Mycenaeans in Western Anatolia

"Mycenaean pottery has been found in significant quantities in most coastal regions of the eastern Mediterranean. Most of the pottery was found in Cyprus, the Levant and Egypt. Despite its relative close proximity to the Greek mainland, Anatolia yielded only little Mycenaean pottery. The lack of significant amounts of pottery in this region has been the subject of much scholarly debate. Some have interpreted the lack of Mycenaean goods as a direct result of an alleged Hittite trade embargo, while others see it as a token of the insignificant role that Greece would have played in interregional trade and exchange. In this article I will focus on the corpora of Mycenaean goods (not only pottery) in western Anatolia. I will pay attention on the diachronic, spatial and cultural distribution of the goods. The patterns of distribution that will be distilled will be set against that what is known of the political situation in the Aegean and (western) Anatolia at that time in order to establish the role, both culturally and politically, of the Mycenaeans in western Anatolia."