The article mainly analyzes artifacts from the Gamma and Omicron burial chambers of the grave circle in Mycenaean royal burials for cultural links between Mycenaean and Scandinavian nobility of the early Bronze Age (mid - second half of the 2nd millennium BC). It is shown that the distribution of the characteristic ornamental motif of the running spiral and images of ships with rams in Scandinavia chronologically coincides with the beginning of the Mycenaean civilization. These facts, together with the discovery of Baltic amber in Greece of that era only in the burials of Mycenaean nobility in the Peloponnese (and their absence in Crete), allow us to conclude that it was the Mycenaean nobility that was the translator of these significant cultural elements to Scandinavia of the I-III periods of the northern Bronze Age according to O. Montelius.
Keywords: Bronze Age, ornamental running spiral motif, Scandinavia, Mycenae, grave circle In Mycenaean royal burials.
This work clearly demonstrates the intensity of cultural (possibly based on elite contacts or trade) ties in the Bronze Age of the population of Jutland and the Peloponnese-peninsulas in the far north and south of mainland Western Europe. The author raises the question of a complex cross-cultural system of relations in the middle of the second millennium BC. As not surprising for such an early time, it is characterized by peaceful coexistence and the presence of a wide network of cultural ties over large areas for several centuries. It seems that at this time similar cultural interactions were also characteristic of a number of other groups of the Eurasian continent's population.
The paper uses published materials from Mycenaean (grave circle B) and Scandinavian archaeological sites. The conclusions are based on the results of a chronological comparison of the existence of the double helix ornamental motif, which is identical in both regions. We also used data on the simultaneous appearance of Baltic amber in t ...
Read more