The Mycenaean civilization (approximately 1600–1100 BC) is the Bronze Age precursor of historical Greece: the world of Agamemnon, Achilles, and the Trojan War (as Homer understood it), preserved in Linear B administrative tablets and in the physical remains of palace complexes at Mycenae, Tiryns, and Pylos.

Mycenaean palatial society was highly organized and redistributive. The Linear B tablets — clay records accidentally baked when the palaces burned — document meticulous accounting of agricultural produce, livestock, metalwork, and personnel. The wanax (king) presided over a bureaucratic system that tracked the distribution of rations, the allocation of bronze to smiths, and the monitoring of religious offerings.

The Bronze Age Collapse (approximately 1200–1150 BC) destroyed the Mycenaean palace system along with the Hittite Empire and the major cities of the eastern Mediterranean coast. The cause remains debated: a combination of drought, internal revolt, disruption of trade networks, and the 'Sea Peoples' migrations has been proposed. The Linear B writing system disappeared; literacy in Greece did not return for about 400 years.

The relationship between Mycenaean Greece and Homer's epics is complex. Archaeological evidence supports the existence of Troy (Hisarlik), confirms some features of Mycenaean material culture, but does not verify the Trojan War as Homer describes it. The Iliad and Odyssey are probably composites of historical memory, mythological elaboration, and the concerns of 8th-century BC Greeks, not straightforward accounts of Bronze Age events.