Customer Reviews

The Discovery of the Greek Bronze Age

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The Discovery of the Greek Bronze Age by Leslie Fitton is a very entertaining history of the archeological attempts to prove that stories thought to be myths were in actuality history. Starting with Heinrich Schliemann and going up to the present day, Dr. Fitton presents a fascinating overview of her subject, explaining the tools and methods of the archeologist as she goes along. She highlights the careers of Schliemann, Arthur Evans, and other English-Speaking archeologists in Bronze Age studies. Schliemann in recent years has been damned as a liar, hypocrite, thief, Philistine, charlatan and an SOB to boot, but Fitton's appraisal of Schliemann seems fair to me. While abhorring his early methods at Troy, Fitton nonetheless respects the fact that he learned from his mistakes, as evidenced by his work at Mycenae later. I found her presentation of such debates as to whether Crete or Mycenae was the dominant power of the Bronze Age very easy to follow and absolutely fascinating. This book makes an excellent introduction to the whole field of Archeology and I would especially recommend it to anyone who is planning a trip to Crete, Hissarlik or the Peloponnese. I found it a very valuable reading experience.

The Bronze Age is not where we usually encounter the Greeks: they beat down the Persians with iron swords and military discipline. The competition was between these island civilizations, the mainland civilizations
with interaction with the Phoenicians that formed the very strong culture
that we see in Homer and the much later Greek literature and plays.
The archaeological evidence is that their climb was slow
and competitive and that they learned a lot from the other civilizations around them.
This book puts the discoveries and large amount of work done in digging into perspective. The text is well written and well documented.

The book provides well-informed background on the major players. Primarily a text book, its print is small, with a left margin that takes 1/3 of the glossy page. Get your glasses out.