The Collapse of the Mycenaean Economy
The Collapse of the Mycenaean Economy
$149.00
USDIn this book, Sarah Murray provides a comprehensive treatment of textual and archaeological evidence for the long-distance trade economy of Greece across 600 years during the transition from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age. Analyzing the finished objects that sustained this kind of trade, she also situates these artifacts within the broader context of the ancient Mediterranean economy, including evidence for the import and export of commodities as well as demographic change. Murray argues that our current model of exchange during the Late Bronze Age is in need of a thoroughgoing reformulation. She demonstrates that the association of imported objects with elite self-fashioning is not supported by the evidence from any period in early Greek history. Moreover, the notional 'decline' in trade during Greece's purported Dark Age appears to be the result of severe economic contraction, rather than a severance of access to trade routes.
- Studies the material correlates of economic and political collapse
- Critically interrogates how we assess quantitative change in the archaeological record
- Takes a long-term perspective on sociopolitical processes of collapse and regeneration
Product details
April 2017Hardback
9781107186378
366 pages
262 × 183 × 21 mm
0.92kg
26 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- 1. The dark light of Early Greek texts on trade
- 2. Direct evidence for long-distance exchange from Early Greece
- 3. Assessing quantitative change in the archaeological record
- 4. Bronze deposition (and circulation?), trade in commodities, and evidence from around the Mediterranean
- 5. Demographic and domestic economic change in Early Greece: factors of supply and demand
- 6. Snapshots of a trade economy in flux
- Conclusions
- References
- Index.
