University of Arkansas Fall, 2001; CLST 1003 Introduction to Classical Studies, Greece Professor Daniel Levine
Questions: Thomas R. Martin. Ancient Greece: From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times
Fresco of the Dolphins in "Women's Hall" at the Palace of Minos at Knossos
Chapter 1: BACKGROUNDS OF ANCIENT GREEK HISTORY
1. What are the modern names for the countries on the "Balkan Peninsula," "Anatolia," and "Magna Graecia?" (1)
2. What animals did stone-age Greeks raise? When did they begin to domesticate chickens? Why didn't ancient Greeks raise horses and cows in large numbers? (2)
3. What did ancient Greeks eat, and what did they drink?
4. What kind of relationship with the sea did the ancient Greeks have?
5. What natural resources did the land of Greece provide to its ancient inhabitants?
6. What kind of climate does Greece have? How does Aristotle relate it to politics?
7. Why did ancient Greeks not make a "Greek" political nation, as one exists today?
8. What four things did the ancient Greeks share that united them into a Greek cultural unity?
9. What is "pre-history?" How did people in the Paleolithic period make their living? Why can we not call the people of this period "Greeks," even though they lived in Greece?
10. How do we think that gender and age were regarded in Paleolithic European societies?
11. What are "Venus figurines"? What do they tell us? What does "steatopygous" mean? (not in text, but it's a good word for these figurines.)
12. What do Paleolithic burial practices tell us about their burial practices?
13. What habits separated the Paleolithic from the Neolithic periods? When did the Neolithic period begin?
14. What evidence of prehistoric peoples does the Franchthi cave in Greece provide?
15. What evidence of their lives did the Neolithic inhabitants of Sesklo and Dhimini leave?
16. What did the site of Lerna show about its late Neolithic inhabitants?
17. What conditions led to the rise of craft specialists in the Neolithic period? What resulted from the existence of such artisans?
18. What kinds of trade goods made their way from place to place in the Neolithic period?
19. How and why did gender roles probably change in the later Neolithic periods?
20. What is the "traditional" explanation of megalithic and metallurgical technology's rise in Europe, and how have we had to revise this theory? What evidence have archaeologists used to revise the theory of cultural diffusion in the Neolithic period?
Lion Gate at Mycenae
CHAPTER 2: FROM INDO-EUROPEANS TO MYCENAEANS
21. When can we first call the inhabitants of Greece "Greeks"?
22. What is the "thorniest question concerning the Indo-European background of Greek culture," and what issues are involved? (17-18)
23. What is the theory of Indo-European language groups? What are some examples of how this theory proves correct?
24. What political and gender theories can we generate based on the evidence of Indo-European words?
25. What is the difference between the adjectives"matrifocal" and "matriarchal," and how do these words relate to the "pre-Indo-European" inhabitants of Europe? What are some of the theories about why a male-dominated Indo-European society replaced an earlier possibly matrifocal society?
26. What kinds of influences from Egypt influenced the early Greeks, and how did such influences come about? (21)
27. What are some of the characteristics of Bronze Age Greece that we can note from material remains? (22-23)
28. What was the "Mediterranean polyculture," and how did it influence the lives of the Bronze Age Greeks? (23)
29. When did the first 'palaces' appear on Crete? Why is their society called 'Minoan'? What characterized the first Cretan palaces?
30. What do we know about Minoan writing and language? (24-25)
31. How did Minoan "palaces" function as part of the Cretan economic system? How did they function as part of a "redistributive economic system"? (25)
32. What does the lack of fortification walls imply about Minoan civilization? What do their wall paintings and grave goods tell us about their culture? (26)
33. Why is the Bronze Age civilization on the Greek mainland called "Mycenaean," and what have archaeologists found at this culture's eponymous site? How do these artifacts relate to legends of the Trojan war?
34. Why was it important for the history of Crete that the Linear B tablets were written in Greek? (27-28)
35. What did the contents of the Dendra tomb reveal about Mycenaean society (29)?
36. How was the chariot important to the Mycenaeans? (29)
37. What do we know about the religion of the Mycenaeans? (30)
38. What happened in the eastern Mediterranean between 1200 and 1000 BCE that resulted in "disastrous" consequences for the Mycenaeans, and troubles for Hittites, Egyptians, and the inhabitants of Cyprus and Ugarit as well? (30-33)
39. Why did the Greeks call the peoples of the levantine coast of the Mediterranean "Phoenicians," and what did the Phoenicians have to do with the Greek alphabet? (33)
40. What do the Linear B inscriptions from Pylos tell us about "ominous signs" that threatened Mycenaean civilization? What do the walls of Tiryns, Mycenae, and Gla tell us about the last years of Mycenaean culture? (34)
41. What does Martin call "the most plausible explanation of the destruction of the palaces of the mainland in the period after bout 1200 B.C."? What scenario does he imagine? (34)
42. What did later Greeks imagine about the "Dorian invasion," and how does Martin think that this notion is mistaken? (34)
Dromos and Entrance of "Treasury of Atreus" at Mycenae (a tholos tomb)
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