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

Homer’s Odyssey and Hesiod’s Works and Days ; Hanson 1999: 443–45) and later (e.g., Thucydides, Ps-Aristotle, Ath. Pol .; Hanson 1999: 445–46) literary sources. However, he also invokes at a general level the discoveries of extensive and intensive archaeological survey and the excavation of farmhouses of the Classical period to support this argument (Hanson 1999: 51–53; 445–46).
    Van Wees places both the development of the phalanx as a hoplite infantry force (van Wees 2005: 56) and the rise of hoplites as a political class in Athens (van Wees 2005: 177) in the sixth century BCE (see also van Wees, this volume). His argument for the development of the phalanx as a fighting tactic is based on a combination of early Greek poetry (especially Tyrtaeus), the archaeological evidence of preserved weapons, and the iconographic evidence, especially of Athenian and Corinthian vases (van Wees, this volume; 2005: 166–79). In contrast, his arguments about the enfranchisement of hoplites as a property-holding group are based primarily upon the, mostly later, historical sources relating to Solon’s property classes and the reforms of Kleisthenes. In his view, the early sixth-century “reforms” extended political participation and military service in the phalanx to the zeugitai , a group that was still part of the wealthy elite in Athens (van Wees, this volume; 2001; 2005: 55–56, 80–81; 2007: 276; Foxhall 1997). The political reorganization of Kleisthenes devolved military organization to the new political units of tribes and demes, although the generals, who held both political office and military command, were elected (van Wees 2005: 99). For van Wees (2001), the key feature is that hoplites in Athens and other Archaic poleis were (prosperous or elite) farmers and property holders within the community; he does not address the specific question of residence.
    The exploration of Mediterranean landscapes through archaeological survey over the past thirty years has transformed our understanding of the ancient Greek polis in its territorial setting. We now have a relatively clear picture of the rural countrysides within which the urban centers of the polis developed and were embedded. The growth of this body of archaeological data has provided us with an additional tool for working through the complex spatial, social, and political relationships between town and country. However, this additional source of data has introduced new, and exacerbated existing, methodological issues. Archaeological and historical data differ in character, and historical “events” do not map easily onto archaeological “events” (Foxhall 2000). Can we use archaeological data to address questions of social and political status in Archaic Greece? If so, what questions can we legitimately ask of these data? Can archaeological evidence be mobilized to address the historical issues of whether the hoplite phalanx was coterminous with “middling” (Hanson 1999: 69) or prosperous (van Wees 2005: 55–56) property holders and whether this phenomenon began in the eighth or sixth century BCE?
    Using Archaeological Data: Landscape and Survey
    If, as historians, we wish to engage with archaeological evidence, we must first be aware of how it is generated and of what, precisely, it consists. It is no use simply swiping the conclusions from the archaeology book without understanding how and on what basis those interpretations were reached (Alcock and Cherry 2004: 5). When historians do this, it can result in the promulgation of major misunderstandings and misinterpretations (and the same is true in reverse, when archaeologists try to use the conclusions of historians on textual data) (Osborne 2004). It is easy to forget that archaeological data are no more “neutral” or “unbiased” than historical data, and that archaeologists, like historians, have often “found” what they were looking for—that is, their results and interpretations are shaped