Missing Mycenaean Palace

My second post about my recent research travels in Greece will tell you about a missing Mycenaean palace. But first, a quick update about my October in-person events for those of you who live in Northern California. I’ve got three events this month, a book festival, a library/coffeeshop author talk, and a panel at the Davis indie bookstore. Here’s the key info and links:

October Events

October 12, 10 am – 4 pm, Great Valley BookFest, Manteca, CA

My favorite book festival, a wide variety of authors and the most enthusiastic readers I’ve ever met at a book festival. It’s fun.

Link for details.

October 19, 2-4 pm, Fig Tree Coffeeshop, 217 Vernon St, Roseville, CA, Sponsored by the Roseville library

An interview conducted by writer Tim Schooley about my historical fantasies set in the worlds of Greek mythology and the Hittite Empire. A deep dive into how I build a lost world for my readers so they feel like they live there, use ancient Bronze Age beliefs to structure my fantasy and magic, and portray ancient power struggles with women at the forefront.

October 22, 6:00 pm, Avid Reader Davis Bookstore, FIGHT FOR PROGRESS: READ HISTORICAL FICTION! Three historical fiction novelists discuss how issues such as women’s rights, religious tolerance, and anti-discrimination resonate from the past in modern historical fiction. This event is in honor of California Writers Week and sponsored by the California Writers Club.

With experience writing in periods and contexts as disparate as war-plagued Europe in the 1480’s, a quirky 1970’s circus, a captive woman in the Trojan War, a 13^th century BCE Hittite queen, and the Flying Nightingales of WWII, this author threesome will entertain you as we take on the past and the ways historical fiction illuminates our current world. For more details, check the bookstore’s website.

About that Missing Mycenaean Palace

My current novel in progress is set on the Greek island of Skyros. I didn’t choose this setting so much as I chose a myth to retell and that myth happens, according to tradition, on Skyros. Specifically, the myth of Achilles and Deidamia takes place in the Mycenaean era palace of King Lycomedes (Deidamia’s father). The problem I soon encountered as I researched this setting was the missing Mycenaean palace.

Archaeology from a previous era

There’s not a great deal published in scholarly research about the archaeology of Skyros. Moreover, the gorgeous archaeological site that has been excavated on the island, called Palamari, dates to the Early Bronze Age. Its final habitation is about 1700 BCE. I was aiming for somewhere more or less around 1250 BCE within the Late Bronze Age to be a credible palace for Lycomedes. But this is a mythic retelling, not precise historical fiction, so I used my knowledge of Mycenaean architecture and borrowed some of the vivid setting details from Palamari. Voila! A fine palace of Lycomedes.

Or so I thought. Then, deep into writing this manuscript, my husband and I decided we wanted to travel. Our last international trip had been pre-covid. In about a month, I planned a trip to Skyros and Santorini. In the process, I tracked down a Greek archaeologist, Christina Romanou, who had fairly recently published about the Palamari site. I was looking for help identifying local people with familiarity of the dig. I’ve found such connections hugely helpful in my past research travels.

Locating the Missing Mycenaean Palace

Ms. Romanou was very helpful. She gave me names of people who’d worked on the dig and could be located at the archaeology museum or guarding the site. But more significantly for my novel in progress and my inner accurate historian, she told me about the likely location of Lycomedes’s palace. It turned out there was evidence of where a Mycenaean palace had once stood, whether the mythical king lived there or not.

Not Much Left

The Palamari site is on the northern portion of the eastern coast of the island. It was abandoned before my characters would have arrived on the scene. I’ll write more about this site down the road. It’s so atmospheric that I’m figuring out ways to incorporate these ruins in my plot. After all, the dramatic horseshoe bastions and stone walls would be there for the exploring in the time period I’m writing, ruined but present.

Also on the eastern coast, but toward the middle of the island, rises a steep, rocky mountain. It’s currently topped with Classical, Medieval, and Ottoman ruins and a still-functioning monastery. I’d never heard a word about a Mycenaean palace there. However, Ms. Romanou gave me the essential information. Soundings taken on the acropolis area of that mountain revealed Mycenaean ruins. The many layers of later use have wiped away any significant trace of this palace, but at least we know where it was. I spent hours climbing (600 steps or so from base of mountain, through village to acropolis) and crawling around the acropolis area where the soundings place a palace. I am ready to move my imaginary palace and citadel.

Instead of a broad bluff over the sea, I now have a rocky mountaintop. Since my characters, early in the novel, do some illicit escaping from said palace, this will take some work. (Note the many steps, although they don’t have to go all the way down to the beach to escape.) But I love to write from concrete details. I had been suffering from a sense of amorphousness of place. I don’t write as well without the sparks from real locations, the smells, the sights, the geographic realities. So, while I’ve got a lot of editing and reworking to do, it’s all for the good.

Modern Skyros

Skyros, by the way, is a beautiful island. Not many tourists. Lots of gorgeous beaches and pine forested slopes. It turned out to be a great place to do research, if swimming in the crystal clear Aegean and hanging out in a largely untouched Greek village of narrow stone streets (paths) and single room houses counts as research!

It is a very aerobically healthy place. Our house was approximately midway between the beach and the acropolis (300 or so steps to either), roughly on the level of the village, although a walk through the village requires enough ups and downs to wind a normal person. The elderly among the villagers seem to manage all this climbing just fine after a lifetime of it.

The village is a place of people seated outside chatting with neighbors, whether in front of their shops or their homes. There is one main “road” with most of the shops and restaurants. It’s mostly too narrow for cars except for a lower section where a tiny truck can squeeze in to make a delivery. Branching off, both above and below, are many winding paths past closely-packed whitewashed homes. The oldest, most traditional section of the village is just below the monastery high on the mountain. On the plain below the mountain, more modern apartments and other buildings now sprawl in a small way where once only wheat and barley fields spread out. These buildings are still patchworked with fields. This may be the capital of the island, but it’s a small place with none of the crowds or over-development of many other Greek islands. From Athens there’s a somewhat complicated ferry or a single flight a day, most days of the week.