 Okay, so let me just quickly thank the organizers for accepting my contribution and without further delay as the clock is on right Okay, so to address the question stated in the title of this presentation We have to start with defining urbanization itself Contrary to traditional definitions, which are looking for a standardized set of features That a settlement must acquire to be called urbanized I accept systematic and relational definition of this process and this definition urbanism is defined by two main criteria Firstly, urbanism is not property of individual sites, but rather of whole settlement systems Which must develop functional differentiation and specialization between sites in order to be called urban Towns in other words imply the countryside Second criterion is that urban sites have to show significantly different internal differentiation than other sites in the settlement pattern Thus urbanization is a process in which we can see growing functional and structural differentiation Within the analyzed settlement network and inside its most prominent sites Already in the early Bronze Age some settlements on the Greek mainland showed features that cost some scholars to call them urban or proto-urban centers However, urbanization understood in a relative way seem to appear on the Greek mainland in the late Bronze Age only together with a palatial face of the Mycenaean culture Roughly in 14th century BC, namely face late Helatic IIIa in local chronology At this time after a formative period of rivalry between various local centers, best visible archaeologically in wealth of shaft graves Mycenaean culture entered a new era dominated by the institution of the palace that now embodied much more centralized power of the elite Rivalry ended up with few palatial sites controlling whole regions and their settlement networks That led to urbanization of the Mycenaean settlement system as it faced formation of hierarchical regional networks and gradual centralization of administration and economy around the palaces The latter caused further emphasis of the role in the settlement network and development of the so-called lower towns They functioned as economic and social background of palaces and seen as one entity with them Concentrally be called urbanized at least the basic internal division between the palatial elite zone and the settlements surrounding it is always archaeologically visible In this view this dualistic layout of two entangled entities Acquires urban features and I would call it a palatial town In the last 30 years due to multiple projects focused on non-palatial late Bronze Age sites On the Greek mainland we started to have much better understanding of Mycenaean regional settlement Networks although they show a significant level of local variability Everywhere they seem to be strictly hierarchical with three or even four tiers of sites Organized around palatial sites that fact that functioned as administrative centers in the following presentation I will focus solely on two regions, Messenia in Southwestern Peloponnese and the Argalit in northeastern part of the St. Peninsular however similar patterns Settlement patterns can be seen also in Laconia, Boeotia and Tessaly so other regions where Mycenaean palaces were identified In Messenia the palatial administration is particularly well-known Thanks to an extensive archives of over 1,000 linear B-tablets in course of the early Mycenaean period the site of pillars Dominated the region and subordinated other significant centers like Iklina and Nihoria that formed a second tier of local settlement system That was 17 or 18 towns altogether They served as capitals of districts to which the state was divided The network was further supplemented with villages of which we know 12 names that formed third tier of hierarchy The lowest tier were farms and hamlets that spread around the landscape We know from the archives that the economic system was centrally organized and planned with various centers playing different roles and providing the palace with selected goods Center of this network was Was the palatial town of Pilos Which or Pilos if you want to pronounce in American way Which during late Hellatic period developed from a small community gathered around the elite living on the acropolis to an urbanized center occupying around 15 hectares So far to believe to have around 3000 inhabitants Next to the palace in the very center of the settlement there are elite tombs including the famous Griffin Warrior shaft graved and massive tolos called tolos for here on this plan In the Argolid we lack extensive written sources and I have to deal with a network that seems to be more complicated in nature There are free palatial sites in the region mycenae, Thenis and Midia Although only the two former has have significant remnants of lower towns so far examined The tier division of the regional settlement network depends a lot on our interpretation of the political situation But I will skip it and just put mycenae here on top of the hierarchy As both the largest and wealthiest site the second tier would be two other palatial towns So Tyrans and Midia and a third tier would comprise of local centers like