which at one point was available as asearchable website, now long discontinued, was subsequently updated,

expanded, and reconsidered in a series of additional articles (Cline 1995a,

1995b, 1995c, 1999a, 1999c, 2005, 2007a). A major conference on the topic

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of LBA trade between the Aegean and the Near East was also held at the

University of Cincinnati in 1997, which resulted in a very interesting anduseful set of articles appearing in the subsequent conference volume

(Cline and Harris-Cline 1998) and which updated the work done up to

that point.

It is a pleasure now to be able to take advantage of this opportunity to

look back at what has so far been accomplished and to look forward at what

still needs to be done.

W H E R E H AV E W E C O M E F R O M ?

Before SWDS appeared, the primary arguments in the field were

whether trade had taken place at all between the LBA Aegean and the

Eastern Mediterranean, for it was not even clear whether there were sus-

tained trade and contact between the LBA Aegean, Egypt, and the Near

East. The publication of the database in SWDSof imported Orientalia in

the Bronze Age Aegean, combined with Leonards (1994) publication of

the Mycenaean vessels exported to the Eastern Mediterranean (see now van

Wijngaarden 2002), put an end to those discussions. As already pointed out

at the 1997 conference in Cincinnati, following the publication of those cat-

alogues, the big questions were no longer concerned with whether there

were trade and contact, but rather with how much there had been and

whether they fluctuated over time in discernable patterns (Cline 1998b).

Many of the broad and sweeping generalizations about trade and con-

tact between the Bronze Age Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean sug-

gested in SWDSare still viable and remain to be disproved (Cline 1994:xxi): Trade was primarily directional to the major palatial centers of the

Aegean, with secondary redistribution from those centers.

Trade was primarily commercial, although some gift exchanges at

the court level appear to have taken place as well.

Primary trade goods included wines, perfumes, oils, and metals,

as indicated by the nature of the extant Orientalia.

Crete was the principal destination of Orientalia during the

LH/LMIIIIA (seventeenth through fourteenth centuries bc).

The Greek mainland was the principal destination of Orientalia

during the LH/LMIIIBC (thirteenth through mid-eleventh

centuries bc).

During the early part of the LBA (LH/LMIIIIA), Crete looked

primarily to the east, whereas mainland Greece looked, to a lesser

extent, both east and west; during the latter part (LH/LMIIIBC),


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Crete looked primarily to the west, whereas mainland Greece looked

to the east. Egypt had a virtual monopoly on trade with the Aegean area during

the LH/LMIII (seventeenth through fifteenth centuries bc), and

Syro-Palestine, Cyprus, and Italy shared in this trade during the

LH/LMIIIAC (fourteenth through mid-eleventh centuries bc).

Moreover, several other suggestions made in individual articles after

the initial publication of SWDSseem to have appealed to a larger audience,

namely, the use in antiquity of implied kinship relations in situations in

which no real relationships existed, thereby facilitating trade between

groups of people unrelated to one another (Cline 1995a), and the idea

that a single import could be multivalent and serve multiple functionsthat is, serving one purpose in the original culture but another in the cul-

ture to which it was exported (Cline 2005). Both concepts are referred to

in various chapters in this volume, although not necessarily cited (for

example, Karduliass chapter 3, Cherrys chapter 5, Wengrows chapter 6,

and Schons chapter 9), as is the idea of distance value applied to seem-

ingly irrational importations such as the Cypriot wall brackets found at

Tiryns (Cline 1999a).

Speaking as a maximalistin terms of my views concerning ancient

trade and connections (see Cherry, chapter 5, this volume)I would still

argue that the trade networks and diplomatic connections were as complex

and politically motivated in the ancient world as they are today, 3,500 years

later. However, I must address a nihilistic statement recently made by Manning

and Hulin. In what I see as a deliberately minimalistic and ultimately harm-

ful interpretation of the available data, they state that the evidence base of

1,118 items [in SWDS][is] an inadequate, if not misleading, basis from

which to analyze trade (Manning and Hulin 2005:283). Cherry cites this in

the present volume:

Manning and Hulin (2005:283) recently commented on the

dataset of Orientalia in the Late Bronze Age Aegean helpfully

compiled by Cline (1994). This does have its weaknesses if not

interpreted with care. Taken at face value, however, the entire

corpus amounts to the exchange of only about 0.5 objects annu-

ally from the entire Aegean over the six centuries in questiona

period during which most scholars imagine a vigorous trade in a

wide variety of materials taking place throughout the entire

Eastern Mediterranean. (Cherry, chapter 5, this volume)

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For Manning and Hulin to call the database presented in SWDSmis-

leading and inadequate is disingenuous at best and misguided at worst.Granted, these items are all we have at the moment. Granted, they proba-

bly represent only about 10 percent of what once existed. Granted, there

undoubtedly were additional perishable items or other evidence not rep-

resented among the recovered artifacts. And granted, the find of another

LBA shipwreck will almost certainly change our understanding of the field

and advance our knowledge. However, because the catalogue represents all

the imported objectsmore than 1,000known to us at that time (1994)

from the Late Bronze Age Aegean, it is certainly not inadequate, nor is it

in any way misleading, in and of itself. It is what it is, as I have already stated

elsewhere (Cline 2007a:200, n1).

