Middle and Late Bronze Age Metal Tools from the Aegean, Eastern ...

goods were redistributed in two distinctive ways: through palace-sponsored feasts and as
payments to certain skilled laborers. 195 When goods were collected by the Pylian palace,
it was often for the feasts. Nakassis emphasizes that the “direct allocation of staple goods
to individuals in return for goods or services rendered” was a form of payment (with
adjustable quantities) rather than regular rations. 196
Although the palaces did not reallocate staple goods to the general population
(except for the public feasts and payments to individuals), two different systems for
collecting harvested products existed. It is clear that local village landholdings and their
197
products were subject to taxation by the palaces. Killen also argued that the grains
listed in the Linear B texts were produced on village landholdings rather than on palatial
land. 198 Other legal arrangements are also possible, and some tablets from Knossos are
concerned primarily with the grain produced by specific fields or certain individuals
rather than the total quantities accumulated in the palace. 199 These observations imply a
share-cropping system that provided staple goods for the Mycenaean palaces, but not
necessarily in surplus quantities. Halstead describes how this operation may have
worked: “palatial grain production involved a share-cropping arrangement, whereby the
palace provided plough animals and perhaps their fodder, while local communities
provided human labour and ostensibly land.” 200
If the palaces provided oxen to plow
fields in a share-cropping system as the Linear B texts suggest, it is reasonable to assume
that agricultural equipment was also distributed by the palaces. Thus, expensive metal
195 Nakassis 2010, 133-138.
196 Nakassis 2010, 134.
197 Killen 1984.
198 Killen 1998; Galaty and Parkinson 2007, 13.
199 Halstead 1999a, 319.
200 Halstead 2001, 41.
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