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
Armor
In the Mycenaean period boar’s-tusk helmets were apparently worn both by
charioteers and by warriors on foot. Such a helmet not only provided protection
for the head, but also marked its wearer as a warrior of high status: the three registers
of tusk plates, each sewn onto a leather cap, required the killing of several dozen
wild boars. Nothing else quite so clearly expresses the period’s militaristic pride
and display as these helmets.^106 The boar’s-tusk helmet probably made its
appearance on the Greek mainland toward the end of the MH II period and was
seen frequently by the LH I period. Remains of boar’s-tusk plates were found in
Grave Circle B, and in the “Sea Battle Fresco” from Thera each of the men carrying
a tower shield wears a plumed helmet made from boars’ tusks. From the end of
the MH III period we now have the boar’s-tusk helmet from the warrior grave at
Thebes. Still earlier, however, are boar’s-tusk plates found in a house at Eutresis
and in the “Shaft Grave” at Kolonna, both dating to the MM II period.
It is possible that Cretan commanders at Aigina and other outposts had worn
such helmets, and that the military newcomers on the mainland admired the look
of the helmets and began killing boars wherever they could find them. Although
the tradition of warriors’ wearing boar’s-tusk helmets evidently began and ended
in the Bronze Age Aegean, it must be said that boars’ tusks had been used for
tools, for personal adornment, and possibly for protection already in the Paleolithic
period. As mentioned in Chapter 3, a Neolithic cemetery at Mariupol, on the Sea
of Azov, yielded 429 boar’s-tusk plates, distributed over a dozen graves. Most of
Militarism in Greece 199