It does no good to disparage the only material evidence we currently

possess. The simple fact is that these imported objects are the only extant

objects we have. As such, they must be taken into account in any discussion

involving possible trade and contact between the LBA Aegean, Egypt, and

the Near East. Moreover, for Cherry (chapter 5) to state that the number

involved amounts to the exchange of only about 0.5 objects annually from

the entire Aegean over the six centuries in question, although numerically

correct, is a contrary way to look at the situation. Obviously, half an object

per year did not arrive each year for 600 years. What is to be gained by such

an observation when the data quite clearly indicate that the extent, and

direction, of trade rose and fell and was dependent upon any number of

factors, both internal and external? The patterns in the data are what mat-

ter, not the raw data themselves.What if we had no firm foundation of real datano compilation of

actual objects? This is, in fact, the situation in which we found ourselves

before 1994 and the publication of SWDS. To imply that we are worse off

now is simply unduly minimalistic andquite franklyunhelpful. As proof

that we are actually better off than before and as a concrete example that

the primary aim of SWDSwas indeed achievedthat is, to put the available

data out as a catalogue so that others could use it in their researches and

thus advance the fieldone need look no further than Schons contribu-

tion in this volume (chapter 9). It is among the most interesting and impor-

tant chapters contained herein; data from SWDS is cited and used eleven

separate times and is integral to the very fabric of the chapter. Schon is by

no means the first to use the data in this manner. Other authors have used

and cited the information in the catalogue in nearly 250 separate articles

and books since 1994, but he, along with Parkinson (in press), has suc-

ceeded in taking these data further than most.


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W H E R E D O W E G O F R O M H E R E ?

Far more constructive than the comments made by Manning andHulin (2005) and by Cherry (chapter 5, this volume) is the approach taken

by Parkinson (in press). Parkinson believes that the raw numbers pre-

sented in SWDSexaggerate the situation because they fail to account for

individual items that may have, or probably, arrived together. He suggests

that, instead of gross imports, one should look at the minimum number of

contacts required to account for and explain the Orientalia found at

each Aegean site. Instead of 111 Orientalia at Mycenae, for example, he

sees 61 contacts. Instead of 41 imported objects at Thebes, he sees only 7

contacts (Parkinson in press).

Parkinson is probably correct, and it is both interesting and useful to

look at his contact numbers as a better way of documenting the interaction

that occurred during any particular time period. Even so, his suggestion

that the total number of items in the Aegean can be accounted for by a

very small number of items and contacts (Parkinson in press) when con-

sidered over the entire 600-year course of the Late Bronze Age must be

ameliorated by the observation that such contacts were probably con-

ducted in fits and starts and should probably not be seen as continual over

the entire length of the Bronze Age. Whereas previously I argued for a con-

stant stream of contact between the Aegean, Egypt, and the Eastern

Mediterranean, upon reflection I would not now be at all surprised if trade

had actually started and stopped, then started again, with years or even

decades intervening between contacts, even within discrete periods such as

MMIA or LMIIIC (as discussed in chapter 2, this volume). In part, thiscould have been due to the difficulties involved in sailing around the

Aegean and Mediterranean (Cline 1999b; Wachsmann 1998), but all sorts

of other factors, ranging from economic to military to climatic, might have

played a role as well.

For instance, I now have no trouble envisioning a multitude of contacts

taking place during boom times such as the so-called Golden Age of the

LBA, that is, during the mid-fourteenth century bc when the Amarna

Letters, in particular, demonstrate that the major world powers (Egyptians,

Hittites, Assyrians, and Babylonians) were in constant contact and were

trading with one another circa 13601350 bc. Such contacts, especially

between Egypt and the Aegean, seem also to have been common during

the time of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III circa 15001450 bc and during

the reign of Amenhotep III circa 13921351 bc (overlapping with the

LBA Golden Age). But I would not be at all surprised if there were far

fewer instances of contact during the years between 1450 and 1392 bc, dur-

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ing the reigns of Amenhotep II and Thutmose IV. Thus, we might envision

a cycle of on-again, off-again, on-again contacts, dependent, in part, uponthe interest of the major individuals involved, historical events, and the

unique situations in their countries that might alternately permit or dis-

courage such long-distance trade and contact, much as Andre Gunder

Frank, William R. Thompson, and Thomas Hall have envisioned world-

system cycles, including those during which such groups or their societies

pulse outward (see Frank 1993; Frank and Thompson 2005; Hall

1999:910).

Thus, I would want any analysis of contact between the Aegean and the

Eastern Mediterranean during the Bronze Age to focus on discrete periods

of time, as well as the contacts that occurred during each, instead of citing

overall statistics that there were 4.73 contacts/decade for Crete and 3.27

contacts/decade for mainland Greece over the course of the Bronze Age

(Parkinson in press). Rather than focus on the small number of contacts

that may have taken place during 600 years, it is more useful to determine

whether there were any points in time during which more contacts than

usual took place and to decide whether such high points can be linked to

historical events or even to individuals, such as Amenhotep III of Egypt.

