Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece Read Online Free PDF Page A

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CHAPTER 10
    Can We See the “Hoplite Revolution” on the Ground? Archaeological Landscapes, Material Culture, and Social Status in Early Greece
    LIN FOXHALL
    Introduction: A Hoplite Revolution?
    The issue of the emergence of hoplite phalanxes in early Greek communities offers a challenging case study for exploring the ways in which archaeological and historical data can be combined, or not, to address questions about social and political developments central to Archaic poleis. A hoplite is not just a material cultural assemblage, although at one level he is defined by scholars by the particular assemblage(s) of weaponry he wore and carried (van Wees 2005: 47–52). Hoplite equipment appears to have varied regionally, over time, and even between individuals, but the core elements were the spear and shield (van Wees 2005: 48; Giuliani 2010). Indeed, “a hoplite” is hardly the issue: it is the hoplite phalanx, the emergence of a group of men fighting together as a team (van Wees 2005: 166–68), that has most interested historians. Fundamentally, the historical debates have focused on the emergence of the hoplite phalanx as a tactic and its relationship to the phalanx as a sociopolitical group, generally believed to be synonymous with property owners (Hanson 1999: 69; 223–24; van Wees 2005: 55–57). The logic of the various arguments presented associates (1) the shared experience of being, almost literally, joined in battle with (2) the shared ideologies that (3) fed into the ideals of a shared political community, whose members (4) held a stake in the security (and sometimes expansion) of a territory they owned and farmed for a living, although not always in this order (Hanson 1999: 235–37).
    Hanson (1999: 47–88) dates the social and political environment that generated the social group and political community of hoplites to the late eighth century. He takes Laertes as epitomizing the Zeitgeist of the phenomenon, “a representation of an entire new class of farmers” (Hanson 1999: 49). A key element in Hanson’s interpretation is Laertes’ permanent residence on his rural farmstead, rather than in a nucleated settlement (Hanson 1999: 51). For Hanson, these “middling” farmers, “independent moderate property owners,” served as hoplites to defend their farms and communities (Hanson 1999: 69, 87–88 and passim). Hanson (1999: 40, 50, 79–82)also envisages this period as a time when farmers spread onto “ eschatiai ,” “marginal lands,” as a result, he postulates, of “population pressure and the scarcity of good bottom land” (Hanson 1999: 82). For the most part Hanson supports his argument for dispersed rural residence (in his terms, “homestead residence”) with evidence from contemporary (e.g.,