Bronze Age and Homer Bibliography

Troy
Bronze Age Bibliography

Akurgal, Ekrem. Ancient Civilizations and Ruins of Turkey. Eighth ed., 1993.

Birchall, Ann and R. A. Crossland. "Retrospects and prospects." In Bronze Age Migrations in the Aegean: Archaeological and linguistic problems in Greek prehistory. Crossland, R. A. and Ann Birchall, Eds. Proceedings of the First International Colloquium on Aegean Prehistory, Sheffield. Sheffield, England: Noyes Press, 1974: 323-347. [summary of conference findings and reports]

Blegen, Carl W. Troy and the Trojans. Rpt. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1995.

-------- . "Troy VII, pp. 161-164 in I.E.S. Edwards et al. (eds.) The Cambridge Ancient History, 3rd ed., II, 2, chapter XXIC, 1975. [layers of Troy and their place in Mycenaean history]

Bouzek, Jan. "Bronze Age Greece and the Balkans: problems of migrations." In Bronze Age Migrations in the Aegean: Archaeological and linguistic problems in Greek prehistory. R. A. Crossland and Ann Birchall, Eds. Proceedings of the First International Colloquium on Aegean Prehistory, Sheffield. Sheffield, England: Noyes Press, 1974: 169-177. [on climate; migration]

Burkert, Walter. Greek Religion. Trans. John Raffan. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985.

Butterworth, E. A. S. Some Traces of the Pre-Olympian World in Greek Literature and Myth. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1966.

Chadwick, John. The Mycenaean World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. [good survey including chapters on writing and what Homer knew]

Coldstream, J. N. Geometric Greece. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1977. [exceedingly technical on pottery and such]

Crossland, R. A. "Linguistics and archaeology in Aegean in prehistory." In Bronze Age Migrations in the Aegean: Archaeological and linguistic problems in Greek prehistory. R.A. Crossland and Ann Birchall, Eds. Proceedings of the First International Colloquium on Aegean Prehistory, Sheffield. Sheffield, England: Noyes Press, 1974: 5-15. [depopulation]

-------and Ann Birchall, Eds. Bronze Age Migrations in the Aegean: Archaeological and linguistic problems in Greek prehistory. Proceedings of the First International Colloquium on Aegean Prehistory, Sheffield. Sheffield<, England: Noyes Press, 1974.[useful]

Davies, J. K. "The Reliability of the Oral Tradition." In The Trojan War: Its Historicity and Context: Papers of the First Greenband Colloquium, Liverpool, 1981. Eds. Lin Foxhall and John K. Davies. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1984. 87-110. [criteria for ascertaining historicity of an oral poem]

Desborough, V. R. d' A. The Greek Dark Ages. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1972. [lots of pottery; good discussions; oral tradition]

Drews, Robert. The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe Ca. 1200 B.C. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. [thesis that Catastrophe at end of Bronze Age was due to changes in weaponry and techniques of warfare, so pirating hordes of skirmishers from the barbarian countries were able to destroy the chariot troops of the palace kings. Argues against other theories for the collapse. Useful in review of the collapse; map of destroyed cities.]

Finley, M. I. Early Greece: The Bronze and Archaic Ages. New York: Norton, 1970.

Foxhall, Lin and John K. Davies. The Trojan War: its historicity and context: papers of the first Greenbank Colloquium, Liverpool, 1981. Bristol, England: Bristol Classical Press, 1984. [articles on archeology of late bronze age; oral tradition, etc.]

Hainsworth, J. B. "The Fallibility of an Oral Heroic Tradition." The Trojan War: Its Historicity and Context: Papers of the First Greenbank Colloquium, Liverpool, 1981. Eds. Lin Foxhall and John K. Davies. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1984. 111-135. [elements of Troy Cycle; oral theory, basic real event]

Latacz, Joachim. Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery. 2001. Trans. from German by Kevin Windle and Rosh Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.[Latacz describes the recent (1988 and beyond) excavations of Troy and environs, directed by Manfred Korfmann. Findings include a large outer ring of dwellings, indicating that Troy was not just a citadel on a hill, but an important trading city, with connections both to the east and to the west. This would be much closer to Homer's Troy than earlier excavations indicated.]

