And they provide the means of triangulating to Mycenaean treaty conventions, an essential element in the larger issue of continuity between Bronze and Dark Age Greece. In his treatment of the Homeric evidence, K. provides a coherent study on one aspect of the epics. While not presented as a similarly unified corpus, the author also introduces a vast array of Near Eastern covenants. Especially effective is his treatment of kinship analogies in covenant-making in which understanding of Homeric 'philotes' is deepened by its comparison with the Near Eastern analogy of kinship. The greater range of 'vitality' of 'philotes' should not have come as a surprise, but it did.
Exemplary caution marks the treatment of several 'tricky' questions.
Whether Homer was literate or not, it can not be disputed that there are several 'historical' layers in the poems, some Dark Age and others Mycenaean. On another difficult issue, K. wisely suggests several explanations for the similar elements present in Near Eastern and Homeric agreements. Or, caught up in the international climate of the late Bronze Age, Mycenaeans may have been directly influenced by eastern cultures. A third possibility is a form of connection between Greece and the Near East during the Dark Age. Arguing first that the number of parallels inclines the balance in favor of causal connection rather than similar but independent developments, K. goes on to conclude that the Mycenaean era is a better candidate than the Dark Age for the time of borrowing of conventions and practices.