Greece after the Bronze Age Collapse: Interview with Professor Alex Knodell

Tides of History

Wondery / Patrick Wyman

Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 26 January 2023

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What happened after the Bronze Age Collapse and the end of the palaces that had defined Mycenaean Greece? It's easy to present this time as a "dark age," but is that really the best way to understand it? Professor Alex Knodell is an expert on the archaeology of Greece from the Bronze Age through to the Iron Age, and his perspective on this oft-neglected period is fascinating.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to Tides of History, add free on Amazon Music.
0:04.2	Download the app today.
0:18.2	Hi everybody, from Wondery, welcome to another episode of Tides of History.
0:21.1	It's great to have you all here and thanks for joining me.
0:24.4	When we think of the transition from the supposed high point of the late Bronze Age, a glittering
0:28.7	era of palaces and states and powerful kings and luxury trade to the rather less exalted,
0:34.2	grittier early Iron Age, nowhere is more central to the story of that shift than Greece.
0:39.0	The palaces of the Mycenaean kings were destroyed or abandoned, fewer people inhabited the countryside,
0:43.9	the world to rise and shrink.
0:46.3	But that's only one way and not necessarily the most accurate or compelling way of thinking
0:50.6	about the transition.
0:52.2	What if we thought instead in terms of landscapes, long term trajectories, and slow processes
0:56.2	of change rather than punctuated crisis and a new beginning in Greece's archaic period?
1:01.8	Today's guest is a fantastic guide to that transitional period.
1:05.0	Alex Nodell is associate professor of classics and director of archaeology at Carlton College.
1:09.8	He's an archaeologist who specializes in the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age of
1:13.2	Greece and the period that connects them, what is often called the Greek Dark Age.
1:17.7	He recently published a book, Societies and Transition in Early Greece, An Archaeological
1:21.5	History, which is one of my favorite things that I have read on this period.
1:25.6	Nodell, thank you so much for joining me.
1:27.6	Thanks for having me, Patrick.
1:29.2	I'm really happy to be here and I appreciate the kind words about the book.
	...

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