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Chariots in late bronze age Greece

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

M. A. Littauer  and
J. H. Crouwel
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Extract

The long-standing debate on the military use of chariots in Late Bronze Age Greece was joined in 1973 by P. A. L. Greenhalgh. In his provocative book, he argued that Mycenaean warriors using thrusting spears had fought at speed from massed chariots. At the same time he rejected as unrealistic Homer's descriptions of chariots as conveyances for warriors who dismounted to fight on foot.

These opinions were recently briefly restated in ANTIQUITY, where Dr Greenhalgh reaffirms his theory, using the well-known metal panoply from chamber tomb 12 at Dendra as additional evidence (Greenhalgh, 1980). In doing so, he disregards the objections that have been raised against his position (Littauer, 1977; Anderson, 1973; 1975).

Type
Articles
Information
Antiquity , Volume 57 , Issue 221 , November 1983 , pp. 187 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1983

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Footnotes

Mrs Littauer is joined here by Dr Joost Crouwel, of the Archaeologisch-Historisch Instituut of the University of Amsterdam, in a rebuttal of P. A. L. Greenhalgh's 1973 book, followed by his 1980 contribution to this journal. They did not intend this to grow into a full-scale paper, but Topsy evidently took over. They say that the problems involved in attempting to use a thrusting spear from a speeding chariot would make the use of a lance directly from a fast chariot very doubtful in Mycenaean Greece.

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