Bronze Age Economic Scope

One of my most interesting findings from my extensive digging is the actual scale and scope of the Bronze Age economy. It emerged and evolved over two millennia and in time certainly poked into every nook and cranny in its search for sources of copper and tin. That is a pretty powerful assertion, yet it is both consistent with capabilities and extant evidence.

The presence of traders and ultimately of miners triggered localized imitation of the parent cultures just as to day urban centers worldwide imitate the major centers. During the Bronze Age these centers were palace oriented polities. In Mycenae, these palaces were made of stone, elsewhere mostly of wood and earth. Regardless, a trader could arrive knowing what to expect and to have solid security for his goods.

Transportation was by sea, and since sea raiding would be uncontrolled, the centers had to be typically built inland unless the center was very large. Subsistence agriculture surrounded all such facilities and provided support. Lack of land mobility limited raiding to reasonable levels and kept a slight control on the regular barbarism normally experienced. However, any reading of the Iliad shows us that every palace maintained a seagoing capacity to meet and fend of challenges from the seas.

Thus the copper economy was both global and focal to every community and organized polity of earth unless completely removed as the Pacific Northwest. The great river basins were not so removed and certainly supported some level of occasional commerce that supported large settled populations.

Over and over the archeology shows extensive artifacts related to the era in question often followed by demise and proceeded by little at all typical of a less organized polity.

Yesterday, I was looking at masses of dinosaur like figurines from Mexico, again dated to the Bronze Age. The numbers were huge suggesting a huge market far in excess of local needs. The images portrayed had also come from a distance and needed explanation. All the problems of a multinational manufactory are sitting there. They likely even had a brand to protect.

Thus we have millions of pounds of copper from Lake Superior and thousands of clay figurines from Mexico. This all represents generational effort carried on with a fair sense of security.

There is a serious need to reconstruct historic population of the basis of likelihood rather than the basis of evidence. Most of the evidence has yet to be found and maps showing a high possibility will inspire study. Recall that pre contact populations in the Americas may have reached 100,000,000. And when we look, we are finding evidence although the need for tribal separation likely kept it much lower; it certainly was very dense in many districts.

Oldest Submerged Town

It may be submerged but it also looks as if the stonework will be well preserved. Presumably it fell victim to an earth quake that induced sudden subsidence. Otherwise, stonework would have been salvaged and cycled into other higher structures. Alternatively the population was wiped out and slow subsidence did its job. That is simply too unlikely.

In the event, this was an important center to be built out as described. I only hope no one tries to claim it was Atlantis.

I cannot help but think that we live today in a true archeological golden age. Plenty of manpower is out there doing the digging and we are slowly grasping the size of the task.

An ounce of critical thinking tells us that the Bronze Age world was fully occupied by palace centered pocket sized principalities similar to the medieval world but possibly more so. There were thousands of jumped up chieftains controlling access to metal. I am sure most of the palaces were large wooden barns accommodating a large fighting band.

Our written knowledge comes from the most successful societies that were able to organize a somewhat larger polity. A reading of Kings from the bible does not give you much sense that anyone was maintaining an excessive number of retainers. In fact it all gets way too small time tribal. It is only in the highly celebrated times of optimum success that any sense of a larger state arises.

It appears the riverine states developed the necessary scale we associate with large polities and that was surely possible because of river transportation. Walk twenty miles inland and you confronted a walled city while your food supplies were dwindling.

Thus all these thousands of walled cities were quite safe if they were well back from water borne supply. The advent of horse haulage changed all that.

Race to preserve the world's oldest submerged town
May 11th, 2009

http://www.physorg.com/news161274284.html

(PhysOrg.com) -- The oldest submerged town in the world is about to give up its secrets — with the help of equipment that could revolutionise underwater archaeology.

The ancient town of Pavlopetri lies in three to four metres of water just off the coast of southern Laconia in Greece. The ruins date from at least 2800 BC through to intact buildings, courtyards, streets, chamber tombs and some thirty-seven cist graves which are thought to belong to the Mycenaean period (c.1680-1180 BC). This Bronze Age phase of Greece provides the historical setting for much Ancient Greek literature and myth, including Homer's Age of Heroes.

Underwater archaeologist Dr Jon Henderson, from The University of Nottingham, will be the first archaeologist to have official access to the site in 40 years. Despite its potential international importance no work has been carried out at the site since it was first mapped in 1968 and Dr Henderson has had to get special permission from the Greek government to examine the submerged town.

Although Mycenaean power was largely based on their control of the sea, little is known about the workings of the harbour towns of the period as archaeology to date has focused on the better known inland palaces and citadels. Pavlopetri was presumably once a thriving harbour town where the inhabitants conducted local and long distance trade throughout the Mediterranean — its sandy and well-protected bay would have been ideal for beaching Bronze Age ships. As such the site offers major new insights into the workings of Mycenaean society.

The aim of Dr Henderson's project is to discover the history and development of Pavlopetri, find out when it was occupied, what it was used for and through a systematic study of the geomorphology of the area establish why the town disappeared under the sea.

Dr Henderson, from the Underwater Archaeology Research Centre (UARC) in the Department of Archaeology, said: “This site is of rare international archaeological importance. It is imperative that the fragile remains of this town are accurately recorded and preserved before they are lost forever. A fundamental aim of the project is to raise awareness of the importance of the site and ensure that it is ethically managed and presented to the public in a way which is sustainable and of benefit to both the development of tourism and the local community.”