03-10-2016, 12:34 PM
(03-10-2016, 12:20 PM)Dan Howard Wrote: The Bronze Age went for a long time and society went through a lot of changes over that time. IMO Homer's description of things is very accurate for the END of that period. We have two physical examples of Greek linen armour. One found at Mycenae dating to the 14th C and one found at Patras dating to the 12th C. The latter dates to the same period as the Trojan War. There are many aspects of Homer's text are consistent with the end of the Bronze Age.
This opens up a can of worms that I don't really want to go into much on a public forum, as experience tells me it's a never-ending debate in which neither side will convince the other. (And I would add that in academic circles, the idea that Homer can be used as a source for the Bronze Age hasn't been taken seriously for at least the past twenty years.)
But very briefly: there are some elements in Homer's poetry that are clearly Bronze Age in source, such as the political geography, but the material culture of the poems corresponds much more closely with that of Homer's own time (this includes, e.g., shields: see Hans van Wees's comments in, for example, one of the appendices in Greek Warfare: Myths & Realities). The palaces described by Homer, for example, don't conform to the Mycenaean palaces, but are more similar to the houses of the eighth and seventh centuries BC. And so on. There's a good article by Jan Paul Crielaard (coincidentally my PhD supervisor) in his edited volume Homeric Questions that deals with the archaeological side of things, as far as dating Homer is concerned.
