The Re‐Emergence of Political Complexity

Whitley, James

doi:10.1002/9781118769966.ch7

A Companion to the Archaeology of Early Greece and the Mediterranean 2019

DOI: 10.1002/9781118769966.ch7

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The Re‐Emergence of Political Complexity

James Whitley¹

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Cited by 3 publications

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“… 11 These are centralised administration, a tiered hierarchy of both statuses and settlements, and a monopoly of legitimate authority and the use of force (see Flannery and Marcus 2012, 422–34; and discussion in Whitley 2014; 2019). …”

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confidence: 99%

Κατεσκαψαν Ιεραπυτνιοι: The Destruction of Political Communities in the Second Century Bc and the Resilience of the Cretan Polis

Whitley

2023

Annu. Br. Sch. Athens

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Recently there has been a revival of interest in both the historical and archaeological dimensions of the destruction of cities. The destruction of the principal settlement of a polis is one thing, the effective eradication of the political community quite another. What did it take to destroy a political community? The historical record is full of references to destructions of one polis by another in late Classical to Hellenistic times in Crete. And though not all of these destructions led to the end of the political community in question, some did, and between the Classical period (where we know of 49 poleis) and the Roman conquest of Metellus (where we know of only 24) the numbers of Cretan poleis were drastically reduced. The destruction of Praisos by Hierapytna between 145 and 140 BC (Strabo 10.4.12) was one such case. This seems to form part of a horizon of destructions (of Dreros, Apollonia and Phaistos) that took place between 200 and 140 BC. Florence Gaignerot-Driessen has demonstrated that there is a clear ritual dimension to this in the case of Dreros, a dimension indicated elsewhere by the use of the verb κατέσκαψαν. Excavations at Praisos have shed light on this question. This paper argues that, while there is no evidence for a widespread destruction by fire, there is clear evidence for the ending of Praisian sanctuaries and the forced abandonment of houses and (most intriguingly) the abandonment of large storage vessels. A particular archaeological ‘signature’ of these abandonments, evident at Dreros, Phaistos and Praisos, is the abandonment of the ‘household pithos’, which in many cases seem to be older than the houses in which they have been found. The paper also argues that these archaeological signatures of what had to be destroyed in order to eradicate a political community in turn shed light on what made this particular form of ‘citizen state’ so resilient.

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confidence: 99%

Κατεσκαψαν Ιεραπυτνιοι: The Destruction of Political Communities in the Second Century Bc and the Resilience of the Cretan Polis

Whitley

2023

Annu. Br. Sch. Athens

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The Tyrants’ Cousins. Ruling Practices and Political Concepts between Anatolia and Early Greece

Santini

2024

Klio

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Summary This paper addresses the vexed question of the origins and nature of archaic Greek tyranny by focusing on the conceptual roots of the phenomenon, namely by investigating the political significance and implications of the Luwian notion of tarrawanni-, ‘just, justice,’ the term from which Greek tyrannos is believed to derive. Firstly, the paper shows how both Neo-Hittite and early Greek societies display a similar attitude towards justice as a key element for political legitimation. After concluding, however, that this commonality is not enough to explain why the Greeks borrowed the concept of tarrawanni- as tyrannos, the paper moves on to examining what specific way of doing politics is captured by the two concepts, arguing that they identify a type of political actor that exercises supreme powers independently of any kind of institutional arrangement. Finally, the paper discusses reasons, modalities, contexts, and timing of the transmission of Luwian tarrawanni- into Greek.

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Reinterpreting the Diachronic Variations in the Numbers of Burials Known from Early Iron Age Athens

Rönnberg¹

2021

JGA

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The number of burials per year known from Athens decreases significantly in the Protogeometric period and then increases rapidly again in the Late Geometric period. The explanation offered for this development by Morris in 1987 is the most popular one so far. This paper will first quickly discuss this and other previous ideas and their wider implications, but then focus on providing a new one. The starting point of this new interpretation is that various types of burial sites may have different recovery rates. I will thus first sketch the different possibilities for the location of graves in Athens in the Early Iron Age and the Archaic period. The subsequent diachronic analysis of these different types of burial sites and their respective popularity forms the core of this contribution. A case study of the Kerameikos and the area of the later Agora as well as an overview of all Athenian sites is provided. These developments and their correspondences in the grave count allow for an interpretation which does account for the variations in the known numbers of graves as well as the changing spatial patterns. This is finally set into the wider field of socio-cultural changes in Early Athens.

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The Re‐Emergence of Political Complexity

Cited by 3 publications

References 45 publications

Κατεσκαψαν Ιεραπυτνιοι: The Destruction of Political Communities in the Second Century Bc and the Resilience of the Cretan Polis

Κατεσκαψαν Ιεραπυτνιοι: The Destruction of Political Communities in the Second Century Bc and the Resilience of the Cretan Polis

The Tyrants’ Cousins. Ruling Practices and Political Concepts between Anatolia and Early Greece

Reinterpreting the Diachronic Variations in the Numbers of Burials Known from Early Iron Age Athens

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