Analysing Mycenaean Pottery
with SEM-EDS
This StoryMap introduces you to what archaeologists call 'Mycenaean Culture', its pottery, and some of the terms and techniques used in the analysis of the exhibited collection.
Mycenaean Style
The term Mycenaean was initially used for the inhabitants of the city of Mycenae and later it was extended to the Late Bronze Age (Helladic) inhabitants of Greece.
Mycenae is known in mythology as the city of Agamemnon, the son of Atreus. King Agamemnon led the expedition against Troy during the Trojan War , which Homer accounted for in his epic poem The Iliad.
The gold funeral 'Mask of Agamemnon'.
National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece.
The Mycenaean civilization began around 1750 BC, evolving from the local socio-cultural landscape of the Early and Middle Bronze Age in mainland Greece , also with influences from Minoan Crete.
Towards the end of the Middle Bronze Age (c. 1700/1675 BC), a significant increase in the population and the number of settlements occurred.
Several centres of power emerged in southern mainland Greece that were dominated by a warrior elite society, while the typical dwellings of that era were early types of megaron buildings with defensive walls.
Major Mycenaean centres included Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos, Thebes, Midea, Gla, Orchomenos, Argos, Sparta, and Nichoria.
In time the Mycenaeans also established themselves on Crete and especially at Knossos, thus superseding the Minoans as the dominant culture in the southern Aegean by the second half of the 15th century BCE.
Grave Circle A, the first Tholos tombs in Mycenae.
Ancient Mycenae city map
THE ACROPOLIS OF MYCENAE 3D RECONSTRUCTION MODEL AND THE MEGARON'S THRONE
Mycenaean female figurines 1400–1300 BCE
Mycenaeans were skilled craftmakers. The market and production practices were dominated by the elites of the palaces.
Craft items used in ceremonies and rituals
They were masterful metalworkers, as their gold, silver, and bronze daggers, drinking cups, jewellery, and objects demonstrate.
Mycenaean gold jewellery
Archaeologists who specialise in Mycenaean pottery argue that the technological style reflects a supra-regional tradition with standard production technology, vessel repertoire, and decorations.
The study of Mycenaean pottery started in the 19th century, and within a decade of the first extensive archaeological excavations were conducted such as Ialysos on Rhodes, Troy, Mycenae, Tiryns, and Orchomenos.
Changing types of Mycenaean pottery were used by archaeologists as chronological categorizations corresponding to important changes in the culture history of the Aegean basin.
The Bronze Age periods were named differently depending on the regional research focus of the archaeologists. The Helladic Mycenaean for example is chronologically divided into three phases which are Early, Middle, and Late Helladic. The chronology for the Cycladic Islands is divided into Early, Middle, and Late Cycladic, which is broadly contemporary to the chronological phases of the island of Crete (Early, Middle, and Late Minoan).
Take a look at the map below and click on the tags to learn more about the people who lived in these regions.
This map shows the arbitrary borders of the Mycenaean, Minoan and Cycladic cultures of the Bronze Age Aegean.
Early Helladic Period
3200-2000 BCE
Middle Helladic Period
2000-1550 BCE
Late Helladic Period
1550-1050 BCE
Archaeologists divided Mycenaean/Helladic pottery into four chronological stages.
- The first stage comprises the chronological phases known as Late Helladic I-IIA.
- The second stage comprises Late Helladic IIB-IIIA1.
- The third stage known as koine (common, shared) spans from the Late Helladic IIIA2-IIIB.
- The fourth and final stage is Late Helladic IIIC which corresponds to the post-palatial era of the Mycenaean culture.
1200-1160 BCE
Late Helladic IIIC-Early
1160-1100 BCE
Late Helladic IIIC-Middle
1100-1050 BCE
Late Helladic IIIC-Late
The pottery samples that were analysed and presented in this exhibit date to the Late Helladic IIIC period.
Late Helladic IIIC Period
This period is considered the beginning of the Dark Ages in Greece. It represents the end of the Mycenaean palatial system, a phenomenon referred to as the 'Collapse'.
The reasons behind this terminology, referring to this phenomenon as the Collapse, are several. Archaeologists discovered the complete destruction of many sites during excavations hinting at the possible loss of population, and a decrease in the number of occupied areas. While this time period is associated with socioeconomic, demographic, and artistic decline, there are notable indications of continuations in production practices at many mainland sites.