I would be in favor, therefore, of taking Parkinsons approach one step

further. Rather than graph and discuss contacts per lengthy period, such as

LHIIIAB (Parkinson in press:table 2, fig. 1), it would be useful to break

down the contacts into smaller, discrete units whenever and wherever pos-

sible, such as during LHIIIA1 at Mycenae or LHIIIB2 at Tiryns. Once the

contacts have been broken down into smaller periods of time and place, itshould be easier to document the rise and fall of international contacts and

to apply other theoretical or historical approaches to examine and explain

the visible ebb and flow over time, especially during specific periodssuch

as discussing the contacts during MMIB specifically in terms of the rise of

Kommos and the reestablishment in Egypt of royal centralized control at

the beginning of the Middle Kingdom, which took place at approximately

the same time, as mentioned in chapter 2, this volume.

However, in the nearly 15 years that have elapsed since the publication

of SWDS, there have been almost no new relevant discoveries in either the

Aegean or the Eastern Mediterranean to help further the discussions. Very

little in the way of new data has been introduced during the past two

decades, except for a potentially exciting new textual discovery from

Anatolia, which, if correct, would be the first letter ever discovered written

by a Mycenaean ruler (see discussion below). The field is at a standstill in

terms of acquiring new artifactual data and has essentially been so for at


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least a decade. The number of new Orientalia in the LBA Aegean found

since 1994 can be counted on one hand. The number of new Mycenaean,Minoan, and Cycladic imports found in Egypt and the Eastern Mediter-

ranean during this same period is similarly limited. The biggest news since

the early 1990s is the discovery of Aegean-style fresco fragments at Daba

in Egypt (Bietak, Marinatos, and Palyvou 2007) and at Kabri in Israel

(B. Niemeier and W.-D. Niemeier 2002; W.-D. Niemeier and B. Niemeier

1998). Even those are nearly 20 years old already (although the revived

excavations at Kabri by Yasur-Landau and Cline have now retrieved new rel-

evant fragments).

In order to continue the discussions, scholars have turned to theory

and to deliberations regarding koine in art styles (see, for example,

Feldman 2006, 2007, for interesting thoughts on the latter). Much intrigu-

ing detail can be teased out of the data by using such techniques; one can

point, in particular, to the extremely important discussion in chapter 2,

which shows just what a multiscalar approach to interaction studies can

achieve, and to approaches such as those pioneered by Parkinson (in

press), which can perhaps be pushed even further, as just mentioned.

What are really needed to further the field in a quantum leap, how-

ever, are either completely new discoveries at a land site or on another

shipwreck oras already stated 10 years ago (Cline 1998b)new scientific

analyses of objects that have already been discovered, such as residue analy-

sis and DNA analysis from scraping the insides of Canaanite jars found at

Mycenae, Asine, and elsewhere in the Aegean and petrography of the

imported (and debated) possible Cypriot wall brackets found at Tiryns.Scholars can profess abstruse and abstract theories as much as they like,

but archaeological theory will never replace hard data.

Barring huge new discoveries of Orientalia in the Aegean or Aegean

pottery in the Eastern Mediterranean, hard science and technical analyses

of the objects currently in our possession are the way of the future. The

best comparable parallel is the DNA and residue analyses that Hansson and

Foley (2008) recently conducted on Rhodian transport amphorae found

off the island of Chios. Although common sense dictated that the

amphorae most likely contained liters of famous Chian wine, the analyses

indicated that the tested jars actually contained olive oil. What surprises

might be in store if similar analyses are conducted on the Canaanite jars

found at Mycenae or the Mycenaean stirrup jars found in Canaanite

tombs? Will the latter hold Aegean oil or perfume, as has long been sus-

pected? or something else entirely? The Canaanite jars found onboard the

Uluburun shipwreck showed that a wide variety of goods were transported

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within them, ranging from glass beads to terebinth resin to, presumably,

liquids such as wine. But we will not know for certain until residue analyseson the jars have been conducted and the results published.

Nevertheless, speaking strictly as a theoretician of material culture, it

seems apparent that if we are to attempt to model interaction between the

polities of the Bronze Age Aegean and their neighbors, we must make cer-

tain that we are all on the same page regarding what we do (and do not)

have in the way of raw evidence for interregional exchange. This is also

true for theoretical models intended to be used to explore and explain

international trade in the Late Bronze Age, such as world-systems theory

(hereafter WST).

T H E U T I L I T Y O R F U T I L I T Y O F W O R L D - S Y S T E M S

T H E O R Y

Utilizing the idea of core and periphery areas, Wallerstein first pro-

posed the World-Systems economic model in 1974 to describe the post-six-

teenth-century ad world. Following a pithy review by Schneider (1977),

who suggested that the model might well be extended back in time, a num-

ber of scholars have attempted to modify the model and apply it to ancient

societies.1

For example, Wallerstein (1974:348350) had suggested that a world-

system required the presence of core states of complex political structure

and weaker peripheral areas of pre-state or incipient state levels; the core

states exploited the labor and material resources of the peripheral areas.

