Minoan art and archaeology

Drawing in equal measure on space syntax and a theoretical framework recently advocated by Carl Knappett for the study of material culture, this paper offers an innovative approach to the fixed, semi-fixed, and mobile elements constituting the built environment. Through a case study from Bronze Age Crete, the paper deals with specific fixtures (hearths and hollowed slabs called kernoi). It first investigates their spatial contexts through configurational analysis and highlights the long history of their
existence in Minoan Crete. Finally, the paper addresses the ways in which these fixtures might have acquired particular symbolic and functional meanings through recursive interactions with people. By focusing on these associations and affordances of hearths and kernoi, the paper intends to highlight the profound importance of low-level meanings of the built environment for the understanding of the complex interactions between architecture, material assemblages, and people. Furthermore, it proposes a holistic analytical method allowing the approach of interactional dynamics (people–space–objects) that do not necessarily appear conspicuously in the archaeological record

In 2010, a portion of a well-preserved domestic building dating to the later part of Early Minoan (EM) I was excavated at Priniatikos Pyrgos, east Crete. Though only a small portion of this house was available to investigate, there was clear evidence for several architectural and habitation phases. The final domestic activities were particularly well preserved because the building was deliberately destroyed in an event that included burning. There was a distinct and clearly defined ritual component to this event, including the decommissioning of household objects. Because of the rapid abandonment and destruction of this building, the excavated area contained well-preserved evidence for the character of use of the building in its final days. This preliminary discussion focuses primarily on this portion of the house and contextualizes it within the overall excavation at Priniatikos Pyrgos, its environs recorded in the Vrokastro Survey Project, and EM I Crete more generally. It provides detailed analyses of industrial, domestic, trade, and ritual activities through the study of stratigraphy, architecture, ceramics, faunal remains, plant remains, obsidian, metal, and plaster. It concludes with a discussion of the character of activity that took place when the building was abandoned.* * We wish to thank the Institute for Aegean Prehistory (INSTAP) for its unstinting support in the conduct of the excavation and study phases of this project. The support and encouragement of the staff of the KD' Ephoreia of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities made this work and publication possible. We are grateful to the Irish Institute of Hellenic Studies at Athens and the INSTAP Study Center for East Crete for providing ongoing logistical infrastructure. The Mediterranean Archaeological Trust also provided assistance. We have been fortunate to have strong support from many individuals; in particular, we thank V. Apostalakou, C.

Currently, long-distance trading, gateway communities, and the longboat are understood to have emerged in the Aegean during Early Bronze (EB) IB/IIA. This longboattrading model envisages an essentially static configuration of trading communities situated at nodal points in maritime networks of interaction, an arrangement that was brought to an end, by the beginning of EB III,

Architecture is perhaps one of the most important elements in the archaeology of Bronze Age Crete. It is thus employed as the archaeologist’s lens through which he views this society, its members and its social structures. While there are certain general laws concerning architecture and its relation to society, an approach is advocated here in which the visual perception of the ancient user is considered to be the key to the interpretation of the architecture. The human perception of architecture is significant in the mode of construction and the subsequent contextualisation of a building within the social network. This principle is illustrated with a discussion of the visual impact of the Palaces within Minoan society, possibly enhancing their monumentality and their ability to function as a stage for various performances.

The tripartite room labeled a Minoan hall is probably the most emblematic architectural feature of the Neopalatial period in Bronze Age Crete (1700/1675–1470/1460 B.C.E.). Although this spatial arrangement stands out as an exceptional accomplishment because of its elaborate layout, fine materials, and innovative properties, its function is still somewhat enigmatic. In fact, some of its very characteristics, such as flexibility and layout complexity, significantly hinder an in-depth evaluation of the role that Minoan halls played in Late Bronze Age Crete. I argue here that the lack of an exhaustive and systematic analysis of the spatial structure of these tripartite arrangements has hampered our understanding of them and that their architectural development should receive more attention. I present an approach for analyzing the spatial syntax of Minoan halls, their evolution in a diachronic perspective, and their diversity in specific buildings. Far from being yet another attempt to give a clear-cut functional definition of Minoan halls, this research offers instead a new way of considering Minoan architecture.

