'Mycenaeans' Unbound: Assessing Cultural Identities in Central Greece (Boeotia, Phocis and Locris Opuntia) during the Mycenaean Palatial Period (c. 1400-1200 BCE)

This thesis investigates the different regional expressions of Mycenaean culture in Boeotia, Locris Opountia, and Phocis during LH IIIA and LH IIIB (c. 1400-1200 BC). It examines whether these archaeologically identifiable differences were also meaningful in the Bronze Age and served to distinguish human communities within the so-called "Mycenaean world". Within this framework, the study explores the relationship between territory, group identity, and political organisation before reconstructing the political geography of the regions under investigation and the social and geopolitical dynamics of the actors involved. Finally, it proposes a plausible reconstruction of the social and historical processes that shaped these parts of the Greek mainland during the periods considered. To identify the cultural, social, economic, political, and identity-related characteristics of these regions, all the available archaeological and textual evidence has been systematically examined. This includes, among other categories of evidence, architectural features (military, domestic, and funerary), pottery, exotica, territorial analysis, settlement patterns, and the Linear B documents. These different datasets are analysed within a holistic interpretative framework in order to integrate evidence that is often studied separately and reduce the gap between emic (internal) and etic (external) perspectives on identity. This approach makes it possible to reconstruct a broader picture that would otherwise remain fragmented by the degree of specialisation required to study individual categories of evidence. The resulting archaeological reconstruction is then compared with the mytho-historical traditions, primarily those preserved in the Homeric poems, in order to assess whether they retain elements dating back to the Bronze Age. Despite the strong cultural homogeneity characteristic of LH IIIA and especially LH IIIB, this study argues that the Mycenaean world resembled a mosaic of regional identities embedded within a shared cultural koine that can be inferred from the archaeological evidence. In the Copais basin, the available evidence suggests the existence of a strong group identity that developed over centuries and was catalysed by the reclamation of Lake Copais. On archaeological, cognitive, anthropological, and philological grounds, this identity is argued to have possessed characteristics comparable to those of an ethnicity. The political landscape likewise appears to have been highly fragmented, with polities of different scales and levels of complexity interacting in different ways over time. Within the case-study area, Boeotia appears to have been divided into two distinct political entities centred on Orchomenos/Gla and Thebes. Locris Opountia and Phocis, by contrast, seem to have been even more fragmented. The former was at least partly controlled from the Copais during LH IIIB, while the latter also appears to have fallen largely within the sphere of Orchomenos, although more distant centres such as Krisa and possibly Medeon may have remained independent. Beyond the case-study area, it is nevertheless considered likely that, at times, a particularly powerful wanax to be identified with the "King of Ahhiyawa" known from the Hittite texts, exercised a degree of authority over the other rulers.