Hall (1986) subsequently pointed out that the peripheral societies mayhave played a more active role in antiquity, especially where complete dom-

ination by the core state was difficult or impossible. Kohl (1987a, 1989)

then made a dramatic effort to demonstrate that a revised version of the

World-Systems model was indeed applicable to the ancient world, persua-

sively arguing for an intricate, multicentered world-system in Mesopotamia

and surrounding regions during the Bronze Age (see Kardulias 1996:45).

Subsequently, Chase-Dunn and Hall (1991a:19, 1993; also Kardulias

1996:7) were able to put a label on Kohls revised version of the World-

Systems model, calling it core/periphery differentiation, in which soci-

eties at different levels of complexity and population density are in

interaction with each other within the same world-system. Andrew

Sherratt (1993a:8; Kardulias 1996:89, 1415), in turn, introduced the

term marginto describe areas that might not be in direct contact but nev-

ertheless exchanged commodities through indirect contacts made possible

by multiple links in a trading system.


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In 1993 Frank first suggested that Wallersteins model of world-systems,

as revised by Chase-Dunn, Hall, Sherratt, and others, might be successfullyapplied to the Aegean Bronze Age; he was simultaneously criticized and

applauded for his efforts. Unfortunately, Franks depiction of the Bronze

Age Aegean as part of an overarching World System (his reworked term,

without Wallersteins hyphen) in place from Europe to India is not ulti-

mately convincing, nor is his description of the period from 1750 to 1400

bc as a B or fragmentation phase particularly accurate from the view-

point of the development and expansion of Minoan Crete (Frank

1993:389, 395398; Gills and Frank 1993:156; A. Sherratt 1993a:45).

Since then, despite Knapps (1993:414) plea for someone to take up

the challenge, only a few scholars, primarily Kardulias and the Sherratts,

have seriously investigated the possibility of applying the world-systems

model to the Bronze Age Aegean (A. Sherratt 1993a; A. Sherratt and

S. Sherratt 1991; S. Sherratt and A. Sherratt 1993; Kardulias 1995, 1996).

Since 1995 Kardulias has been, justifiably, employing a more cautious, and

cautionary, approach to the topic than did Frank and has convincingly

argued that the exchange system of the Late Bronze Age Aegean can indeed

be described as a world-system with three interconnected levels of trade:

internal, intermediate, and long-distance (Kardulias 1995, 1996:910).

Kardulias has plausibly suggested that Chase-Dunn and Halls term

core/periphery differentiationcan be applied to the situation in the Bronze

Age Aegean, if slightly emended, because there are instances in the inter-

nal and intermediate levels when the polities interacting are at the same

level of complexity, i.e., peer polities (Kardulias 1996:9, also 1114, 16).Berg, in her 1999 article applying WST to the southern Aegean, agreed

with Kardulias that there was core/periphery differentiation during the

Middle Bronze Age in the southern Aegean region, particularly in the rela-

tions between Crete and the Cycladic islands. However, she saw this situa-

tion as changing to a core/semiperiphery differentiation when the Late

Bronze Age starts and mainland Greece begins to enter the equation (Berg

1999). Moreover, Berg was discussing internal Aegean relations, especially

in the southern Aegean region, but we are more interested here in the

external relations of the Bronze Age Aegean and the possible applications

of WST to those international connections. This is territory where Berg

does not tread but where Kardulias (1995, 1996) has provided yet more

food for thought.

Many previous scholars have seen the Aegean as having a coreperiphery

relationship with the Eastern Mediterranean, in the sense that the Aegean

was geographically distant, was of secondary importance to those living

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and ruling in the Eastern Mediterranean polities, but did possess some

desirable raw materials (Cline 1999c). This may well have been the case forCrete in the prepalatial period. However, by the Late Bronze Age, Minoan

Crete was by no means lacking for technological skills, organization of

labor, or strong political development. Neither were the Mycenaeans on

mainland Greece.

Various entities and polities within the Aegean were clearly in contact

with Egypt and the Near East during the centuries of the Late Bronze Age.

These can be viewed in a variety of ways, ranging from considering Crete,

mainland Greece, and the Cyclades as whole entities, to discussing individ-

ual cities and polities such as Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos, Kommos, and

Knossos. Thus, one must continue to wrestle with the questions of the

degree(s) of such contact and the proper terminology to use in expressing

these relationships.

For instance, Andrew Sherratt (1993a:5) suggested that the term

periphery should be applied only to societies that underwent structural

transformation as a result of regular exchanges of material products with

privileged consumers elsewhere. This still does not seem particularly

applicable to either mainland Greece or Crete during the Late Bronze Age,

especially in the context of exchanges/contacts with the Eastern

Mediterranean.

