The course offers an insight into Mycenaean civilization through the examination of the emergence and development of its main centres, from its beginning (1600 s.) to its decline (1050 B.C.). The most important Mycenaean sites of the Argolid, Messenia, Laconia and Boeotia are presented in detail and their finds critically discussed. The course further explores the expansion of Mycenaean civilization and its impact on Crete and the Aegean during its apogee. It also examines the Mycenaean palatial administrative system with relation to developments detected in regions of the Eastern Mediterranean with which the Mycenaeans maintained relations, in order to put Mycenaean civilization in the wider cultural context of its time and to stress the crucial role of the Eastern Mediterranean in the interaction of high civilizations flourished there during the second half of the 2nd millennium B.C.