Understanding the role of metal within the Late Bronze Age community at Mycenae: challenges and potential approaches

Abstract

Metal has been widely argued as playing a decisive role in the development of Mycenae, which became one of the foremost centers on the Late Bronze Age Greek mainland. Yet, little is understood as to how metals were integrated into the lives of the inhabitants. Most scholarship has concentrated on the relationship between the ruling class and metal artifacts, drawing much of the evidence from the Linear B archives and top-down models of trade, society and internal redistribution that are increasingly considered untenable within the study of other aspects of Mycenaean life. This paper presents a new project, which uses a practice-orientated approach based around object biographies to study the use of metal across the entire social spectrum of the Late Bronze Age community at Mycenae (approximately 1700–1050 BC). The benefits of such an approach are discussed through a case study that examines the unexpected absence of gold vessels from the Palatial period archaeological record from the perspective of social practice and demonstrates how the holistic use of evidence from multiple sources can help overcome the difficulties inherent in the study of the use of metal in past societies.