Marinatos, Sp. "The first 'Mycenaeans' in Greece." In Bronze Age Migrations in the Aegean: Archaeological and linguistic problems in Greek prehistory. R.A. Crossland and Ann Birchall, Eds. Proceedings of the First International Colloquium on Aegean Prehistory, Sheffield. Sheffield, England: Noyes Press, 1974: 107-113. [depopulation]

Mee, C. B. "The Mycenaeans and Troy." In The Trojan War: Its Historicity and Context: Papers of the First Greenbank Colloquium, Liverpool, 1981. Eds. Lin Foxhall and John K. Davies. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1984, 45 - 56. [appended is "Discussion" by D. F. Easton, 57-62; trade between Troy and Mycenae; rich Troy VI; Troy as trade city]

Mellart, James. "Troy VIIA in Anatolian perspective." In The Trojan War: Its Historicity and Context: Papers of the First Greenbank Colloquium, Liverpool, 1981. Eds. Lin Foxhall and John K. Davies. Bristol: >Bristol Classical Press, 1984, 63-82. [appended as "Discussion" by L. Foxhall, 83-86; good on Sea Peoples]

Mellink, Machteld Johanna. Troy and the Trojan War: a symposium held at Bryn Mawr College, October 1984. Bryn Mawr, Pa.: Bryn Mawr College, 1986. [*Postscript by Mellink (p. 93-101) sums up current archeological and ancient-historical issues; Troy a strategic site for navigating; Troy VI main destruction by Greeks; final sack by Sea Peoples]

Millard, A. R. "Events at the end of the late bronze age in the near east." In The Trojan War: Its Historicity and Context: Papers of the First Greenbank Colloquium, Liverpool, 1981. Eds. Lin Foxhall and John K. Davies. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1984, 1 - 15. [gap between Bronze Age and Homer]

Nissen, Hans J. The Early History of the Ancient Near East: 9000-2000 B.C. Trans. by Elizabeth Lutzeier, with Kenneth J. Northcott. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Redford, Donald B. Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. [good on downfall of Mycenaean civilization in the catastrophe of the 12th c; a tad hostile towards Israel]

Sandars, Nancy K. The Sea Peoples: Warriors of the ancient Mediterranean 1250-1150 BC. London: Thames and Hudson, 1978. [overextended Mycenaean economies collapsed under stress]

Snodgrass, A. M. The Dark Age of Greece: An Archaeological Survey of the Eleventh to the Eighth Centuries BC. Edinburgh: The University Press, 1971. [very technical; very thorough; start of decline and start of renaissance]

-------. "Metal-work as evidence for immigration in the Late Bronze Age." In Bronze Age Migrations in the Aegean: Archaeological and linguistic problems in Greek prehistory. Crossland, R. A. and Ann Birchall, Eds. Proceedings of the First International Colloquium on Aegean Prehistory, Sheffield. Sheffield, England: Noyes Press, 1974: 209-213. [against theory of mass migrations ca. 1200]

Thomas, Carol G. Myth Becomes History: Pre-Classical Greece. Publications of the Association of Ancient Historians 4. Claremont, CA: Regina Books, 1993.

-------. Director. Ancient History: Recent Work and New Directions. Publications of the Association of Ancient Historians 5. Stanley M. Burstein, Ramsay MacMullen, Kurt A. Raaflaub, and Allen M. Ward. Claremont, CA: Regina Books, 1997.

Vermeule, Emily T. " 'Priam's Castle Blazing': A Thousand Years of Trojan Memories." In Troy and the Trojan War, Ed. Mellink, 1986: 77-92. [Trojan War in 15th c. at Troy VI, the rich one; height of Bronze Age wealth and power; homer a verb; many homers]

-------. Greece in the Bronze Age. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1964. [elegant, eloquent; chapters on how Mycenaeans lived and what they produced]

Warren, Peter. The Aegean Civilizations. The Making of the Past. 1975. First American Edition. New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1989. [wonderful pictures; lucid, useful narrative; series editor Sir John Boardman; Schliemann's discoveries and dating]

Wood, Michael. In Search of the Trojan War. New York: Facts on File Publications, 1985. Updated (to reflect important new archaeological findings): California: University of California Press, 1996; paperback edition, 1998. [now it reflects the digs of the 80's and 90's and the larger Troy; not a scholarly, documented book, but full of fascinating anecdotes about Troy; a marvelous video, In Search of the Trojan War, goes with this]

Woodford, Susan. The Trojan War in Ancient Art. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. [studies the images as mythography; retells the Troy story using the images as exempla]

Zangger, Eberhard. The Flood from Heaven: Deciphering the Atlantis Legend. With foreword by Anthony Snodgrass. New York: William Morrow, 1992. [hypothesis is that Troy was Atlantis; this is rather weak, but the information on geoarchaeology of Mycenaean Greece and the Plain of Troy is fascinating and shows sophisticated engineering of the time; also, Mycenaean cities under yards of silt because they were built on lowlands, people then deforested hills and rains washed silt down to cover cities. All we see now are fortified citadels; lower cities under 16 feet of silt.]

(c) Diane Thompson : 8/25/1998; updated: 05/20/2007