#[hisarliks commonly identified as troy but from what i’ve seen there are still some reservations from some scholars]

[doloneia]

honestly? personally, i defer to neither and instead look more at the primary material itself. contemporary scholars are generally good and reliable but their interpretations can also reflect their own biases or refer to outdated interpretations [*cough dorian invasion cough*]. and past scholarship is uh. er. [shakes fist at arthur evans and schliemann]. not great!

that being said, i will say that the primary material does not provide a very clear picture of mycenaean society - being very limited both textually and geographically - and mostly conveys administrative and religious information [ie, who gets how many beds! how much pylos sacrifices to poseidon! this guy has a son!] which can be interpreted to some degree by scholars but heavy caveats should always be put in place due to how fragmentary the material is. at some point, we do have to admit we don’t know for certain. and that is a difficult thing to do! especially when we have later representations like homeric epics that seem to present a situation that is sometimes echoing the context and other times actively contradicts it.

the unfortunate reality is that homeric epic is not coming from that context, it is coming from - at absolute best - snippets of that context but mostly later ones. homeric epic can be misleading, and in the context of aegean bronze age archaeology it has been actively damaging to sites like mycenae, knossos, and troy. maybe it’s just the amount of times i’ve had to hear about schliemann’s absolute massacre of troy’s LBA levels in his search for “priam’s treasure,” but i am incredibly cautious towards reliance on homeric narratives in scholarship and letting them guide understanding of mycenaean culture and society.

there’s a strange dichotomy with the late bronze age aegean, particularly mycenaean palatial complexes, where you have so much of this fragmented and scattered material that provides tantalizing glimpses into their society and culture but also contains so little detail at the same time. what the fuck is a lawagetes? who knows! academics are still divided on that one. at some point you do just have to cobble together scholarship, tablets, and material remains to come up with what you interpret that society to look like.

Wondering which one y’all like better: 1. Homer with his bunch of anachronisms plus fact-checked errors (hoplites, some cultural differences between Mycenaean and Archaic Greece, everyone speaking in Ionic Greek, inaccurate depiction of western Mediterranean geography, some gods worshipped in later times, etc); or 2. Well-researched scholars with our vague understanding of the Mycenaean Greek culture

I’d like to hear some thoughts