Moreover, as Kardulias (1996:19) has pointed out, a dependent core

periphery relationship was never established between the Aegean and the

Eastern Mediterranean. In part, this was because the distances involved

were too great, but it was also because the Eastern Mediterranean couldnot control the sources of raw materials in the Aegean, which were instead

under local control. In this instance, therefore, the distance parity model

of interregional interaction (Stein 1999a) may be better suited than the

world-systems approach.

However, Karduliass (1995:342) further suggestion that the Aegean

Bronze Age economy was an adjunct to an eastern Mediterranean world

system minimizes, at least semantically, the role that I believe the Aegean

played in this international scenario (Kardulias 1996:1). The archaeologi-

cal, textual, and pictorial evidence suggest that both mainland Greece and

Minoan Crete were in contact with the Near East and Egypt during the

course of the Late Bronze Age and that direct relationshipsnot simply

adjunct relationshipsexisted between these regions and their various

spheres of influence (for example, the data in Cline 1994).

Kardulias (1996:15) does go on to postulate the existence of an Aegean

or Eastern Mediterranean metallurgical province that clearly represents a


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world-system, but one with a corecore relationship. This may be a more

appropriate description of the overall system, without minimizing the roleplayed by either Crete or mainland Greece, however geographically distant

they were from the Eastern Mediterranean. His more recent discussion of

a negotiated peripherality may also come into play here, emphasizing the

role of emergent elites as participants in long-distance exchange networks

(Kardulias 2007) within a world-systems network.

Similarly, although Andrew Sherratts (1993a:8) description of mar-

ginal areas could be employed to describe the long-distance contacts

between Minoan Crete and inland areas such as Mesopotamia, where con-

tact may have been only indirect via Syro-Palestinian or Cypriot merchants,

one can still argue that the text at Mari in Mesopotamia that records tin

being distributed from the east to Minoans from Crete present in the city

of Ugarit in Syria indicates that the Aegean world-system, in which Crete was

the major player at the time, was neither a marginal area nor adjunct

but was directly linked to the contemporary Mesopotamian world-system

whose existence has been demonstrated by Philip Kohl and others

(Kardulias 1996:20; Kohl 1989; regarding the Mari tablet, see Bardet et al.

1984:528; Cline 1994:Catalogue 1, no. 4.2; Heltzer 1989:12). This does not

mean that Franks idea of a single World System is validated, but rather

that one might postulate a series of smaller world-systems linked via a net-

work of long-distance trade during the Late Bronze Age (Kohl 1987a:23,

1989:233, 237; Wallerstein 1993:295).

Because corecore, coreperiphery, coresecondary core, or multi-

ple core relationships are all integral to the various world-systems modelsthat have been proposed, one could argue that it certainly seems possible

to move forward from the basic core/periphery models and to propose a

hypothetical series of Aegean, Eastern Mediterranean, and Mesopo-

tamian world-systems in place during the second millennium bc, which

were composed of overlapping, geographically disparate, and politically

autono-mous core regions (Kohl 1989:233) stretching from the Bronze

Age Aegean to Mesopotamia. Thus, one could consider the Bronze Age

Aegean not as simply an adjunct to an eastern Mediterranean world sys-

tem (Kardulias 1995:342), but rather as an integral, albeit geographically

distant, part of a world-system of autonomous core regions linked via a

trade network extending from the Aegean to the Eastern Mediterranean

and beyond.

On one hand, perhaps there is some merit to continuing to consider

the possibility that an Aegean economic world-system dominated first by

Crete and then by mainland Greece may have interacted with an inter-

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locked series of Late Bronze Age world-systems, each dominated by Egypt

and other polities in the Eastern Mediterranean, that reached to the cen-tral regions of Mesopotamia and perhaps beyond. On the other hand, is

this not just a new way of saying that there were international relations in

the ancient world, that is, between mainland Greece and the Eastern

Mediterranean and between Minoan Crete and the Eastern Mediterra-

nean? The existence of such relations, I believe, has already been well

established and is not significantly furthered by the introduction of new

terminology and jargon.

We may well ask, what has been gained by introducing a world-systems

theory model into the ancient world of the Late Bronze Age Aegean and

its international connections? Can future scholars build upon this theoret-

ical model more easily than upon the raw data, or discuss the raw data

more easily in terms of this theoretical model? Can we explain trade pat-

terns and interactions in a way we could not previously? Can we, in fact,

explain thingsproblems, enigmas, conundrumsthat could not be

explained previously? Although the potentials of WST are fascinating, the

necessity of its application to the Late Bronze Age Aegean is still not clear,

for moving away from the objects and into abstract theory does not neces-

sarily help us to explain how an object got from one place to another.

That is to say, objects clearly move from one place to another in the

ancient world, but they also quite obviously do not do so under their own

power. All the theory in the world will not help objects move from one

place to another if there are no available connections that enable them to

do so. They move because human beingsusing ships, animals, or theirown feettransport them. And human beings from one culture or society

in the ancient world either have contact, be it direct or indirect, with

another such society or do not. Moreover, the connections have to exist

already or be created specifically in order to allow the movement of objects;

otherwise, there can be no such movement.

