Greeks and Pre-Greeks Aegean Prehistory and Greek Heroic Tradition [Hardcover]

Margalit Finkelberg proposes a multidisciplinary assessment of the ethnic, linguistic and cultural situation in Greece in the second millennium BC.Most current reconstructions of Aegean prehistory are predominantly based on archaeology. This book, however, approaches the subject from the vantage point of linguistics and Greek heroic tradition. Its main thesis is that the ancient Greeks started their history as a mixed population group consisting of both Greek-speaking newcomers and the indigenous population of the land. Issues such as intermarriage and cultural and linguistic fusion are discussed as well as the eventual collapse of Mycenaean Greece and the creation of the myth of the Trojan War.Most current reconstructions of Aegean prehistory are predominantly based on archaeology. This book, however, approaches the subject from the vantage point of linguistics and Greek heroic tradition. Its main thesis is that the ancient Greeks started their history as a mixed population group consisting of both Greek-speaking newcomers and the indigenous population of the land. Issues such as intermarriage and cultural and linguistic fusion are discussed as well as the eventual collapse of Mycenaean Greece and the creation of the myth of the Trojan War.Systematically confronting Greek tradition of the Heroic Age with the evidence of both linguistics and archaeology, Margalit Finkelberg proposes an interdisciplinary assessment of the ethnic, linguistic and cultural situation in Greece in the second millennium BC. The main thesis of this book is that the Greeks started their history as a multi-ethnic population group consisting of both Greek-speaking newcomers and the indigenous population of the land, and that the body of 'Hellenes' as known to us from the historical period was a deliberate self-creation.1. Introduction; 2. The heterogeneity of Greek genealogy; 3, The pre-Hellenic substratum reconsidered; 4. Kingship in Bronze Age Greece and Western Asia; 5. Marriage and identitlS‘