Economic Interplay Among Households And States

This Forum has made progress on both its stated research themes: control of craft production and the newer topic of markets. My comments take up the issues of household economy, state control, and markets. First, I discuss developments at the second-order center of Nichoria, which show both independent activity and the effect of incorporation into the state of Pylos. Excavation of another such settlement at Iklaina promises to support and expand on the findings from Nichoria. State control is another subject for discussion; the evidence suggests some differences between prestige goods and ordinary pottery, concerning both production and consumption. Finally, I argue that the existence of markets is well supported by both archaeological and textual data. Chadwick’s The Mycenaean World introduced to the world of Aegean studies a whole new field of inquiry. His was the first general account of Late Bronze Age Greece based almost entirely on contemporary documentary evidence. He stressed that the Linear B tablets were palatial documents focused on matters of interest to the central administration. The palatial perspective naturally dominated subsequent research on Mycenaean economy and society for a time, but Chadwick readily acknowledged that this was only a partial view of Mycenaean culture: “It is very hard from our records to form a picture of the ordinary people and imagine what sort of lives they led.”1 It was left to a later generation of scholars to look for traces of these ordinary Mycenaeans outside the palaces and, to varying degrees, outside the palatial economy. This trend has been productive in several ways. For one thing, the thoughtful interplay between textual and archaeological research has heightened awareness of commodities and processes not monitored by Mycenaean scribes and thus not under palatial control.2 For another, comparison of Mycenaean states has shown that despite important similarities, they developed and operated differently—this is not surprising, given their different local histories and environments.3 Finally, it should now be generally accepted that the redistributive model is inadequate to characterize even those aspects of the Mycenaean economy that were under tight palatial control. Even a binary palatial/nonpalatial formulation is too simple. In a recent compilation of evidence, I suggested that “[a] more productive model is a continuum, with individuals and groups involved in various ways and to various degrees with the central palatial administration, from full dependence to greater or less interaction to no contact at all.”4 This wider and more flexible vision of Mycenaean economy is well exemplified by the contributors to this Forum. The palaces are rightly viewed as consumers, not just producers, and regional considerations are important to the discussion. The stated focus here is on craft specialization and markets. The first is well documented for the Mycenaean states, both textually and archaeologically. The second is a much newer topic in Aegean studies, but the discussion is now wide open. Much in these papers deserves comment. There are some nice smaller points throughout. Parkinson et al. take the concept of one-stop shopping back to the Bronze Age, proposing that there were regional centers for the production and distribution of multiple products.5 Hruby reinforces Nakassis’ argument that qe-ta-ko at Pylos was both a smith and a potter,6 by observing that both professions required expert control of firing conditions. As to the larger research themes, all the contributors mention the need for more data from household contexts; all are concerned with the 1 Chadwick 1976, 77. 2 Halstead 1992; Killen 1998; Whitelaw 2001. 3 Shelmerdine 1999. 4 Shelmerdine 2011, 19. 5 Parkinson et al. 2013. 6 Nakassis 2006, 531; Hruby 2013. CYNTHIA W. SHELMERDINE 448 [AJA 117 profiles of the different Mycenaean states as both producers and consumers; and all offer support of different kinds for the existence of markets. The study of pottery in particular links these topics together. In regard to household archaeology, Nichoria has until very recently offered the only opportunity in Messenia to examine a second-order center and its interaction with the palatial center. Aprile makes the most of this opportunity, though the data are not always up to the job.7 As I well remember from my own part in this project, much of the material is scrappy; prestige artifacts are rare in domestic deposits, and some parts of the hill remain unexcavated. Aprile treats Late Helladic (LH) IIIA and IIIB together, citing the difficulty of analyzing diachronic change between the two periods. It would be useful to add some chronological refinements, though, and this is in fact possible in some cases. Several of the houses (Units III-2, III-6, IV-3, IV-6, IV-7) were remodeled during LH IIIB, and different floor levels can