One way of looking at WST is that it is simply a fancy way of saying that

there were certain connections in the ancient world and that if an object

was transported through the series of connections, then it could have made

its way from Mesopotamia to Italy during the Bronze Age via any number

of possible routes. However, we already knew that, so how does WST help

us? How does using WST further the field? Does it help us to explain some-

thing we could not otherwise explain? If so, then let us use it; if not, then

there is no need for jargon-laden rhetorical flourishes that serve no pur-

pose other than to make archaeology incomprehensible to the general

public.


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Of far more potentialand immediateuse in considering the flow of

goods from the Eastern Mediterranean to Minoan Crete and mainlandGreece, and vice versa, might be to ask and answer different questions

altogether: namely, how much do we need to take into account possible

problems on the eastern end of things, that is, problems that faced the

Canaanites, the Hittites, the Egyptians, the Mitanni, and the like, and that

might well have affected the trade routes established between these regions

and the Aegean? One wonders, for example, whether the hostilities between

the Egyptians and the Hittites that resulted in the Battle of Qadesh circa

1286 bc by the Orontes River in Syria, or the various Hittite attempts to cap-

ture Cyprus during the latter part of Late Bronze Age, might have affected

connections with Crete and mainland Greece and, if so, to what extent.

These are the types of questions to which Parkinson and Galaty refer

in chapter 1, this volume, in terms of a domino effect: historical events in

one region can affect those regions with which it interacts. As they state,

the results of the domino effect seem to be more pronounced when those

historical events directly affect interaction itself. The more detailed dis-

cussion in chapter 2, this volume, in which a multiscalar approach to inter-

action studies is used, shows just how one can link changes on one side or

other of the Aegean and Mediterranean with shifts in trade. For example,

one can compare and contrast MMIA contacts between Crete and Egypt,

which can be explained with reference to the political situation during the

chaotic First Intermediate period in Egypt, to the later MMIB contacts,

which can be seen in terms of the foundation of the Minoan palaces and

the reestablishment in Egypt of centralized royal control at the start of theMiddle Kingdom.

It seems, to this author at least, that multiscalar, domino, and trade dias-

pora approaches may yield more useful data than does a WST approach.

However, this is not to say that WST should be completely abandoned or

that it does not have its uses. Several aspects are, in fact, quite useful. For

instance, the concept of a contested periphery, which was first discussed

by Allen for use in his 1997 UCLA dissertation concerned with Philistia, the

Neo-Assyrians, and world-systems theory, might be quite appropriate when

discussing international connections during the Late Bronze Age. He iden-

tified contested peripheries as border zones where different systems inter-

sect (Allen 1997:4951, 320321, fig. 1.4). Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997:37)

immediately adopted this term and defined it more formally as a periph-

eral region for which one or more core regions compete (see also Berquist

1995a, 1995b; Cline 2000).

This term contested peripheryhas geographical, political, and economic

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implications because such a region will almost always lie between two larger

empires, kingdoms, or polities. Moreover, contested peripheries are alsolikely to be areas of intense military activity, precisely because of their geo-

graphical locations and constantly changing political affiliations. Thus,

Allens phrase is applicable to the area of Troy and the Troad, for instance.

This region has been the focus of numerous battles during the past 3,500

years or more, from at least the time of the Trojan War in the Late Bronze

Age right up to the infamous battle at Gallipoli across the Hellespont dur-

ing World War I.

The region of Troy and the Troad in Anatolia commanding the

Hellespont was always a major crossroads, controlling routes leading south

to north, west to east, and vice versa. Whoever controlled Troy and the

Troad, and thus the entrance to the Hellespont, by default also controlled

the entire region both economically and politically, vis--vis the trade and

traffic through the area, whether sailors, warriors, or merchants. It is not

difficult to see why this region, as a thriving centre ofcommerce at a

strategic point in shipping between the Aegean and Black seas (Wilford

2002:F1), was so desirable for so many centuries to so many peoples.

A continuous stream of armies should actually be expected as a natural

occurrence in a region such as the Troad. It sits astride important routes

where different geographical, economic, and political world-systems came

into frequent contact, and it may have grown wealthy, in part, by exploiting

international connections. Such desirable peripheral regions would likely

attract the covetous gaze of rulers in one or more neighboring cores and

be highly contested. Troy may have had insufficient hinterland and naturalresources to become a true core on its own, but it certainly became a

major entrept and an important periphery, waxing and waning in a

complex series of cycles with the nearby major players and world-systems

that competed for control of this lucrative region each time they pulsed

outward and bumped into one another (see Hall 1999:910).

Calling the region of Troy and the Troad a geographical contested

periphery provides scholars with a convenient (and common-sense) way

to describe the area politically, economically, and geographically.

Researchers can then begin to take the next step by comparing this area

with other sites and areas in the world with similar geographical definitions

and similar bloody military histories.