Tsungiza in the Nemea valley or Kalamianos on the coast of Seronic Gulf Then we can assume the existence of a fourth tier made of hamlets and farmsteads The hierarchy of the network is clear and one can follow the process of palatial sites and particularly mycenae gaining domination over the region by controlling the exchange of Precious goods and constructions of conspicuous tombs The functional division within the network can be seen by the palatial involvement Involvement into various projects like supporting the pottery production in the Berbatty Valley or Developing settlements in the Nemea valley insert for a new land or for example founding a port of Kalamianos Insert for the maritime access to the Seronic Gulf Kalamianos will be on the other map, but it's slightly to the right from here, which you can see on this map The center of the Mycenaean settlement in the Argolid was the town of Mycenae It's surrounded a citadel that comprised of the palas various administrative and religious buildings together with grave circle of early Mycenaean shaft graves Other elite tombs in forms of large toloi were placed at the entrance to the acropolis Together with few large houses of probably not only residential but also economic functions So far researchers estimated the size of the site at around 30 hectares and Various population estimations were given the largest what I found was 30,000 citizens Okay, so as we like a good excavation now Let's briefly characterize those two palatial towns Which I choose to focus on so Mycenaean and Pilos as we like a good excavated and published portion of palatial lower town What I mean by good means bigger than just few houses next to the citadel We need to look at non palatial settlements for an example of how a Mycenaean urban space may look like We can find this in the already mentioned coastal site of Kalamianos Which serves as a Mycenaean harbor on the Saronic Gulf in Lake Helatic 3 The settlement was enclosed with a circuit wall although a good portion of the enclosed space seems empty and lacks any traces of architecture Researchers identified around 50 buildings concentrated mostly in the eastern part of the site The area seems to be generally residential with two main building types Small rectangular four-room structures and larger multi-room complexes Certainly this needs more research as chronology of and functions of build of buildings are not all clear But a rough estimation shows the possible density of 70 to 90 maybe up to 100 inhabitants per hectare Another site that we should look at closely is Neopalatial Knostos so slightly earlier than Then palatial towns of Lake Helatic 3 period Which gives the Knostos gives us a best example of an extensively examined Aegean urbanized settlement Reliable estimations of its size and population were presented by Todd Whitelow and Here we can see that an extent of a surface distribution of pottery When verified with excavations is not one of what an actual extent of the settlement was and in addition we can know that Whitelow estimated Knostos at this period that it had 14 to 18 Thousand inhabitants on 60 to 80 hectares which gives a maximum average density of about 220 inhabitants per hectare and an additional note here although this is kind of speculative would be that I Think we could consider Knostos something like a Model city for Mycenaeans as this would be the largest urbanized center They could be in a direct contact and they could see with their own eyes in the early Mycenaean period so I think it one could say that Knostos kind of Constituted what the city looked like for month for Mycenaeans although as I said careful here so back to Pilos and Mycenae applying what was said here to those two sites We can try to estimate their population We have to consider how much of site space was used for residential purposes while remembering the case of wide open spaces of Kalamianos and Tomb standing in the very center of both settlements and they obviously take a lot of space Whitelow estimated that about 75% of my non sites was residential and I would argue for more or less the same here Now taking the population density of Kalamianos as our minimum average and Knostos as our maximum average as it seems very doubtful that any Mycenaean site would reach density higher than Knostos We can come with a very rough calculation of 1100 to 1400 habit inhabitants for Pilos and Little over 2000 up to 5000 for Mycenae Obviously this has to be treated with a lot of caution and not taken as any kind of hard data But in my opinion, these are more or less numbers we should work around Now let's move to a brief comparison of Mycenaean palatial towns within my non and wider eastern Mediterranean context This will give us also opportunity to point features that specifically characterize Mycenaean palatial towns In comparison with my non palatial sites the Mycenaean communities seem to be much more dominated by the palaces rising over them This can be mainly archaeologically seen with two features firstly massive fortifications dividing the elite zone from the rest of the community and Secondly proportionally larger share of the very elite core zone in the overall size of the settlement It