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.
In the earlier days of Mycenaean studies, the limited focus of the Linear B tablets made it commonplace to regard palatial administrators, indeed the wanax himself, as having total control over the economy of a given state. Subsequently, however, Paul Halstead and others challenged this monolithic view. They drew attention among other things to various items (like pulses) and industries (like chipped stone tool manufacture) that are attested in the archaeological record but do not appear in the tablets.1 Since the tablets concern topics under the control of, or of direct concern to, palatial administrators, it follows that topics not covered there fall into neither of these categories. By such reasoning arose a binary view of Mycenaean state economy: alongside the palatial sector was a non-palatial sector, operating independently of the central authority.2 Still more recently it has become clear that this notion too is overly simple and rigid. 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.In a 2004 presentation to the London Mycenaean Seminar, I discussed what we might call the y-axis of Mycenaean society and economy: the vertical socio-economic ladder, with slaves, smiths, and governors standing on different rungs. This time round, I focus on the xaxis, looking at the horizontal continuum described above, to highlight the degree to which palatial control can vary, and the range of citizen involvement in palatial enterprises. I and others have identified and explored a number of indicators of differential control and involvement. It is useful to draw the disparate results together, because they have implications for fine-tuning our view of Mycenaean society and of how Mycenaean states operated. I concentrate chiefly on the textual evidence here, though like the oral version this paper closes with a brief look at the potential of some recent archaeological work.1. Payment and support of workers is one general area in which one can discern a variety of different relationships between individuals and the central administration. Mary-Louise Gregersen (now Nosch) identifies several different systems of payments to craft workers at 1 For example, P. Halstead, 'The Mycenaean palatial economy: making the most of the gaps in the evidence ', PCPS 38 (1992)
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.