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11 · LEGACY · END OF THE BRONZE AGE

After the palaces

When a script was forgotten

With the disappearance of the Mycenaean palaces, the use of Linear B script ceased to be documented.

Museum documentation · free public access, no account required.

DECLARED VISUAL RECONSTRUCTION · EXISTING EDITORIAL RESOURCE · TRACEKEEPERS

Generated reconstruction · Declared visual hypothesis

Declared visual reconstruction for museographic context; it is not a photograph of the original nor documentary evidence.

Specific historical recreation of When a script was forgotten, mainland Greece, Crete and Aegean islands, c. 1200–1100 BCE
DECLARED VISUAL RECONSTRUCTION · EXISTING EDITORIAL RESOURCE · TRACEKEEPERS

Generated reconstruction · Declared visual hypothesis

Declared visual reconstruction for museographic context; it is not a photograph of the original nor documentary evidence.

History and context

Between the end of the thirteenth century and the twelfth century BCE, the Mycenaean palatial systems disintegrated and the use of Linear B ceased to be documented. Oral tradition may have preserved and transformed echoes of that world before the later written poems.

There is no single satisfactory cause for all places. War, mobility, climate and internal tensions are discussed in different combinations, so the gallery does not project a uniform catastrophe.

Destructions affected Pylos, Mycenae, Tiryns and other centres in a sequence, not in a single night. The disappearance of offices reduced the context that sustained Linear B.

Communities continued, modified settlements and maintained memories. Climate, conflict, mobility and internal tensions are factors investigated in local combinations.

Evidence and interpretation

Documented fact: From c. 1200 BCE, destructions and reorganisations succeeded one another in Mycenaean centres; palatial administration and its Linear B archives disappeared, although occupation continued in various regions. Interpretation and caution: Directly relating each Homeric account to a specific Bronze Age fact is not demonstrable. Expanded documented fact: Mycenae suffered destructions from c. 1200 BCE; the palatial system and its Linear B archives ceased, while regional occupation reorganised. Expanded interpretation and caution: ‘Sea Peoples’, Dorians or earthquake do not alone explain all sites, and Homer is not a contemporary witness.

Catalogue facts

Narrative date
c. 1200–1100 BCE
Location
Mainland Greece, Crete and Aegean islands
Material
Palatial ruins, pottery and tablets
Context
Post-palatial transformation
Curatorial reading
The documented fact and its interpretation appear separately in the evidence block.
Transformation
End of palatial Linear B archives
Rhythm
Regionally uneven destructions and reorganisations
Documentary coverage
3 museum, heritage, primary corpus or research sources for this stop.

A closer look

About 1 min to read · 1 section. Further reading and sources · free access. Editorial review recorded: .

Testing the earthquake hypothesis

The HERACLES project examined damage attributed to earthquakes at Tiryns and Midea using local geology and simulations. One problem was the distribution of destruction: Tiryns’ lower town, settled on looser sediments, should have suffered especially, but did not show the expected damage. Another test studied thousands of simulations of terracottas supposedly fallen from a bench; their dispersal poorly matched that explanation. The results published in 2018 questioned the seismic hypothesis for these sites. They did not identify a universal alternative cause: they showed that a ruined building does not automatically equal an earthquake.

Sources and references

Expand this information and consult its sources

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