Negotiated Peripherality in Iron Age Greece Accepting and Resisting the East

Most archaeologist.., argue that the Aegean was cut off from the Near Ea..,t in the tenth century B.C., but a new position is winning favor, seeing Iron Age Greece a.., a periphery to a Lcvantinc core. In this paper, I argue for a more complex model of negotiated pcriphcrality. I try to understand how Greeks made sense of the Ea..,t. For this, variations in local leadership were crucial Political changes in the Near Ea..,t c. 1050 B.C. reduced contacts, and in the central Aegean, a new mythology emerged, stressing isolation in time and space and making sense of these shrinking horizons. People deliberately cmpha..,izcd isolation in ritual, with one exception, a remarkable burial at Lcfkandi c. 975 B.C. This inverted normal symbolic practices, using Oricntalizing antiques and burial customs which throughout the first millennium were linked to the idea of a vanished race of scmidivinc heroes. This opposition between an inward-turned present and an expansionist pa..,t remained central to ancient Greek social structure.


Introduction
In this paper, I concentrate on a small area, the Aegean, and on the particularities of its relationships with the Near East between about 1000 and 800 B.C.I follow this course, rather than offering a set of high-level theoretical abstractions, for two main reasons.First, because small-scale empirical studies are vital for the health of any grand theory; and second, because the grand sweep docs not pay enough attention to the way knowledgeable actors construct core-periphery relations.In my title I use Nick Kardulia-.'s expression "negotiated peripherality," because Greek-. in these two centuries developed competing visions of their own dependence on the Near Ea-.t, and combined these senses of space with different understandings of time a-.part of a complex ideological struggle.
The Greek Dark Age I begin my story after the destruction of the palaces of the Bronze Age, around 1200 B.C., and the opening of the so-called "Dark Age." Population fell, political centralization decrea-.ed,and advanced crafts, including writing, disapp eared.A group of archaeological syntheses in the 1970s concluded that by 1000, the central area of Greec e wa-.isolated from contact with the outside world (Snodgra-.s 1971;Dcsborough 1972;Coldstream 1977).Snodgra-.s (1971: 228-68;1980;1989) argued that central Gr eek-.had learned about ironworking from Cyprus by 1050, and, thrown back on their own resources, created an iron-ba-.cdeconomy.Most finds come from graves, and between 1000 and 925, there is very little bronze, gold, ivory, or other import ed mat erials.By 900, contact revived, and by 850 bronze grave goods were common, and even actual imports from the Near Ea-.t.
Tenth-century central Greek graves were very consistent: most were of adults, and almost all had between one and four pots, and one or two iron objects.Even complex ornaments like fibula-.were often made of iron.There is very little evidence for monum ents.These were poor and homog eneous graves.I have argued that they belong to an elite which represented itself a-.internally egalitarian (Morris 1987).They dominated a pea-.antrywhos e dead were buried less formally, with lower archaeological visibility.
Twenty years on, the 1970s synthes es seem too positivist.There is no rea-.onto doubt that there wa-. a decline in trade, since Greek objects also disappear from the Near Ea-.t, Phoenician finds stop on Cyprus, and Philistin e pressure on the Phoenicians after 1050 [Page 2] Journal of World-Systems Research provides a plausible context.But ex cavations at settlements such a-.A-.inc (Wells 1983) and Nichoria (McDonald et al. 1983) show what should be obvious anyway, th at there wa-.some bronze in circulation through the tenth century; and chemical analyses of the bronzes deposited in graves at Lcfk.andi between 1100 and 900 show no real change in tin content, although it was tin which would be hardest to find (Morris 1989).Central Gre eks had more than one way to respond to the decline in trade after 1050.Central Gre eks had contact with Chalcidicc, and from there access to bronze-rich Macedonia (Snodgra-;s 1994).Responding to a trade decline by cutting imports from grave goods wa-; a decision people made, not a pa-;sivc reflection of larger forces.
