The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples - RePub - Erasmus Universiteit ...

our identification of the Weshesh with the Italic Oscans.
The connection thus achieved with the developments
in Urnfield Europe at the time, also go a long way in providing
us with a model to explain the resurrections of the
Sea Peoples. The invasion of Italy by bearers of the Urnfield
culture – a true mass migration – caused great disruption
of peoples living in the area, as the displacement of
the Sicels living in Latium and southern Etruria mentioned
in the above, who in turn were forced to displace other
population groups in their search for new homes. Moreover,
the finds of handmade barbarian ware either linked
up with Italy or Urnfield Europe in various locations of the
Aegean at the end of the Late Bronze Age600 and the
growing popularity of the rite of cremation from that time
onwards, 601 suggest that some of the invaders, like we posited
for the Oscans, made common cause with population
groups they displaced and went with them straight on to
the eastern Mediterranean, with which the original population
of Italy and the central Mediterranean islands, as we
have seen, had been in contact. This resulted in a dominoeffect.
First, the region of Pylos in Greece was attacked
with devastating results, ultimately causing Akhaians to
join the eastern move and look for new homes in Cyprus
and the Cilician plain. Next, the Hittite fleet stationed
along the coast of Lycia to ward off the entrance of the Sea
Peoples from the Aegean into the eastern Mediterranean
waters was utterly defeated and the island of Cyprus/Alasiya,
the southern Anatolian coast, and that of the
Levant lay undefended as an easy prey for looting and
plunder, and eventually settlement. Finally, as we know by
now, an attempt was made to invade the richest country in
the Near East, Egypt, with appetizing prospects for plunder
and settlement (see Fig. 24). Only this last stage in the upheavals
of the Sea Peoples failed….
I am not suggesting that the foregoing model explains
everything. It is highly unlikely that the Sea Peoples are
responsible for, to name but two examples, the devastations
in Thessaly and the fall of the Hittite capital Boazköy/Hattusa.
The upheavals of the Sea Peoples ultimately
caused by the movement of bearers of the Urnfield culture
into Italy works as a catalyst to set in motion other devel-
600 Rutter 1975; Deger-Jalkotzy 1983; Vanschoonwinkel 1991:
233-42, carte 8; Popham 2001; for barbarian ware in Cyprus, see
Karageorghis 1986 and Pilides 1994; for further literature on the
topic, see Eder 1998, 20, esp. note 25.
601 Vanschoonwinkel 1991: 191-6, carte 7.
(a)
(b)
116
opments. Thus the devastations in Thessaly are likely to be
ascribed to warlike Balkan tribes bordering to the north of
the Mycenaean realm, always looking for an opportunity to
plunder their much richer neighbor. Furthermore, the sackers
of the Hittite capital Boazköy/Hattusa are likely to be
identified as Kaskans and Phrygians, who, when the
smoke-screen had disappeared, turned up in great numbers
along the Assyrian border at the time of Tiglathpileser I
(1115-1070 BC). 602 As an historical parallel for these developments
one could point to the fact that when Dionysios
I of Syracuse wanted to attack the Etruscans of Caere,
he made a common cause with the Celts in their hinterland,
who, just like the northern neigbors of the Greeks and the
Kaskans and Phrygians in Anatolia, were only waiting for
the opportunity to plunder the lands of their hated oppressor.
Fig. 24. Distribution of Urnfield culture and the route of the Sea
Peoples; (a) c. 1180 BC; (b) 12th-10th century BC (after Kimmig
1964: 269-70, Abb. 17-8).
602 Lehmann 1970: 34; Diakonoff 1984: 123; see also section 7,
esp. note 147.