motifs that included birds, octopi, and papyrus, became so popular as an
item of exchange it is found today in places the Mycenaeans never went
themselves and probably never heard of. Olive oil remained at the center of
Mycenaean trade along with wine: almost 3,000 stemmed drinking cups
were found in one room in the Mycenaean palace at Pylos, an indication of
the enormous quantity of wine produced.
In the east, the Mycenaeans were aggressive traders who operated from
commercial outposts at Ugarit and other Levantine cities. To the south,
shards from Mycenaean stirrup jars used for shipping oil have been found as
far as Nubia. To the west, Mycenaean activity extended to Sicily, southern
Italy, and Sardinia. This is most evident in the thirteenth century when the
Mycenaeans appear to have shifted their trade westward to compensate for
deteriorating conditions in the east. To the north, there is little in the way of
pottery or other indicators of Mycenaean trade except for weaponry, such as
bronze swords, double axes, spear heads, and even war chariots that turn up
as grave goods, and items that are believed to have been symbols of high
rank such as razors, tweezers, and folding stools. Along with the actual
imports are many local imitations. Curiously, Mycenaean contact is more
evident in the Nordic–Baltic region than in Central Europe. The explanation
may be amber, the one detectable item from the far north for which the
Mycenaean elite appears to have had an inexhaustible appetite. Assuming a
Baltic-to-Aegean commercial link based on an exchange in prestige goods–
amber for heroic weaponry – several mechanisms could have been used:
directional trade involving long-distanceprofessional traders, large-scale expedi-
tions up the river systems, or inter-elite prestige chain gift exchange. Another
possibility is that the Mycenaeans simply plugged into preexisting trunk routes
running across central and northern Europe and did receive goods from
central Europe, such as horses and slaves, which are archaeologically invisible.
By the late Bronze Age a series of overlapping commercial exchange sys-
tems extended from the western Mediterranean to Afghanistan and India.
This structure would not make an orderly transition into the next period, the
Iron Age. In the last centuries of the second millenniumBCE, the Bronze Age
cities and states came crashing down, destroyed byfire and sword. Cities like
Ugarit were destroyed, states as powerful as the Hittite Empire were cru-
shed, and whole civilizations including that of the Mycenaeans faded into
oblivion. Egypt might have been overrun by the enigmatic Sea Peoples
except that, by luck, it was under the rule of one of its greatest warrior
pharaohs, Ramses III. New peoples such as the Philistines and Dorians seem
to appear ex nihilo. Farmers, craftsmen, and miners stopped producing for a
market economy, sea lanes swarmed with pirates, roads fell into disuse,
trading centers were abandoned, and whole trade systems became dislocated.
The remaining traffic dwindled to a trickle.
The cause of this cataclysm has not been completely sorted out, but the
usual suspects–warfare, demographic shifts, large-scale migrations, social
58 Into the Aegean and out of the Bronze Age