Individuals and the state in Late Bronze Age Greece: Messenian perspectives on Mycenaean society

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Current studies of the Mycenaean state have challenged the view, articulated most strongly by Moses Finley (1957) and further explained by John Killen (1985), that the palace played a central and dominant role in Mycenaean society and economy (e.g., Halstead 1992, Galaty and Parkinson 1999). Such studies, while they have given valuable perspectives, have also tended to model the Mycenaean state as monolithic, incapable, and static of change - Thus the popularity of systems collapse as a model to describe the ultimate failure of the Mycenaean states - and more or less disconnected from the non-palatial system.

A better representation of the Mycenaean state is to view it not as a material entity, but as a relational field. As Edward Sapir (1931) puts it, any social system "is only apparently a static sum of social institutions; essentially it is being reanimated or creatively reaffirmed from day to day by particular acts of a communicative nature which get among individuals participating in it." Also relevant in this regard is the "structuration theory" of Anthony Giddens (1979, 1984, 1987), which deals with the problematic relationship between structure and individual. In short, Giddens argues that structure and agency are mutually dependent. Thus, "structural properties of social systems are both medium and outcome of the practices they recursively organize" (Giddens 1984: 25), as actors reproduce in and through their actions the very conditions which make their actions possible.