Editing Linear B (section)

=== Chronology ===
{{See also|Linear A#Chronology|l1=Chronology of Linear A}}

==== Timeline of Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean scripts ====
The Aegean is responsible for many of the early Greek language words that have to do with daily life such as words for tools and items that are seen every day.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Greek Art and Archaeology|last=Neer|first=Richard|publisher=Thames & Hudson|year=2012|isbn=978-0500288771|location=New York|pages=44}}</ref> The sequence and the geographical spread of Cretan hieroglyphs, Linear A, and Linear B, the three overlapping, but distinct, writing systems on Bronze Age Crete, the Aegean islands, and [[geography of Greece#Mainland|mainland Greece]] are summarized as follows:<ref name="Olivier 1986, 377f.">{{cite journal|last1=Olivier|first1=J.-P.|title=Cretan writing in the second millennium B.C.|journal=World Archaeology|date=February 1986|volume=17|issue=3|pages=377–389|doi=10.1080/00438243.1986.9979977|url=https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/248436/4/53a239ae-5319-44a5-b013-69ca027964b7.txt}}</ref>
{| class="wikitable"
! Writing system
! Geographical area
! Time span<ref group="note">Beginning date refers to first attestations, the assumed origins of all scripts lie further back in the past.</ref>
|-
|[[Cretan hieroglyphs]]
|[[Crete]]
|{{circa|2100}}–1700 BC
|-
|[[Linear A]]
|[[Crete]], [[Aegean Islands]] ([[Kea (island)|Kea]], [[Kythira]], [[Milos]], [[Santorini]]), and [[Laconia]]
|{{circa|1800}}–1450 BC<ref>{{cite book|last1=Daniels|last2=Bright|first1=Peter T.|first2=William|title=[[The World's Writing Systems]]|year=1996|location=Oxford|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=0-19-507993-0}}</ref>
|-
|Linear B
|Crete ([[Knossos]]), and mainland ([[Pylos]], [[Mycenae]], [[Thebes, Greece|Thebes]], [[Tiryns]])
|{{circa|1425}}−1200 BC
|-
|}

====Timeline of Linear B====
The main archives for Linear B are associated with these stages of [[Helladic period|Late Minoan and Helladic pottery]]:<ref name="Cline1998">{{cite book|last=Shelmerdin|first=Cynthia W.|editor-last1=Cline|editor-first1=Eric H.|editor1-link=Eric H. Cline|editor2-last=Harris-Cline|editor2-first=Diane|url=https://www.academia.edu/2284473|title=The Aegean and the Orient in the Second Millennium: Proceedings of the 50th Anniversary Symposium, Cincinnati, 18–20 April 1997|series=Aegaeum|year=1998|publisher=Universite de Liege, Histoire de L'art Et Archeologie de la Grece Antiquei|chapter=Where Do We Go From Here? And How Can the Linear B Tablets Help Us Get There?}}  The table is heavily indebted to this chapter.</ref>
{| class="wikitable"
! Relative date !! Period dates !! Location || Locale or tablet
|-
| '''LM II''' || 1425–1390 BC || [[Knossos]] || Room of the Chariot Tablets
|-
| '''LH IIIA1/early LH IIIA2''' || 1400–1370 BC || [[Iklaina]] || 1 tablet found in refuse pit<ref>Summer, Amanda. "The Birth of Bureaucracy." Archaeology, vol. 65, no. 4, Archaeological Institute of America, 2012, pp. 33–39</ref>
|-
| '''LM IIIA2'''<br />or<br />'''LM IIIB''' || 1370–1340 BC<br />or<br />1340–1190 BC || [[Knossos]] || main archive
|-
| '''LM IIIB''' || 1340–1190 BC || [[Chania]] || tablets Sq 1, 6659, KH 3 (possibly Linear B)
|-
| '''LH/LM IIIB1 end'''<ref group="note">LM III is equivalent to LH III from a chronological perspective.</ref> || || [[Chania]]<br />[[Mycenae]]<br />[[Thebes, Greece|Thebes]] || tablets Ar 3, Gq 5, X 6<br />tablets from Oil Merchant group of houses<br />Ug tablets and Wu sealings
|-
| '''LH IIIB2, end''' || || [[Mycenae]]<br />[[Tiryns]]<br />[[Thebes, Greece|Thebes]]<br />[[Pylos]] || tablets from the Citadel<br />all tablets<br />Of tablets and new Pelopidou Street deposit<br />all but five tablets
|}

Sixteen tablets found at the Megaron at Pylos are also thought to be dated to LHIIIA.<ref>Skelton, Christina. "Re-Examining the Pylos Megaron Tablets", KADMOS, vol. 48, no. 1-2, 2010, pp. 107–123</ref>

==== Controversy on the date of the Knossos tablets ====
The [[Knossos]] archive was dated by [[Arthur Evans]] to the destruction by conflagration of about 1400 BC, which would have baked and preserved the clay tablets. He dated this event to the LM II period. This view stood until [[Carl Blegen]] excavated the site of ancient [[Pylos]] in 1939 and uncovered tablets inscribed in Linear B. They were fired in the conflagration that destroyed Pylos about 1200 BC, at the end of LHIIIB. With the decipherment of Linear B by [[Michael Ventris]] in 1952,<ref>{{cite book|last=Salomon|first=Marilyn J.|title=Great Cities of the World 3: Next Stop... Athens|publisher=The Symphonette Press|year=1974|page=15}}</ref> serious questions about Evans's date began to be considered. Most notably, Blegen said that the inscribed stirrup jars, which are oil flasks with stirrup-shaped handles imported from Crete around 1200, were of the same type as those dated by Evans to the destruction of 1400. Blegen found a number of similarities between 1200 BC Pylos and 1400 BC Knossos and suggested the Knossian evidence be reexamined, as he was sure of the 1200 Pylian date.

The examination uncovered a number of difficulties. The Knossos tablets had been found at various locations in the palace. Evans had not kept exact records. Recourse was had to the day books of Evans's assistant, [[Duncan Mackenzie]], who had conducted the day-to-day excavations. There were discrepancies between the notes in the day books and Evans's excavation reports. Moreover, the two men had disagreed over the location and strata of the tablets. The results of the reinvestigation were eventually published by Palmer and Boardman, ''On the Knossos Tablets''.<ref>{{cite book|first1=L.R.|last1=Palmer|first2=John|last2=Boardman|title=On the Knossos Tablets|location=Oxford|year=1963|publisher=Clarendon Press}}</ref> It contains two works, [[Leonard Robert Palmer]]'s ''The Find-Places of the Knossos Tablets'' and John Boardman's ''The Date of the Knossos Tablets,'' representing Blegen's and Evans's views respectively. Consequently, the dispute was known for a time as "the Palmer–Boardman dispute". There has been no generally accepted resolution to it yet.