Warfare on the Greek mainland in the Middle Helladic period
It appears that on the Greek mainland—unlike in the Cretan palaces or in Cretan outposts abroad—any kind of military display was very rare through most of the Middle Helladic period. As mentioned above, in his survey of Aegean bronze artifacts from the Early Bronze and Middle Bronze (before the Shaft Graves) periods, Branigan catalogued more than 400 Aegean daggers. Scarcely a dozen of these were found on the Greek mainland.104 While the dagger was a personal weapon, the spear was potentially a military weapon, and before the Shaft Grave period very few men on the Greek mainland seem to have owned a spear. Branigan counted more than fifty Aegean spearheads, but of these only two—one from EH Lerna and one from MH Sesklo—come from the Greek mainland.105 The Sesklo spearhead reappears in Robert Avila’s catalogue of some 200 bronze spearheads from the Greek Spatbronzezeit, and is the only entry in Avila’s long catalogue that seems to date from before the Shaft Grave period.106 The Sesklo spearhead was “shoed,” a not very effective method of attaching a metal head to a wooden shaft,107 and the founder’s mold discovered in the Sesklo cemetery shows that someone in MH Thessaly was making “shoed” spearheads. The type may have originated along the Adriatic (of the seven known to Avila, one came from the island of Lefkas and two from Albania).108
Fifty years ago R. J. Buck summarized what evidence had been found for war and warriors on the Greek mainland before the Shaft Grave period:
The Middle Helladic people certainly possessed weapons, but comparatively few bronze ones have been discovered, if we except the rich finds from the Shaft Graves of the very end of the period. The bow and arrow were employed; for obsidian arrow-heads and stone arrow polishers and straighten- ers occur not infrequently. A fairly short bronze dirk or dagger, sometimes with a pommel, is found occasionally; it may have Cycladic affinities.109
Excavations in the last 50 years have not much changed Buck’s characterization of MH Greece. The 1046-page Mesohelladika volume published in 2010 includes sixty-three papers on MH Greece,110 but none of the papers deals with weapons. In her contribution to the volume Maria Kayafa analyzes the 260 metal objects that she has catalogued from the MH Peloponnesos before the Shaft Grave period. Half of the copper-based objects are ornamental, another third are either personal implements or tools, “while the rest of the finds constitute small minorities.” The weapons Kayafa mentions are a few daggers and one sword.111
The discoveries on Keos and Aigina are spectacular, but they tell us not about the Greek mainland but about Cretan rulers’ ambitions to control valuable resources, and in particular the mines at Laurion. More problematic is a cist grave with a warrior burial discovered in 1982 at Thebes. The burial has been seen by some as earlier than the Shaft Graves of Mycenae.112 The warrior at Thebes was buried with a Type A rapier (0.86 m long), a spear, at least five arrows (and therefore also a bow), the arrows having heads of flint and obsidian, and evidently a boar’s-tusk helmet. That is the same “kit” of weapons and helmet found in the rich MM II burial at Kolonna on Aigina. If the two burials are of the same date, I would suppose that the “warrior” at Thebes was also the local chief, serving the ruler at Knossos, and possibly the commander of a small chariot unit. Although the Theban burial is regarded by some as dating to the MH II period, it is more often placed at the very end of the MH period, making it contemporary with the earliest Shaft Graves in Circle B at Mycenae. Maria Kasimi-Soutou, who published the grave, dated it to the transition from MH III to LH I.113 Katie Demakapoulou put it still later: at the beginning of the LH period.114 A date in the MH II rather than the late MH III or very early LH I period for the Theban burial depends in part on the spearhead,115 which must be added to the “shoed” specimens known to Avila. Although the shoed spearhead is attested for the MH period, it evidently survived into the Mycenaean period. One of the seven in Avila’s catalogue came from Shaft Grave IV at Mycenae, showing that well into the LH I period a shoed spearhead was occasionally seen.116
Unless an early dating of the Theban tomb can be established, the fortifications and weapons on the offshore islands of Aigina and Keos are virtually the only indications we have that at least parts of the Greek mainland would have been familiar with some kind of military presence in the MH (or MM) II period. If the towns at Kolonna and Ayia Irini were subject to a king at Knossos, as is very likely, he must have installed vassals to control the islands and also to police the opposite coastal areas. Each vassal may have had a troop of spearmen at his disposal and ships to take them wherever on the nearby coasts trouble was brewing or military coercion was required. And I will suggest that both vassals, and also— if he did indeed live in the MH II period—the man so impressively interred at Thebes, may have employed several chariot crews to help them keep the peace in their mainland bailiwicks.
