Kaiphranos
Donor
Also, making archaeology fit textual evidence is something that Western Ancient Historians have only just grown out of. Sometimes the archaeology needs to speak for itself.
Fair enough. Still, it's better than nothing, which is still the situation with the Indus civilization, as far as I know...
Having said that, I agree that it's likely that the 'Greeks' of the Illiad were not a united polity but rather several kingdoms. Also, Linear B is only found for some religious texts and mainly economic ones such as inventories. Even with the ability to read Linear B, it doesn't actually reveal much.
Well, it provides a bit of circumstantial evidence--namely what they thought was important enough to write down. So there's a bit of contrast to the Hittites or Egyptians, where we have extensive evidence of diplomatic correspondence. (Granted, as you point out, one discovery could change all this, if they found something like a Mycenaean equivalent to the Amarna letters or something.) And inventories do give us some idea about the material culture and economics, such as they were.
Also, the Greek Dark Age is more than just a discontinuity,
True, true. I may have been understating things a bit.
Urgh, sorry I feel like i've ranted a bit, and I do agree with your conclusions about what 'Ahhiyawa' was likely to have been like; I just feel like inserting a note of caution because we have so little information to go on about the Greeks in this period that we might find that one archaeological discovery is enough to reinvent our image of their society.
Hey, not a problem. As you may have noticed, Mycenaean Greece is sort of peripheral to my main area of interest.