Large wheelmade terracotta figures with upraised arms, found together with typical cultic equipment, are characteristic of Cretan Postpalatial bench sanctuaries. It is generally assumed that these figures represent one or more deities and were used as cult images. Past and recent excavations on Crete illustrate a series of contexts that contain cultic equipment but lack such a figure with upraised arms. Most of these contexts date to Late Minoan (LM) IIIA–B and are found within larger building complexes that have potential communal functions. These complexes contrast with the contexts where the figures with upraised arms are found, which are freestanding public buildings and date to LM IIIB–C. This evolution suggests a change in the dynamics of and practices in cult spaces, an evolution that is here regarded as socially relevant. Within this framework, the figures with upraised arms are reconsidered as symbolic representations of votaries within the context of elite competition, rather than as cult images or cult statues.

Until recently, the study of religion and ritual by archaeologists was typically found among those studying "world religions," particularly those with the benefit of texts. Building upon a renewed interest in archaeological explorations of ancient religion and sacred ritual, the authors in this volume construct new understandings of the material forms of religion through the combination of multiple perspectives and differing methodological approaches. By using a variety of strategies applied to widely divergent regions and time periods, these scholars demonstrate how the archaeological study of ancient religion and ritual is methodologically and theoretically valid. [religion, ritual, materiality, theory, practice]

Pottery from the Late Minoan I kiln at Haghia Triada in the Mesara Plain, southern Crete, was analysed by a range of techniques, comprising thin-section petrography, scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, X-ray fluorescence and neutron activation analysis. The project characterizes the ceramic fabrics and probable raw materials, correlates paste recipes with shape, reconstructs the firing conditions of the kiln and establishes a chemical reference group, taking into account post-burial alteration and contamination. Comparison of the reference group formed with that from the neighbouring, broadly contemporary, kiln at Kommos shows an unexpected differentiation of the two kilns.

The harbor site of Kommos, Crete, has yielded rich evidence for longdistance exchange in the form of ceramic transport jars of types used not only for distribution within Crete and the Aegean, but also across the eastern Mediterranean. An integrated petrographic and chemical approach is here employed in order to determine the provenance of short-necked amphoras, transport stirrup jars, Egyptian jars, and Canaanite jars. The results reveal a detailed picture of local jar production within southern Crete, as well as jars that have their origins in the Nile Delta and at several specific locations along the Levantine coast.

That the 'natural' world was imbued with symbolic and religious meaning in Minoan Crete has been suggested since the early days of Minoan archaeology. Notwithstanding, it often remains unclear how certain constituents of the physical environment acquired specific meanings, and what such meanings imply for the actual dynamics of human-environment relations. This paper considers the relationship between (what is today construed as) religion and human engagement with the environment in Minoan Crete. An 'ecological' perspective is adopted which assumes that both organisms and inanimate objects are a result of and subject to continuous development, and their identity is defined by the network of relationships they are endowed with. The idea is put forward that the relationship between people and certain landscape elements were of a social kind, based on mutuality and intimacy, and that some activities conventionally identified as religious or ritual are better understood in terms of practical engagement with the physical environment.

Summary. This paper discusses the interpretation of the objects deliberately hidden and sealed up in the structure of Minoan buildings. These building deposits are usually interpreted in terms of religion and ritual but this conventional view may actually be based on fallacious assumptions about the nature of human-environment relations in Bronze Age Crete. The present paper outlines an alternative ecological approach, which allows a degree of sociality between humans and non-human entities, and treats building deposits as an essentially practical means of manipulating the relations between humans and the (built) environment in situations of potential stress. It will be argued that buildings and other artefacts can, in some respects, be understood to live and grow similarly as organisms. Thus, in order to appreciate their significance, Minoan building deposits need to be related to the life-cycle of buildings.

Attribution studies, the identification of the work of individual artists, are a familiar aspect of art history, and have also been used to isolate individuals and workshops of the Aegean Bronze Age. This paper examines the methodological issues involved and argues that attribution is feasible for prehistoric material, albeit in only a limited way in comparison, for example, with Classical vase painting. It is further suggested that attribution should be viewed not as an isolated aesthetic pursuit, but be approached contextually, as an integral part of artefact analysis. In this way attribution studies can contribute towards the better understanding of the formation and development of style, the definition of closely contem­porary groups of material, and the spatial distribution (and its significance) of the products of individuals. Two case studies are presented to illustrate this approach: Mycenaean pictorial pottery of the fourteenth-thirteenth centuries BC, and a contrasting group of material, clay figurines from the Minoan peak sanctuary of Atsipadhes.