be distinguished. Taking such changes into account would require adding the level of intra-household analysis to the inquiry. But this is not necessary for considering the crucial disjunction at the end of LH IIIA1. At that point, the megaron (Unit IV-4) went out of use; most of the household units in Areas III and IV, and also the tholos, were built subsequently, during LH IIIA2. If these developments were a consequence of the assimilation of Nichoria into the Pylian state, as seems likely,8 they are directly relevant to the comparison of households at the site. It is also worth keeping in mind that a tomb assemblage is not strictly comparable to a domestic context, though both do document goods to which a settlement had access. Thus, Aprile’s two elite contexts, megaron and tholos, differ both functionally and chronologically. These points aside, Aprile’s results are interesting and helpful. Regarding household provisioning, she finds little difference between the assemblages in the megaron and those in the other houses, suggesting little distinction between elites and nonelites in the acquisition of household goods. This observation is based in part on the distribution of kylikes, which are in fact ubiquitous at all Mycenaean settlements, from palace to village. I think she is right, therefore, to distinguish between the low value of the kylix itself and the high social value of its use in feasting. (The miniature kylix is of course a different matter, as she notes.) Cooking tripods tell a similar story. As well as the two from the megaron (P3637, P3638) mentioned by Aprile, there are two numbered examples from nonelite domestic contexts (P3735 from Deposit L23 OPfg Wall A; P3736 from Unit IV-6, Room 3).9 Like the kylikes, they show that elites and nonelites at Nichoria had the same basic needs for routine vessels. The sources, too, may be the same. Tripods at Nichoria are of a distinctive Messenian shape, derived from the Minoan type, with vertical handles below an incurving rim. They thus exhibit a regional preference that extends across status boundaries. Excavations now in progress at the settlement site of Iklaina, under the auspices of the Archaeological Society at Athens, are certain to provide further material for similar analysis.10 The site is probably to be identified with the district capital a-pu2-we mentioned in Linear B tablets from Pylos. The Mycenaean history of the site shows some parallels to that of Nichoria, including a disjunction early in LH IIIA2 and subsequent construction of several houses. No sealstones have been found to date, but figurines are concentrated in a few specific contexts, and fragments of several miniature kylikes have also come to light. It will be important to analyze the find contexts of both as study continues.11 Household pottery, however, is distributed throughout the excavated area without apparent status distinctions. Fine wares are of the usual fabrics and shapes (little decoration survives), but coarse wares tell a more interesting story. The tripods in all contexts are of the same Messenian shape as those from Nichoria. Two coarse fabric types common in the Early Mycenaean period are unusual, without parallel at Nichoria or even at Pylos; they seem to be quite local products. LH IIIA–B coarse fabrics are less distinctive, bearing out suggestions in this Forum that pottery production was carried out by fewer manufacturers working on a larger scale (see more below). Aprile also notes distinctions in clay color at Nichoria, for both pottery and figurines, as a possible measure of elite status.12 It is true that there are two major fine ware fabric types at Nichoria, as at Iklaina, but chronology again plays a role. The very soft greenishwhite fabric (e.g., Munsell 10YR 8/1–8/2) is characteristic of late LH IIIB fine ware at both sites; the buff fabric (e.g., 7.5YR 7/4), sometimes with a pinkish core (e.g., 5YR 7/3), dominated earlier, though both types occurred from LH IIIA onward. The color 7 Aprile 2013. 8 Bennet 1999, 143. 9 Shelmerdine 1992, 502, 542. 10 Online excavation reports at www.iklaina.org; see also Cosmopoulos 2006. 11 Miniature kylikes are also reported from chamber tombs at Volimidia (Blegen and Rawson 1966, 366). 12 Supra n. 7. ECONOMIC INTERPLAY AMONG HOUSEHOLDS AND STATES 2013] 449 distinction is due not to a difference in clay but to firing conditions, which a potter could control to some extent. Further, the soft greenish-white fabric is typically unpainted; the decorated pottery is almost always buff throughout or pink at the core with a buff surface. Mycenaean figurines, which also bear painted decoration, are also buff or pink/buff, so the rarity of greenish-white figurines is not surprising, and the fabric probably represents low rather than high value. Even the greenish-white pottery from the Palace of Nestor seems to have resulted from the mass production of intrinsically low-value vessels.