Spears
The Shaft Graves show that along with swords, late in the MH period, came spears. As noted in Chapter Three, prior to the Shaft Grave era the Greek mainland has yielded only two metal spearheads: one from EH Lerna, and the other from MH Sesklo.99 The Lerna head was tanged, and the Sesklo head was “shoed.” In contrast, Robert Avila catalogued almost 200 spearheads certainly from the Mycenaean period. Almost all of these were socketed, a significant improvement over the “shoed” (in Avila’s classification the shoed heads are Type I and the socketed Type II). Some of the Type II spearheads were merely large. Avila’s no. 11, from grave Alpha in Grave Circle B, was 37 cm long, and no. 16, from Shaft Grave VI in Circle A, was 32 cm long. Other Type II spears, all from the Grave Circles, were spectacular, resembling a pike or a sarissa.100 With bronze heads of 51 cm (no. 8), 53 cm (no. 9) and even 58 cm (no. 12), these spears were
Figure 6.1 Evolution of the sword, and chronological range of sword types, in
Mycenaean Greece. From Molloy 2010, Figure 2. Courtesy American Journal of Archaeology and Archaeological Institute of America as formidable as any known from the ancient world. The Type II were evidently in use from the end of the MH through the LH I period. Most of them were found in Grave Circle A, but nos. 8, 10 and 11 came from Grave Circle B (Graves Alpha, Iota and Nu). The Type II were followed by Avila’s Type III spearheads, including the four poorly preserved specimens (nos. 37-40) found in the Dendra tholos tomb. These Type III, known mostly from the LH/LM IIIA period, had a leaf-shaped blade, and were almost as large as the Type II. The badly damaged no. 39 was 57 cm long, and no. 43, found in a richly equipped warrior grave at Knossos, was 56 cm long. With their elegant decoration these must have been very impressive weapons.
For what were such great spears intended? A favorite theme in Mycenaean art was of spearmen thrusting their weapons against a lion. The most famous of these depictions were inlaid on the “lion hunt daggers” found in Grave Circle A. Since Nancy Thomas has shown that the lion was indeed still present in Greece in the second millennium BC, it may be that great spears were wielded with both hands by hunters confronting a lion.101 By the beginning of the LH IIIB period great spears had given way to considerably smaller thrusting spears.102 And because killing a lion had for 300 years been the ultimate display of heroism it may be that by the beginning of the LH IIIB period the lion population in Greece had been much depleted.
Although the killing of a lion was perhaps especially praised by the local population on the Greek mainland, spears as large as those found in the Shaft Graves must also have been intended for combat. A lance was often carried on a chariot, to be used against an enemy on foot who was menacing the crew or the horses and was too close to be targeted with a bow. Another military use of the great spear is indicated by the frescoes, carefully reconstructed from the fragments in which they were found, in room 5 of the West House at Akrotiri. The frieze on the south wall shows a fleet of seven ships, each carrying a contingent of helmeted warriors, sailing from a small city on the left to a larger city on the right. In this Flotilla Frieze fresco the larger ships are propelled by at least forty-two oarsmen, who are assisted by rectangular sails.103 The frieze on the north wall, the “Sea Battle Fresco,” shows three naked men falling into the water or drowning while eight warriors walk on the shore, evidently after a battle has ended in their favor. The eight point their spears upward at a 45-degree angle, and the spears appear to be some 4 m long. The men are armored with boar’s-tusk helmets and large leather (oxhide) shields and are girded with swords, but the spear is their primary weapon.
Several interpreters, beginning with Spyridon Marinatos who excavated the West House at Akrotiri, have proposed that the spearmen wielded long thrusting spears from their ships, against either the crewmen and marines of enemy ships or against enemies who attacked the ships as they came ashore. Iliad 15. 385-389 describes the Achaeans using vanpaxa to defend their beached ships against the Trojans who were trying to board them. These naumacha were, as defined by Autenrieth, “ship-pikes.” In the Iliad passage the Trojans and Achaeans fight a battle at the ships, the Trojans with their customary spears, but the Achaeans, in the translation of Lang, Leaf and Myers, “climbing up aloft, from the black ships, with long pikes that they had lying in the ships for battle at sea, jointed pikes shod at the head with bronze.”
The question remains whether the frescoes in the West House at Akrotiri are Minoan or Mycenaean: whether on the eve of the volcanic eruption, that is, Thera was subject to the palace at Knossos or to some regime on the mainland. Sarah Morris made a detailed argument that although the frescoes in room 5 of the West House seem to have been done by a Minoan artist they reflect the mindset of a Mycenaean and they tell a Mycenaean story, perhaps of a Mycenaean expedition to coastal Anatolia.104 There is no doubt that Thera had been under Cretan control in the MM III period, and it is very likely that by the beginning of the LM/LH IIIA period, when Achaeans under Attarissiya were causing trouble on the coast of southwest Anatolia, all of the Cyclades along with Crete itself were subject to a ruler on the Greek mainland. It cannot be excluded that Thera was taken over by a force from the mainland already during the LM/LH IA period. Since that possibility is available, we may double down on the “Mycenaeans at Thera” theory, and wonder whether the frescoes in room 5 of the West House at Akrotiri tell the story of a fleet from the mainland that had recently sailed to Thera, bringing troops who defeated a small Cretan force that until then had controlled the island. Chariots were probably not involved in a Mycenaean takeover of Thera, whenever that happened, although chariot sealings have been found at Akrotiri.105