T H E P R O B L E M O F M I S S I N G C O R R E S P O N D E N C E

Finally, we should spend a little time discussing what we do not have

at the moment. For instance, in terms of the movement of objects and


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people between the LBA Aegean and the Near East, if such was indeed tak-

ing place, one might expect that a certain amount of writing would havebeen involved as well, if only in the form of accounting lists, inventories,

and correspondence.2 Many of the Amarna Letters, for instance, not only

are letters exchanged between the kings of Egypt and those elsewhere in the

Near East but also contain lists of items being sent as gifts. One wonders,

then, why we have not yet found any correspondence from the Eastern

Mediterranean in the Bronze Age Aegean and, vice versa, any correspon-

dence from the Mycenaeans or Minoans in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Many scholars might initially reply that the answer is obvious and that

there is no need to theorize, for the climate of Greece is not conducive to

preserving perishable items such as leather or papyrus scrolls or wooden

diptychs with wax inside. The missing foreign correspondence must there-

fore have been written on such perishable items; otherwise, we would

surely have found it. However, such an answer makes numerous assump-

tions that are not necessarily valid. One could ask whether there is any evi-

dence that the Mycenaeans or the Minoans ever wrote on such perishable

material, apart from Homers mentioning a folded (and therefore presum-

ably wooden) tablet of baneful signs (IliadVI.169). Why should we assume

that a different material was used in the Aegean for recording foreign cor-

respondence, when all the other written records that we have from the

Bronze Age Greek world were inscribed on clay tablets? Unless the wooden

diptychs found on board the Uluburun shipwreck belonged to Mycenaeans,

and so far not even Pulak has claimed that they did, one could argue that

there is no good reason to suggest that this was ever the case.So could it be that we are simply missing every clay tablet that dealt

with the foreign trade or contacts of Bronze Age Greece? Apart from a few

items, a couple women, and a shepherd or two with foreign names men-

tioned in the Linear B tablets of Pylos, Knossos, and Mycenae (Cline 1994;

Palaima 1991), archaeologists have yet to unearth any records written in

the Bronze Age Aegean concerning specific contacts with foreign peoples

and powers in the Eastern Mediterranean. There are none from Pylos or

from Knossos, where the two main archives have been excavated, nor are

there any from Thebes, where the latest trove of tablets has been found,

nor any from Mycenae, Tiryns, Khania, nor from elsewhere in the

Mycenaean or Minoan world.

How does one explain this? Should it be argued that there was no

direct contact between the Bronze Age Aegean and the Eastern Mediterra-

nean and that everything was carried by Cypriot or Syro-Palestinian mer-

chants acting as middlemen? Or does one postulate something else?

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Clearly, the situation must be explained. Could it be that, in every single

polity, such records were stored separately from other written records andhave eluded us so far? Or does one acknowledge that perhaps there was no

such correspondence, no such records, in the first place because

Mycenaean Greece and Minoan Crete were on the margin or periphery of

the Eastern Mediterranean world-systems?

This last possibility seems unlikely, given the tremendous amount of

artifactual and pictorial evidence for both direct and indirect contact and

trade between the Bronze Age Aegean and Egypt, Anatolia, and the Near

East (Cline 1994, 1999c, 2007a). However, it is also true that archaeologists

have yet to unearth any such written records or correspondence from the

Eastern Mediterranean in the Bronze Age Aegeanwhether from royalty,

merchants, or commoners.

Even if all these powers were only in indirect contact, one could argue

that there should still be written evidence of some kind left to us by the

middlemen carrying the goods back and forth. This leaves us with the pos-

sibility that the letters or records from foreign peoples or recording foreign

contacts were stored in special places at Knossos, Pylos, Mycenae, Tiryns,

and Thebes and simply have not been located yet. Is it conceivable that the

archives of the Foreign Office at any of the Bronze Age Aegean sites simply

have not been found yet? This is a more hopeful scenario but leaves one

wondering whether, at these sites, there is still anywhere left to look. More-

over, one must also ask the reverse of the question posed earlier: why has

no written correspondence from Bronze Age Greeks, either Mycenaeans or

Minoans, been found in the Eastern Mediterranean?On one hand, Egyptian texts mention the Aegean. Tanajais most likely

a reference to the Greek mainland and the Mycenaeans, and Keftiuis the

name for Bronze Age Crete and the Minoans, as written in Egyptian. There

are mentions of the Mycenaeans in Hittite texts as well. Wolf-Dietrich

Niemeier and Trevor Bryce have conclusively provedat least to my satis-

factionthat Ahhiyawais a Hittite reference to the Greek mainland and

the Mycenaeans. And yet there are no mentions of Bronze Age Crete or the

Minoans in Hittite records. On the other hand, there are numerous men-

tions in the Mari letters of Minoan goods, assuming that Caphtor is the

name for Bronze Age Crete and the Minoans as written in Akkadian. There

are similar mentions of the Minoans and/or Crete in Canaanite texts. But

where are the Greek mainland and the Mycenaeans in Mesopotamian

texts? And where are they in Canaanite texts (see Bryce 1989a, 1989b; Cline

1994:Catalogue I, 1998a; W.-D. Niemeier 1998)?

