cover image The Discovery of the Greek Bronze Age

The Discovery of the Greek Bronze Age

J. Lesley Fitton. Harvard University Press, $37.5 (192pp) ISBN 978-0-674-21188-9

Only in the last 125 years have archeologists and historians established that classical Greece had roots in the early Bronze Age cultures that flourished in the Cycladic islands in the third millennium B.C.; in Minoan Crete, whose elaborate palaces were built around 1900 B.C.; and in Mycenae, dominant power of the Greek mainland from 1600 B.C. until the collapse of the Bronze Age in the 12th century B.C. In an exciting, useful, attractively illustrated study, Fitton, a curator at the British Museum, begins with the pioneering excavations of Troy, Mycenae and Minoan Crete by Heinrich Schliemann, Arthur Evans and others, then reviews the consolidation and reinterpretation of their finds by succeeding generations. She also discusses remarkable new finds, such as the discovery in 1984 of a Bronze Age sunken cargo ship off Turkey, and the recent excavation of 16th-century-B.C., Minoan-style wall paintings in Avaris, ancient capital of Egypt's Hyksos kings in the Nile delta. (Mar.)