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'Reading the Texts': Archaeology and the Homeric Question 809 ‘Reading the texts’: archaeology and the Homeric question E.S. SHERRATT* Specialists in Greek literature have long argued about how Homer’s epics were formed and just what they represent. The question is a pressing example of the larger general case -the relationships between archaeology, history and oral literature in many periods and places. E.S. Sherratt, in offering an archaeological perspective on Homer, sets out to establish the stratigraphy of its text and its history. My basic conclusion is that certain ‘event-related’ tory meet, in texts which have often seemed to structures do not restructure easily. It is my hypothe- provide some of the most tantalizing glimpses sis that a certain clustering of anomalous features will of protohistoric societies whose material show the trace of the survival of a structure from ‘life’. remains are known from the archaeological Pure text were it to exist, would, in contrast, present record. But the precise relationships between almost no barriers to quite arbitrary restructuring. these glimpses and the formation of the texts - ARDENER1988: 31 which crucially affects the way we use the latter - are still a matter of continuing debate. Introduction Students of literature or linguistics, historians The Homeric epics - the Iliad and the Odyssey- and archaeologists have each had their own way are among the oldest European literary docu- of approaching the problems, and, as a result, ments. Traditional sources and linguistic evi- have tended to arrive at what often appear to be dence suggest that they were substantially fixed incompatibly different answers. in the form in which they have come down to us sometime around 700 BC, at the dawn of literate Literary approaches Greek history (Janko 1982); but it is clear that Central to this are the implications of the they contain echoes of an even older, orally ‘Homeric Question’ which, in its wider sense remembered past. As such, they are bound up (the circumstances of their formation and final with the problem of the relationship of ‘history’ composition), is not just a problem for those to oral tradition, which is not by any means with a literary interest in the Homeric epics but confined to ancient Greece (Vansina 1975; Sah- one which also has some bearing on the histori- lins 1985: ch. 2). cal status of their content. Since Milman Parry The perceived status of the events, society in the 1920s demonstrated the presence of the and material culture presented in the epics has characteristics of orally composed and trans- fluctuated between history, legend, myth and mitted poetry in the epics, it has been widely fantasy, reflecting both the changing attitudes of (though not universally) accepted that they are literary scholars to the nature of their composi- ultimately the product of an oral bardic tradi- tion (the ‘Homeric Question’), and the varying tion (Parry 1971; for a discussion of subsequent desires of historians and archaeologists to make work on this aspect of Homer see Householder & use of the historical, social or ideological Nagy 1972: 19ff.). Within this constraint, how- information they potentially contain. They are ever, opinions have varied among literary an area where literature, archaeology and his- critics and others as to the precise implications * 3 Woodside, Wood Green, Witney, Oxfordshire 0x8 6uq. ANTIQUITY64 (1990):807-24 808 E.S. SHERRATT of what Parry & Lord (1960) have termed the basis of the historical Greeks’ own traditional epics’ oral-formulaic mode of composition, in dates for such events as the Trojan War - the particular over the relative r6les of a long- belief in a basically Late Bronze Age setting standing tradition of transmission and of the persisted through such writers as Allen (1921), creative genius of one poet - Homer- in shaping Nilsson (1933),Page (1959),Wace & Stubbings the Iliad and the Odyssey as we know them. (1962), Blegen (1962), Mylonas (1966: 213ff.), This is essentially a qyestion of emphasis. For and on down to Luce (1975) and Wood (1985) in some Homerists the latter is of prime impor- the last two decades. Meanwhile, Lorirner tance, to the extent that the epics may be seen as (1950) and Gray (1947; 1954; 1955; 1958; 1968), essentially the work of one poet who, sometime while maintaining the Late Bronze Age basis of in the years around 700 BC, travelled about the events and much of the world portrayed in Greece collecting and combining a wealth of the poems, stressed the archaeological grounds topographical detail with various tales and for regarding the epics as heavily interwoven traditions (some inherited in verse form, others with the material culture of later periods. By the not) and composed them into poetic works 1950s, on the other hand, Finley (1954 [1956]; which transcend the inheritance of both subject 1957) was arguing strongly for a primary setting matter and technique which lay behind them in the loth and 9th centuries - though less on (Taplin 1986: 70f.; Rubens & Taplin 1989). grounds of the material record than on the type Others, over the years, have taken a less cata- of society he saw portrayed in the epics. Later, clysmic view. Most, however, insist - quite Snodgrass (1971: 389; 1974) was to argue for a justifiably- on the integral unity of each of these selective mixture of (palatial) Mycenaean and two long epics, and maintain that a single 8th-century elements with little in between; individual was responsible for shaping the final while the emphasis above all on the 8th century structure of each and ensuring its integrity was also taken up by Kurtz & Boardman (1971), through various internal linking and unifying and - again concentrating mainly on the poems’ elements, such as the prophetic cross- referen- social institutions - by Morris (1986). Finally, ces contained in many of the speeches (Ruther- Dickinson (1986) returned to the chronological ford 1985). setting proposed by Finley (though in this case more explicitly in terms of the material record) Archaeological approaches and placed the background and creation of the For those concerned primarily with the histori- epics in the period between c. 1200 and the end cal and cultural background to the epics as of the 9th century. revealed through the archaeological record, These apparently quite different conclusions greatest interest has lain in identifying the represent the answers to different questions, chronological period in which the greater part each of which arises from a different view of the of their material or cultural content - if not their social function of the epics and stresses the actual composition - can best be set. Here too importance of different aspects of their content. there have been distinct shifts of emphasis, At one extreme, many archaeologists have been shifts which have ranged from the Late Bronze content to regard them as little more than Age (Mycenaean) era in Greece to various points entertaining accounts of historical or semi- in the Early Iron Age (FIGURE1). From the time historical events, people or societies which can when Schliemann first claimed to have found be assigned to chronological periods with the the graves of Agamemnon and his companions help of the archaeological record. What is within the citadel at Mycenae in 1876 (Schlie- important here is the assumption of an mann 1880: 336-45), there arose a growing accretion of continuous but gradually fading conviction among archaeologists (if not among traditions (in poetic or other form) which Classical scholars) that the material setting and underlie and inform the finished epics and historical background of the epics was essen- which can be traced through the social or tially that of the Late Bronze Age Mycenaean material reflections they contain. At the other world. Although Schliemann’s identification of extreme, other archaeologists and historians Homer’s Mycenae with that of the early have stressed the primary r61e of epic in the Mycenaean Shaft Graves was soon rejected as establishment and enhancement of social and too early by about 300 years - largely on the political structures, and concluded that the art 'READING THE TEXTS': ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE HOMERIC QUESTION 809 DATE AGE POTTERY OTHER 700 Early Historic Geometric 800 Early Iron 900 Age Protogeometric 1000 1 ( 1 - -Submycenaean) - - - - - 1100 Post- } Mycenaean Palatial } (Late Helladic) 1 IIIC 1 1200 Late Mycenaean (Late Helladic) 1300 Bronze IIIB Palatial Age Mycenaean (LH) IIIA 1400 Mycenaean (Late Helladic) I1 1500 Mycenaean Pre-Palatial (Late Helladic) I 1600 FIGURE1. Chart showing archaeological divisions of the Greek Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age with approximate absolute dates. of the poets lay in weaving a complex web of contrasting approaches, while keeping sight of social ideology and material symbolism in the implications both of oral delivery and of an which even the smallest detail played a part. On oral-formulaic technique of composition, this view (which presupposes a sustainedly which appear to impose a restraint on the attentive and reflective audience) the final extremes of both views. To begin with, we can version as an integrated whole is all that counts consider three sample passages from the Iliad. (cf. Morris 1986); and the task of the archaeo- The first, from Iliad xxiii, concerns a prize logical or historical interpreter is to identify the offered in the games which accompanied messages encoded in the poems and match Patroklos' funeral (Iliad xxiii.826-35, trans- them to the social and political circumstances lated Lattimore (1951)): most likely to have produced them. Now the son of Peleus set in place a lump of pig-iron. which had once been the throwing-weight of Eetion The archaeology of the texts in his great strength: It seems to me that there must be some syste- but now swift-footed brilliant Achilleus had slain matic method of combining aspects of these him and taken 810 E.S.
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