Synchronizing the Destructions of the Mycenaean Palaces

The Late Bronze Age Mycenaean palaces in southern and central Greece stood at the head of the earliest state system on the European continent. The authors, all leading scholars in Bronze Age research and often engaged in excavating the palace sites themselves, focus in their contributions on the most recent progress in pottery studies, in order to arrive at precise relative chronological dates of the destruction events. The investigated archaeological sites range from Crete in the south to the Peloponnese with the palaces of Pylos, Ayios Vasileios, Mycenae and Tiryns and further north to central Greece with the palace of Thebes, while contemporary sites on Cyprus and in Syria are taken into consideration as well. A precise chronology of those multilayered sites is a precondition for placing the administrative texts from the palace archives in a historical sequence as well as for writing the building history of the palaces themselves. Ultimately, this chronological sequence must also form the backbone of each theory seeking to explain the causes of the palace destructions and their final abandonment. The search for those historical causes is subject of this publication as well. The book contains primary data from the investigated sites – in many cases illustrating the relevant archaeological finds for the first time. It is the first comprehensive analysis of the topic and is based on the most recent archaeological excavation results.