Integrated Study for the Structural Change from Mycenaean Society to Polis World

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The nature of the social change from the Mycenaean kingdoms to the city-states is one of the most critical and highly debated topics of early Greek history. In this research I tried to reconstruct this complicated process through the examinations of both written and archaeological evidence. The interpretation of the most important documents of Mycenaean Greece, the Linear B tablets, has widely been distorted by the reference to an inadequate social model, which has contributed to establish an unnecessary divide between the Mycenaean society and Polis society. On the other hand, recent progress of the investigations on various sites of Early Iron Age as well as the philological research on the origins of alphabets strongly suggest the importance of continuity of some cultural elements between these two societies. As for the birth and development of early Greek poleis, it has become evident that the two sorts of movement of large number of Greeks through the colonization to the West and the settlement of mercenaries in Egypt were prime movers for the development of Polis society.