The calcareous skeletal remains of various microscopic organisms such as foraminifera and ostracods are a striking feature of thin sections of many archaeological ceramics from the Aegean Bronze Age. While the presence of these calcareous microfossils in pottery has been noted for some time, attempts to utilize them to further the aims of ceramic compositional analysis have been few in number. In the following paper, we take a first detailed look at the occurrence and utility of calcareous microfossils in archaeological ceramics. By presenting selected case studies from the Bronze Age of Crete, we demonstrate the potential of calcareous microfossils, especially the extremely small ‘nannofossils’ and the highly contextual geological information that they contain, in terms of the characterization and grouping of ceramics, the determination of their provenance and the reconstruction of ancient technology.

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The find of an early Mycenaean tholos tomb at Vapheio (Tsountas 1889) brought to light two unusual objects: a seal showing a person in long robes holding a fenestrated ax, and the Vapheio ax, the latter a unique and heavy fenestrated ax with no parallels in the Aegean to date. Scholars from Evans to Maran have argued for a non-Aegean, Levantine origin of this type of ax. This article, therefore, attempts to find the origin of this ax type and to point to its symbolic meaning in the Levant and later in the Aegean. It is argued that the Vapheio ax was a Levantine product produced long before the end of the Middle Bronze Age, sometime between the 20th and late 18th centuries b.c. At least some of the symbolic meaning of the ax as an attribute of rulership in the Levant was transferred to Minoan Crete. By the time the ax, and its related Levantine-inspired iconography, reached Vapheio and was deposited in the tomb, it was a centuries-old ceremonial weapon, and without doubt it was perceived as a formidable symbol of power.

Bill Newton died just a few days after submitting this for the special issue of Archaeometry, marking 50 years of NAA in archaeology. It was subsequently edited and expanded by John Prag and myself. I post it here firstly as a tribute to Bill, and secondly to provide an overview of the NAA work carried out by the Radiochemistry group at the University of Manchester from the early 1970s to the late 1990s.

In replying to our 2019 publication: “A New Identification of the Monkeys Depicted in a Bronze Age Wall Painting from Akrotiri, Thera,” Urbani and Youlatos (2020) argue for the traditional identification of the monkeys depicted on the north and west walls of room 6 of Building Complex Beta at Akrotiri, Thera, as vervet monkeys (Fig. 1). Their argument is based largely on previous scholarship and their analysis of monkey morphology as it appears in the Bronze Age artwork. Here, after clarifying some misconceptions and misquotations, we thoroughly contextualize the wall painting in question, emphasizing the importance of collaboration between disparate disciplines for a multifaceted and rigorous approach. The nature of the item in question is key in this reply: we are studying artwork. Because this is a cultural representation of monkeys rather than a study of live primates or preserved specimens, consideration of artistic choice, color conventions, and the agency of the artist are important for answering the questions raised by Urbani and Youlatos, stimulating further cross-disciplinary discussions.

The unique gold pendant found at Chrysolakkos, Malia, Crete, in 1930 has been variously interpreted, and usually is said to represent a pair of bees. This vague interpretation is discussed, and it is pointed out that the three discs that are suspended from the pendant closely resemble the fruits of a native Cretan herb, Tordylium apulum. Megascolia maculata, a member of the order Hymenoptera, is proposed as the model for the insects. Like a gold toggle pin, also from Chrysolakkos, the pendant demonstrates that Cretan goldsmiths were capable of creating aesthetically pleasing work by paying close attention to the local flora and fauna and used examples as the models for their unique jewellery

This article presents the curatorial context of a newly discovered fragment of Minoan faience, now in the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery (BCMAG), and the technological study conducted on this piece at the British Museum. It also discusses the British Museum study of comparable fragments, now in the Ashmolean Museum, belonging to the Town Mosaic from Knossos, an important and unique find brought to light during Sir Arthur Evans's excavations of the 'Palace of Minos' at the beginning of the twentieth century. Both the stylistic study and the analytical results suggest that the Bristol fragment is genuine, and most likely belonged to the Town Mosaic. The Bristol piece does not possess features that can advance our understanding of Crete in the Bronze Age, but its curious biography adds something to the history of collecting and the history of archaeology. The Annual of the British School at Athens, , page  of  © The Council, British School at Athens,  doi:./S                                                                                                             