The replacement of bronze, gold, and ivory by iron must have had profound symbolic implications.It cut the link-; which tied the present to the pa-;t, a-; well a-; those tying the locality to the larger ca-;t Mediterranean.In Homer's eighth-century epics, and from th en on for the rest of antiquity, bronze is the metal of the heroes of the distant pa-;t.Throughout 28,000 lines, the heroes only ever use bronze; but in his similes , comparing a situation in the story to the contemporary world, Homer regularly speak-; of iron.Using bronze and other imported materials spoke of a-;sociations with the wider world and the distant pa-;t; using iron, dug from the ground all over Greece, spoke of an enclosed, isolated present.W c do not sec an attenuated use of bronze or gold across the tenth century; these materials simply disappear.
At lca-;t, this is true of 99% of the record.Some 200 tenth-century graves fit this pattern; but a double burial of c. 1000-950 discovered at Lcfk.andi in 1981 docs not.One of th e bodies is a male warrior cremation, with the a-;hcs in a bronz e urn from Cyprus , about 200 years old when buried.Next to him wa-; a female inhumation, wearing gold jewelry ; one piece, the gorgct, wa-; Old Babylonian, already a millennium old when buried.Next to her skull wa-; an iron knife with an ivory handle.Over the graves wa-; a pot 1.5 m. high, decorated with a Near Ea-;tcrn tree-of-life motif; and in a second shaft, the skeletons of four horses.The complex wa-; enclosed in an apsidal house 50m.long--t cn times the size of any known contemporary housc--which wa-; then converted into a giant tumulus, which stood undisturbed till its owner started bulldozing it to build a summer hom e in 1981 (Catling and Lemos 1990;Popham ct al. 1993).I should cmpha-;izc that this burial complex is not a grander version of typical funerals ; it completely overturns every norm.Where other burials deny the past and the ca-;t, this positively revels in them.Where others arc understated, this dominates the landscape.It breaches the limits of time and space a-; established in tenth-century ritual.Who could do Again, the later literary record provides clues.Around 700, in his po em the Work-; and Days, Hesiod sets out a mythological account of the history of humanity, dividing it into five successi ve races, of gold, silver, bronze, heroes, and iron."Would that I were not amon g the men of the fifth race," he says, "but had either been born before or died after.
For now is truly a race of iron, and men never rest from labor and sorrow by day, and from perishing by night; and the gods shall give them harsh troubles " (lines 174-78).Elements of this myth probably go back to Bronze Age Near Eastern stories, but the race of heroes is a Greek invention.Zeus created the heroes after he destro yed the bron ze rac e, and the heroes, armed with bronze, destroyed themselves in wars at Thebes and Troy.The heroes, Hesiod tells us, were "a godlike race of heroic men, who arc called demigod-;" (lines 159-60).For the next thousand years, semi-divine heroes were central to Greek mythology.A race of them had lived in the distant pa-;t, but contemporary men, such a-; the founders of colonies, could show by their deed-; that the blood of the hero es ran in their veins, and at their death they could be promoted to heroic status.Th e rites of promotion usually involved clements out of a package of cremation, burial in a metal urn, horse sacrifice, burial of weapons, and a tumulus.In fifth-century tragedy, a charact er only had to refer to a grave mound to evoke the whole concept of th e age of heroes.
These rites appear for the first time at Lc:fkandi.I want to suggest that around 1025-1000 B.C., there was a revolution in ritual and mythology in central Gre ece.New types of funeral imposed order on the post-Mycenaean chaos, distinguishing an int ernally homogeneous elite from its dependents.The rites cut the present off from the unw elcome pa-;t, and cut the Aegean off from the wider world.The scanty remain s of houses and sacrifices to the gods present a similar self-effacing, inward-turn ed ideology of simplicity (Morris, forthcoming: Chs.5-7).In combination with new ritua ls, a new system of myth made sense of the Greeks' shrinking horizons.It gave them a usable pa-;t.As Hesiod said, this was truly a race of iron.But every so often, a man might once again merge present and pa-;t in his own body, rising to the ranks of the heroes.In this way, I would suggest, they stabilized a new system of power around 1000 B.C .
