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The 2015 MacArthur "Genius" Fellowships were announced last week, and among the awardees is Dimitri Nakassis, a classicist at the University of Toronto who specializes in the archaeology of Bronze Age Greece and the early written language called Linear B. The time period in which he works, around 1600-1100 BC, saw the rise and fall of the Mycenaean civilization, which boasted large, fortified building complexes, gorgeous frescoes and gold artifacts, and impressive burials fit for a king.
For centuries, scholars have looked to these monumental structures at places like Mycenae, Pylos, and Thebes as "palaces," and even as the remains of the estates of the Greek heroes of the Trojan War, assuming a political and economic oligarchy that may have been toppled at the end of the Bronze Age. The reason for the collapse of Mycenaean society -- after which a "Dark Age" with little writing and material culture was ushered in -- is still a mystery, but Nakassis is chipping away at this and other questions about the Late Bronze Age through archaeology, philology, and economic theory.
Nakassis was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule to answer some questions for me about his work and his MacArthur fellowship.
Dimitri Nakassis, 2015 MacArthur winner for Greek archaeology. (Photo credit CC-BY, John D. &... [+]
KK: I'm intrigued by your recent book, Individuals and Society in Mycenaean Pylos, as it sounds like it challenges the long-held assumption of a top tier of few elites controlling Mycenaean society. Can you briefly explain the importance of this change in view to our understanding of the Late Bronze Age politics and economics in Greece?
DN: My argument means that politics wasn't limited to a small group in the palace, but was a broader process that embraced a large, heterogeneous, elite class -- this elite class is archaeologically visible in houses and tombs, so this opens up the possibilities of integrating archaeological and textual evidence. In economic terms, I argue that the palatial economy is built on the back of a large and flourishing non-palatial economic sector. So the palace is more the historical product of economic activity than a producer of it, although of course the palace is still enormously important as a consumer and a generator of demand.
KK: Building on that, what do you think caused the collapse of Mycenaean civilization?
DN: That's still an enormously complex question, as Eric Cline's recent book demonstrates (1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed). It seems clear that the collapse of Mycenaean civilization is connected to developments elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean, but even so the result of the collapse varies widely across the Mycenaean world: catastrophe in Messenia, but moderate prosperity in the Argolid, for example. If I'm right that the palaces are the product of intense interaction and competition among a broad elite class, then it seems to me that the elite may have "opted out" of the system: perhaps they no longer considered it necessary? That explains the collapse less than the failure to rebuild the palaces after they were destroyed, however.
KK: Are there any lessons we can learn from the collapse, particularly as applied to contemporary economics or politics? Are we at risk of falling into a Dark Age ourselves?
DN: I suppose we're always at risk of falling into a Dark Age! If we knew for sure why the Collapse happened then we'd have some more concrete lessons. The Collapse, whatever its causes, was surely complex and unexpected. I think theories that see the Collapse as inevitable do violence to the complexity of the evidence and to the intelligence of our Mediterranean ancestors. I think the main lesson is that the Collapse almost certainly wasn't inevitable . The worst thing we could do is to assume that we're powerless to avoid our fate.
KK: You are an expert on both the language -- Linear B -- and the archaeology of this civilization; is one more important than the other for finding out about past people?
DN: Well, we know about the language from tablets that are discovered through archaeological excavations, so the distinction isn't as clear as we might think. But no, one isn't more important than the other. The two types of evidence are really complementary. The texts tell us about administrative procedures, offices, and certain types of people in ways that archaeology can't; but archaeology tells us about change over time, and about the many regions and communities that the texts are completely silent about.
KK: What particular area of Greek archaeology deserves more research or interest than it's currently getting?
DN: I'd say that we need to do a better job of studying the 99% of the ancient Greek world . Because most of our texts are written by the elite for the elite, and because so much archaeology has focused on urban centers and big public structures, we know much more about them relative to everyone else. What's missing is a deep understanding of the rest of the population.
KK: One of the very first things that got me into classical archaeology as a kid was seeing the Mask of Agamemnon from a tomb at Mycenae in a Greek archaeology textbook. How about you? When did you know this is what you wanted to do?
DN: I went to Greece almost every summer as a kid and among other things (mostly swimming) we would visit archaeological sites and hike around the landscape. And I learned modern Greek there: it was the only language my grandparents spoke. My grandfather taught me the opening lines of the Odyssey one afternoon as we waited for the train. But despite all that, and the fact that my uncle worked for the ministry of culture, archaeology never occurred to me as a thing to do until college.
It was almost pure accident. I was flipping through a course catalog at my first year at Michigan, and I thought it might be neat to take ancient Greek. That sounds like a joke, but my dad knows ancient Greek because when he was growing up in Greece it was part of the high school curriculum, and I thought that it might help my modern Greek, too. The catalog pointed me to Classics, and the first subsection was Classical archaeology. I liked history -- thanks in large part to a fantastic high school history teacher, Mr. Hines -- and although I had never thought about majoring in archaeology, it had an instant appeal. Here was a historical discipline, but with detailed study of material culture: that seemed interesting. I signed up for two classes, and both were amazing, taught by amazing professors. I was hooked.
KK: And finally, what does the MacArthur award mean for you, personally and professionally?
DN: Personally it's been great to hear from so many friends, family, and colleagues who are really happy for me and excited about the announcement. That's been the best part so far. Professionally it's been a nice validation of my work so far, and I think it'll give me some confidence moving forward to be ambitious about my research plans.
Colleagues are impressed by Nakassis' work and new honor. Bioarchaeologist Sherry
Read More: The Most Interesting Thing About That Ancient Spartan Palace Isn't The Palace -- It's The Language
Nakassis is currently co-directing an archaeological project called the Western Argolid Regional Project, through which he hopes to glean information about the settlement of the area that was eventually home to the Mycenaean civilization, as well as co-directing a project digitizing the Linear B tablets from Pylos for the first time.