We can finally answer the last of these questions, for Lackenbacher and


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Malbran-Labat, followed by Singer, have now published the first evidence

for textual mentions of Ahhiyawans in Canaanite documents, specifically intwo letters (RS 94.2523 and RS 94.2530) found at Ugarit and dating to the

late thirteenth or early twelfth century bc. Assuming that Ahhiyawais the

Hittite reference to the Mycenaeans, as just stated, then these letters appar-

ently contain the first-ever occurrence in Akkadian of a reference to the

Mycenaeans. It is a version of the Hittite word Ahhiyawa, used in these let-

ters to refer to the Hiyawa-men and rendered into Akkadian as the gen-

tilicon Hiyau(wi). The specific occurrences are hi-ia--wi-i(RS 94.2523) and

both hi-ia-a- and hi-ia--wi-i (RS 94.2530; Lackenbacher and Malbran-

Labat 2005:237238, nn69, 76; Singer 2006:250252).

In sum, there are no Mycenaeans or Mycenaean goods in Mesopota-

mian texts yet, but they are present in Egyptian, Hittite, and Canaanite

texts. And there are no Minoans or Minoan goods in Hittite texts yet, but

they are present in Mesopotamian, Canaanite, and Egyptian texts. What is

one to make of this?

The fact is, when taken as a whole, Mycenaeans, Minoans, and/or their

goods appear in the texts of all the major powers or areas of the Bronze

Age Eastern Mediterranean. Note, however, that only the Egyptians and

Ugaritians mention boththe Mycenaeans and the Minoans and are the only

ones to differentiate between the two. Perhaps one should not read too

much into the fact that there are presently no Mesopotamian texts men-

tioning Mycenaeans or Mycenaean goods. The artifactual remains attesting

to either direct or indirect contact between these areas indicate to me that

the written records should also eventually be found. The same may be saidfor the current lack of Hittite texts mentioning Minoans or Minoan

goodspossibly.

What is more disturbing is the lack of correspondence or texts from

the Bronze Age Aegean in the Eastern Mediterraneanespecially the lack

of correspondence from Bronze Age Aegean rulers or merchants. Here

Starkes announcement that he believes one of the Ahhiyawa letters was

sent from Ahhiyawa to the Hittites comes into play. If he is correct, then

there isfinallyan example of correspondence sent from the Bronze

Age Aegean to an Eastern Mediterranean area. Specifically, Starke has sug-

gested that Ahhiyawa letter KUB 26.91 is from the Ahhiyawan ruler of

Thebes, whose name was Kadmos. Starkes formal announcement of the

discovery at a 2006 conference in Montreal was greeted with a mixture of

acceptance and skepticism. He was convincing in showing that it could be

a letter from an Ahhiyawan ruler, but he did not prove that it was from

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Thebes or from a ruler named Kadmos, as he had initially suggested (to

date, the only published mention and discussion of Starkes hypothesis hasbeen presented not by Starke himself, but by Latacz [2004:243244]).

In the end, based on the number of artifactual imports and exports

from each area, I find it hard to believe that Mycenaean and Minoan rulers

were not, or could not have been, in direct contact with Eastern Mediter-

ranean rulers during the Late Bronze Age. Therefore, although the written

records documenting specific contacts continue to elude archaeologists for

the moment, the circumstantial evidence indicates, to me at least, that they

must exist or that they did exist at some point. It is probably only a matter

of time before such records are found.

C O N C L U S I O N S

In Fantalkins (2006:200) paper concerned with Greeks in the Eastern

Mediterranean during the Iron Age, he suggested that there is no single

model that would explain these contacts (or their absence) through dif-

ferent time periods. Quite the opposite: judging from the facts on the

ground (and there are some), every subsequent historical period requires

a different explanation, a different narrative. The same holds true for the

contacts between Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean during the pre-

ceding centuries, that is, during the Bronze Age and particularly for the

contacts between the Aegean, Egypt, and the Near East.

These Bronze Age centuries were full of historical events, of course,

some of which would have impacted international relations and all of

which we would have to take into consideration in order to draw a true andcorrect picture of the situation. Whether a model can be constructed that

takes all of the above into consideration remains to be determined. It also

remains to be determined whether the Aegean was in the mainstream or

on the margins or periphery of the Eastern Mediterranean world-systems

during the Late Bronze Age. It seems likely to me, in my role as a maxi-

malist when it comes to matters of international trade and contact, that the

Aegean was in the mainstream, but clearly much more evidence needs to

be located and discussed before any sort of concrete resolution can be

agreed upon.

Notes

1. Much of the material in this section originally appeared in Cline 1999c; other

portions were first published in Cline 2008. In each case, the material is reproduced

here in altered form by permission.


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2. Much of the material in this section was originally presented at the 2006

MycenaeansHittites conference in Montreal, Canada, and is reportedly forthcomingas Cline in press. I am grateful for the opportunity to present some of the more salient

points here, especially as the original paper may not see the light of day.

Eric H. Cline

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