It began to break up a century later.Again, while I emphasi ze the Greek elites' efforts at self-fa-;hioning, we have to set these within a wid er netw ork of resistanc es and forces.Around 975, icing David defeated the Philistin es, who had throughout the eleventh century

Journa I of World-Systems Research
exerted military pressur e which had kept the Phoenicians weak, and between 969 and 936 Hiram I of Tyre directed a program of Pho enician explora tion and trad e.By 900, Phoenician objects turn up all around the Mediterran ean, and Greek pott ery in the Lev ant (Ncgbi 1992;Aub ct 1993;Courbin 1993).By the late ninth century there may have been a Phoenician shrine at Komm os on Crete (Shaw 1989), and probabl y Syrian craftsmen living at Knoss os and on Rhodes (Coldstream 1993).Betwe en 900 and 850, rich grave good-; reappear in the Aege an (Coldstream 1977: 55-72).
Greece wa-; being drawn into a Lc vantinc economic system, but the Greek s' responses to this were complex.Firs t, we should note that in the ninth century bronz es and other exotica are known only from graves.None have been found in sanctuaries of the gods or houses.Second, there is little spatial uniformity in responses.At Lcfkandi, the Toumba cemetery began around the great hero burial after 950, and before 900 included not only bronzes but actual Near Eastern imports.These escalated; by 850, some graves held dozens of gold and bronze ornaments, embossed Syrian bowls, and thousands of Egyptian faience beads (Popham et al. 1980;1982;1989;Popham 1995).But at Chalc is, barely ten miles away, there are no ninth-century exotica (although only a dozen graves arc known here).At Athens, bronzes start to appear in some graves before 900, but imported finished object<; arc rare until 850.Near Eastern materials and imports are even less common at Argos, but occur by 900 in several graves at the much smaller site of Tiryns, just five miles away (Morris,forthcoming: Ch. 5).
This pattern is unlikely to be purely random; nor do I think it was a pa<;sive response to differences in Phoenician-controlled patterns of supply.There is no geographical rea<;on for Tiryns to be better supplied than Argos or Athens.I suggest that there wa<; disagreement and competition both within and between communities over what should be done about the new availability of exotica.In the tenth century, these rare object<; had evoked a parallel universe of heroes; after 900, they were much ca<;icr to get hold of.Some people, like the buriers in the Toumba cemetery at Lefk.andi, embraced the new; others, like most buricrs at Athens, were hesitant.Rushing to use oriental object<; meant abandoning or at lca<;t revising the tenth-century elite ideolo gy of an inward-turned, homogeneous ruling cla<;s which wa<; a race of iron.Some members of th e elite tried to hold onto this; others turned away from it.There wa<; a general loos ening of the rigid distinction between pa<;t and present, and between 900 and 850 Bronz e Age heirlooms were placed in graves on Naxos (Lambrinoudakis 1988)  By 850, grave goods at man y sites were rich by Greek standards, with gold, bron ze, ivory, and even amber.But between 825 and 800 this trend wa<; reversed, and by th e early eighth century graves are generally poorer and simpler than at any tim e since the tenth century, although bronze wa<; not abandoned (Coldstream 1977: 73 -10 6).This wa<; definitely not a pa<;sivc response to supply: by 800, Greek pottery is abundant at Al Mina on the Syrian coa<;t (Boardman 1990).Wheth er Greek traders settled here or a Syrian community had become intensivel y involv ed with the Aegean, Gr eek hori zons were widening, not contracting.Greek objects start to appear in quantity in Italy and Sicily, too.Th ere wa<; mor e contact with the wider world, but at the same time people were bringing this world under control, fitting it into older ideological framework-;.By 800, central Greek-; had renegotiated their pcriphcrality to the Levant.

Conclusion
The most reasonable interpretation of this 200-ycar history is that the periph eral relationship to the ca.;;t wa-; something actively constructed by knowl edgeable social actors.Some Greek-; keenly sought out the ca-,t; others resisted it.They operated within constraints not of their own making, and the Phoenicians' agency, which depend ed partly on military and political events in the Levant, was critical.But the differing responses of Greek communities presumably had serious implications for the Phoenicians too.To understand the processes fully, we need to sec them from both sides, and Nick Kardulia-,'s concept of negotiated pcriphcrality is a valuable one.
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and Skyro s (Papadimitriou 1936), and at Tiryns (Gercke and Naumann 1974) and Vranczi (Sotiriadis 1907), tumuli arc known from three of these locations (not Tiryns), and the famoLL<; centaur model divided between Lefk.andiToumba grs. 1 and 3 also hints at a refiguring of [Page 5] Journa I of World-Systems Research notions of myth and history.