DISTURBANCES IN THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN

The expansion of Mycenaean civilization had been bound up with a vigorous trading activity in the eastern Mediterranean, and for the archaeologist the recession of that trade is one of the most obvious symptoms of the Mycenaean decline. But this generalization will not get us far in the reconstruction of the history of the period. Cultural and political history are not the same thing; and in the L.H. IIIb phase, when pottery of Mycenaean style found its widest distribution in the east Mediterranean lands, the political decline of the Mycenaean world may already have begun. We have already noted that at this time the Mycenaean potters of Cyprus were showing a greater independence of the style of mainland Greece, and that their wares seem to have captured most of the eastern market, for nearly all the Mycenaean pottery of L.H. IIIb style that turns up in Syrian and Palestinian sites shows Cypriot peculiarities. Cities such as Alalakh (Tell Açana) and Ugarit (Ras Shamra) continued to import Mycenaean-style pottery until their destruction in the early twelfth century, but that pottery came in the main from Cyprus. At the least this must imply that direct trade from the Aegean was now less frequent, and it is difficult to see why. Either, one would suppose, something had undermined the commercial vitality of Greece at home, or else the political conditions in the east Mediterranean had become less favourable to trade. It may be partly that Mycenaean traders in Cyprus were better placed, and had therefore become rivals to their homeland; on these lines we might explain the curious situation at Tell Abu Hawwām near Haifa, where, quite exceptionally, the Mycenaean imports at this time do include pots which must have come from mainland Greece.