seems to be largest in Mycenae where the Citadel occupies around 10% of the site in comparison My non palaces are quite to do 5% of the settlement All of this can point also towards greater economic imbalance between the elite and the rest of the community But to examine that we would need more excavated households from the lower towns Secondly empty spaces in Mycenaean towns seem to be designed for processions not communal gatherings This is in contrast with my non open access courts and squares This difference can be seen even in form of the palaces with my non Mycenaean palace being basically a tunnel leading to main Megaron and a my non one is a center is is being centered around a massive open court Again, Mycenaean elite this time marching is in the center of attention Now moving to near eastern comparative context one have to start with Very small size of Mycenaean sites in comparison to important centers and the largest centers of late Bronze Ridge eastern Mediterranean While some of the my non towns particularly Knosos can be still set in that context and compared with near eastern centers and This cannot be said even about Mycenae This is significant as size and this population of the settlement is an important factor to estimate its economic needs and capabilities Those seems to be quite small in comparison to cities like Avaris or Hattusha Even if Mycenaean elite was able to present itself as equal to rulers of those centers the community behind it certainly did not Find out finally in both my non and Mycenaean towns We lack traces of any monumental buildings except from the palaces in the Near East. Those are mostly temples, but not only Serving religious but often also administrative and economic functions It seems that both in Mycenaean Knosos this role of supporting the administration was played by semi residential elite houses surrounding both palaces In case of Mycenaean palatial towns It is also noteworthy that both Pilos and Mycenae had conspicuous elite tombs in the very center of the settlement It is possible that they served at least some of the religious and social purposes that were reserved for near eastern temples All of this again points towards an overwhelming domination of the elite over the Mycenaean community As it managed to link most if not all the social operation with its tombs and residences The answer to the question put in the title links directly to understanding why Mycenaean palatial towns looked in the way described above The structure and organization came directly from the way they were formed as backgrounds to the centers of power That were in communication with the outside world for early Mycenaean elite This outside world was mostly Crete which at that time was the main influencer in the Aegean Spreading its material culture all across the Cyclades, the Dicanese and even western Anatolia and that is a process called Minoanization which was just presented However apart from influencing the early Mycenaean material culture Minoans also at least indirectly affected the political situation on the mainland Contacts with Crete of yet unclear nature were possibly the very reason that enabled Pilos and Mycenaean to dominate their regions Access to Minoan wealth was one of the triggers that started the transformation of early Mycenaean regional settlement networks To a hierarchical systems with one dominant center Later in the late bronzet when Mycenaeans themselves started to dominate the Aegean including Crete They started to took from the Minoan culture more than just parts of arts and crafts They copied the palatial social economic and administrative systems slowly turning their chiefdoms into bureaucratic states This supported urbanization and led to formation of urbanized palatial towns Adoption of writing and palatial administration formed centrally controlled urbanized regional settlement system However, as this process happened mostly because Mycenaean elite emulated foreign social practices One may say that it was superficial and led to excessive domination of this elite over the community gathering around it Simply the Mycenaean palatial town was still more about the palace than about the town Internal weakness of Mycenaean urbanism can be also seen in the post-palatial settlement networks of pureth lh3c late helatic 3c The private of palaces they immediately lose urban character Even if some centers seem not only to survive but even flourish On the other hand urbanization was influenced from the outside But in the same time it was partially an indigenous Mycenaean development Hierarchy of sites was formed due to internal main non-conflicts which shaped regional settlement networks Palatial towns had a set of characteristic features and a specific scale of urbanization All of this was also a result of local social and economic conditions and potentials Finally the Mycenaean elite may have tried to copy patterns they observed on quid But either did not want to or simply could not do it fully They transferred the palatial culture but also transformed it for their own purposes and according to defense social situation on the mainland Thus the best answer to the title in question would be then probably both