eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

the citadels have been found. There is copious evidence of burning, collapsed walls, floors
and ceilings, and broken artefacts, which have been identified within the same or closely
connected archaeological contexts at centres such as Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos and Thebes (see
section 6.2.1). The depopulation theory holds that with the demise of these centres, people
either migrated or perished. However, Lin Foxhall (1995), looking at sites mainly in terms of
continuity in agricultural practice, concludes that outlying sites fared differently depending on
their proximity to or involvement in their local palatial economy and although sites and
possibly population did decrease in some areas, it is without doubt not the case in all.
The area of Berbati-Limnes, very close to Mycenae, certainly did not fare very well (Wells
and Runnels 1996). During the LH period, survey evidence indicates that this region was
quite densely populated by a number of individual farmsteads. After the LHIIIB period,
however, there is a gap in the record until the LG period. A possible explanation is that
farmsteads, which perhaps relied heavily on the palace for survival or existed solely to serve
the palace economy, could not survive without it and the population may indeed have moved
on. However, regions that show a different pattern can be found on the Methana peninsula
(Mee & Forbes 1997) and at Lefkandi (Popham et al., 1979), both places that were not
involved in a local palatial economy, based on current evidence. In these places, the
archaeological record shows an increase of activity after the demise of Mycenaean
Civilisation. While it appears that the defining factor for depopulation may be the presence or
absence of a major site in close proximity, evidence from Nichoria complicates the picture.
This site in Messenia, relatively near and most likely subject to the palace at Pylos during the
LH period, seems to have prospered as a substantial site in its own right after LHIIIB
(McDonald 1991). Differentiation in burials and houses suggest that Nichoria had its own
elite, and floral and faunal evidence indicates that agriculture and animal husbandry continued
in much the same way that it had when subject to Pylos (Coulson et al. 1983). Foxhall (1995)
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