Mycenaean Citadels c. 1350-1200 BC: No. 22 (Fortress)

This is a superb introduction and overview of Mycenaean citadels of the Late Bronze Age (the last 150 years or so). While it cannot (and does not) pretend to be comprehensive in all respects, it does contain the main elements and the combination of text and illustrations on each of the main fortresses is rather compelling.The author begins with a worthwhile word of caution: the chronology is somewhat uncertain with specific dates for major events being particularly difficult to pin down with anything more than spurious accuracy. Depending on various authors and dating systems, the scope can range from 50 to 150 years in some cases with no way of telling who is correct since dating is largely relative and depends on stratification and comparisons. A second word of caution is that historians of the period have engaged in fierce controversies on just about everything, with claims of major discoveries attributed to Homer's characters being among the most well-known, such as the supposed "Death mask of Agamemnon", not to mention the historicity of the Trojan War itself.The author however makes the choice to believe that the Illiad has a historical basis. While this may be questionable, it does make for a more interesting story and it can be argued. The problem then because to identify what pieces of the poem reflect elements that can be traced back to the Late Bronze Age and the Mycenaean civilization and which are additions that relate to a latter period, when the poem was finally put into writing some five hundred years afterwards. As the author mentions himself, using Shakespeare's Macbeth as a guide to the historical eleventh century King is somewhat imprudent. However, at times, this is exactly what the author tends to do when discussing the "Catalogue of Ships" drawn from the Illiad and which shows a rather huge and somewhat implausible number of ships, warriors and locations that apparently contributed to the expedition against Troy.Having mentioned this, the book also summarizes the main features of these fortifications and clearly makes the two main points. They were mostly (because he also mentions a couple of exceptions which he also describes) fortified palaces and citadels, rather than the fortified cities that can be found across Asia Minor and the Near East. These fortified palaces may have served as refuges for the population living in nearby villages but they seem to have been the seat of the local warrior-king (Wanax) who dominated the region. The second point is that these defences were remarkably sophisticated and the sites were clearly selected for their strategic locations and because they dominated the countryside.The author then describes in a fair amount of detail a selection of four sites, including the most well-known (Mycenae and Tiryns) but also a site which was a fortress but not a palace (Gla) and another which was a palace but does not seem to have been fortified during the Later Bronze Age period (Pylos, where the excavations had yielded a large amount of written tablets showing how the palatial economy was organized and functioned). It is the descriptions of these four sites with the associated illustrations, reconstructions and cutaway views that largely make this book so fascinating. Another ten other sites, including Argos, Athens and Thebes, are also described in lesser detail, if only because they have not (and cannot be) thoroughly researched given that the Mycenaean fortifications lay under more recent ones.The final section is a short overview of the warlike Mycenaeans, their arms and equipment, a little of what is known of their society and a very short presentation of the various reasons put forward to explain its collapse around BC 1200. Here, I might have a little quibble. While the name of the main historians defending one or the other theory explaining this collapse, together with the date of publications, the titles of these publications do not appear and do not seem to have been included in the bibliography. This is a bit of a pity for a reader wanting to learn more on this particular aspect and it will make her/his life a bit more difficult, although she/he can probably manage to find the respective books through the names and dates, as I did.

This does what a good Osprey should do: gives one the basics of the topic, plus some very nice colour illustrations leaving us to launch into other more detailed works. I found it most useful in hauling my eyes northward to Gla and to the cornlands of Boeotia and away from sandy Pylos and mighty walled Tiryns.

excellent

Previous reviews have concentrated mainly on the text of this book, with one mentioning the black and white photos and their quality. I want to enlarge on the latter, in that there are something like 46/47 black and white photos and only 3 in colour. Being a perfectionist amateur photographer, the black and white photos of an extremely poor standard. It is difficult to distinguish in detail the scene of many, many photos and two in particular on pages 28 and 32 should never have been printed. The one on page 28 has a young female, wearing a baseball cap, sleeveless top and shorts with two other people in the background. Likewise on page 32 there is what looks like to be an arm in the immediate foreground and a young female wearing a sleeveless top and shorts just exiting the entrance to the Secret Cistern who obscures part of this entrance. When the title of the book is "Mycenaean Citadels .....",do I really want to see these young females each time I read this book? Could not the author have waited a while in order to take these two photos without people in them? It is not as if they are in the photos in order to give perspective to the subjects in these photos. I have many other books in this Fortress series and this book is by far the worst as to the quality of the photos, whereas the others have the majority of the photos in colour. To conclude,I am very disappointed with the author's photos but did find the text to be interesting.

A useful book which goes beyond the normal Mycenae-Tiryns-Pylos triad to look (albeit too briefly) at all the Bronze Age Mycenaean citadels. If you're read a lot on this subject it won't ad very much you don't already know, but as ever with Osprey, the illustrations are worth it.My slight reservation is that it takes at face value the theory that all the citadels were the focus of petty kingdoms. It does not mention the more likely theory that some were the centres of baronies under an over-king. For this please see the writings of Jorrit Kelder (in Palamedes 2008 and elsewhere): "Linear B texts found at various Mycenaean palatial centres indicate that Mycenaean palatial society was headed by a wanax. The wanax appears to have been involved in a wide variety of activities, including military, economic and religious affairs. Although the texts suggest that he was the major shareholder of the palatial realm, it appears that the wanax shared most of his ‘spheres of influence’ within Mycenaean society with another important official: the lawagetas."It is generally thought that each Mycenaean Kingdom was ruled by one wanax, and that the lawagetas was his second in command (although there is no consensus on the precise status of the lawagetas). It is generally thought that the wanax ruled from the large megaron referred to above, while the lawagetas would have performed his duties from a smaller megaron nearby."....[but] the view described above is essentially based on a circular argument, spawned from a desire to denounce the – in the 19th and early 20th century ruling – Homeric paradigm of Mycenaean Greek unity (to whatever extent). .....whilst the modern view of Mycenaean political fragmentation is not necessarily flawed, a case in favour of a ‘unified Mycenaean world’ is at least equally persuasive. Moreover, that view would be corroborated by Hittite and Egyptian texts, indicating larger political entities on the Greek mainland during the 15th to 13th century BC." (Kelder, 2008)Space in these Osprey books is at a premium, but a sentence or two on this other theory would have been a useful addition.