Geochemical and mineral analyses of pottery production practices allow archaeologists to understand the intentional choices of potters in production practices as a response to the crisis that followed the demise of the palatial administration.
Potters who lived in the LH IIIC period were able to create and exploit a sustainable market operating outside of a palace/elite dominated system. Potters changed the raw materials and firing techniques they used to produce their pottery while keeping the traditional shaping and decoration styles as a way of resistance to the shifting political and social contexts of this period.
The technological characterization studies of Mycenaean pottery from the Argolid region, indicate that potters followed standardised production practices.
Potters prepared their clay pastes with refined calcareous clay and formed their vessels with the wheel-thrown technique.
They smoothed and polished the surfaces of the vessels, and sometimes used iron-rich painting agents to decorate them.
Then they fired them in up-draft kilns either in oxidising or alternating oxidising-reducing- oxidising (O-R-O) controlled atmospheres.
An oxidising atmosphere is an oxygen-rich firing atmosphere while a reducing is an oxygen-poor, carbon monoxide-rich atmosphere.
An oxidising atmosphere allows iron-rich painting agents to turn red. If this stirrup jar was fired in a reduced atmosphere, these red lines would be black.
What is a pottery fabric? How can archaeologists know the firing conditions in which pottery was produced more than 3000 years ago? How do they know what is in the painting agent potters used back then?
Fabric
Fabric is the term used for the composition and the structure of the fired clay body.
It is determined by:
- the natural composition of the raw material(s);
- the practices of the potters in creating the clay mix, such as settling out the coarser component, adding particular inclusions, or combining two or more clays;
- the firing atmosphere and temperature;
- the use and post-depositional contexts of the pottery.
Since the 1960s fabric analysis has come to take one of the central positions in pottery studies.
While earlier pottery classifications were done according to pottery shape and decoration, archaeologists now use various analytical techniques to identify fabrics and use them to classify the pottery they study.
Petrographic and compositional analyses of the pottery fabrics provide archaeologists with a variety of information that is not possible to obtain in other ways. This includes the technology of the production practices, the physical characteristics of the fired product, and the provenance of the raw material sources used in production.
Archaeologists then use this information in combination with other contextual data to investigate broader social and material practices, ways of living, and being in the past and present.
Fabric representation images of the exhibited samples from Koukonisi, Lemnos.
Lem58 fabric optical microscopy image. Zoom in to the image to see the inclusions more clearly.
Lem16 fabric optical microscopy image. Zoom in to the image to see the fabric composition more clearly.
Microstructure
Microstructure is the term archaeologists use to refer to the characteristics of the internal structures of pottery fabrics. Why do you think archaeologists who specialised in analysing potteries study the microstructure of a piece of pottery they find on archaeological sites?
Microstructure of the body fabrics captured with scanning electron microscope in backscattered electron mode. Right: sample Lem07, Left: sample 58
Microstructures provide information on raw material use and processing choices, as well as the firing techniques employed during production.
These characteristics are generally the size, shape, and orientation of the grains observed in the clay matrix, which means both the clay and constituent materials observed.
Firing causes permanent changes to the natural clay material. Absorbed water in the pores and between particles starts volatilising at low temperatures (100–200°C) and continues as the temperature increases (400–800°C).
As the temperature increases, the elemental compositions of clay minerals change. This causes solid-state reactions such as sintering and vitrification phases to happen.
Sintering begins at temperatures of 600 o C and continues until the start of vitrification at higher temperatures of 800 o C to 1100 o C.
Vitrification
Vitrification is the phase where particles within the clay matrix simultaneously form a bond consolidating and cementing the particles together.
Microstructural analyses of pottery allow archaeologists to identify the vitrification degrees of the clay matrix.
Archaeologists can then interpret possible firing techniques used in pottery production by juxtaposing these vitrification degrees observed in the samples.
Comparison of the vitrification degrees of the exhibited samples from Koukonisi, Lemnos.
Expand the map to zoom in.
No Vitrification
Initial Vitrification
Initial Vitrification (+)
(between the initial and extensive vitrification stages)
Extensive Vitrification
Continuous Vitrification
Surface Analysis
Click on the numbers to learn more about this electron image of a ceramic sample
Exhibited Collection
On this page, you will browse through the selected images of the Mycenaean pottery samples analysed with SEM-EDS. This exhibited collection is a smaller component of a broader pottery assemblage used in the analysis.
Lem07
Lem16
Lem36
Lem37
Lem41
Lem55
Lem58
Lem61
Lem62