This paper presents a method for data mining archaeogenetic autosomal data. The method is applied to the widely debated topic of the origin of the Bronze Age Minoan culture that existed on the island of Crete from 5000 to 3500 years ago. The data is compared with some Neolithic and early Bronze Age samples from the nearby Cycladic islands, mainland Greece and other Neolithic sites. The method shows that a large component of the Minoan autosomal genomes has sources from the Neolithic areas of northern Greece and the rest of the Balkans and a minor component comes directly from Neolithic Anatolia and the Caucasus.

Late Minoan (LM) IIIB (∼1300-1200 B.C.) represents a crucial period in the history of Bronze Age Crete, heralding the transition to the Iron Age through a wave of site destruction and abandonment. According to the traditional view, earthquakes may have played a significant role in these events. A new archaeoseismological approach is proposed to test this hypothesis and to attribute destruction and abandonment to earthquakes. Potential earthquake archaeological effects (PEAEs) are defined and documented at LM IIIB sites. Synchronisms of PEAEs between sites are based on ceramic evidence. The reliability of the PEAEs is furthermore assessed using empirical ground-motion relationships defined for three types of earthquake mechanisms that can be considered to occur in the seismotectonic context of Crete:

This paper describes on-going research investigating movement and behaviour patterns of visitors in archaeological sites as a way of informing interpretive planning. A critical point of this study was the development of a hybrid methodology for collecting and assessing data on visitor movement around archaeological sites and of the things that visitors value the most during their visit. This paper demonstrates the methodology developed mainly at Gournia, a Minoan archaeological site of eastern Crete in Greece. Apart from recognised forms of observation and the collection of qualitative data, technologies such as Geographical Positioning System body tracking, geo-tagging and applications of Geographical Information Systems were employed. The interpretation of the processed data provided a better insight and an overview of the site's affordances for movement and as well as the weaknesses of the current interpretation infrastructure. Additionally, the methodology extends to a visitor-sourced approach to reveal the site's 'hot spots' by combining hotspot analysis with a thematic analysis of the geo-tagged images captured by visitors.

This paper discusses the relationship between art, perception and human engagement with the environment in Minoan Crete through the depiction of landscapes and the 'natural world' in art. It is argued that the conventional approaches to Minoan 'nature scenes', based on the representation and expression theories of art, are overshadowed by modernist assumptions about art and human-environment relations. The paper then proceeds to discuss the workings of visual perception and the dynamics of human-environment systems. On that basis, the nature of humanenvironment relations in Minoan Crete is reconsidered and an 'ecological' approach to ancient art explored. A tentative suggestion is made that Minoan nature scenes might be understood as instruments for perceiving and knowing the environment, and some broader implications of the ecological perspective for the interpretation of the archaeological record of Minoan Crete are indicated.

Analysis by gas chromatography was conducted on pottery from a Middle Bronze Age workshop from the Minoan culture of Crete, confirming it as a facility for manufacturing organic dyes. The archaeological site is located at Alatzomouri-Pefka in northeast Crete. The site has a series of nine rock-cut basins associated with channels in the bedrock, remains of stone walls, and many artifacts. Its pottery provides a date in Middle Minoan IIB (ca. 1800/1700 B.C.). The gas chromatography identified three dyes (Murex purple, yellow from weld, and red from madder) as well as lanolin, the oil associated with wool from sheep.

The first part of the book presents archaeological evidence from the Prehistoric Aegean and onward, which demonstrates the existence of an enduring, highly valued and advanced prehistoric Aegean apiculture. Some well known ceramic vessels from Knossos "palace" are identified here for the first time with beekeeping paraphernalia thus proving the existence of a systematic Minoan apiculture. In the second part, an alternative view is proposed for some of the most important scenes on Minoan and Mycenaean gold rings, seals, and clay sealings that have led Evans, Nilsson, and many others over the past century to various speculations regarding the nature of the Prehistoric Aegean religion. By applying a naturalistic context of interpretation on the depicted scenes, apiculture paraphernalia and practices are recognized, instead of the religious symbols of the "sacred tree", "flying gods", "baetyls and birds epiphany of deities", "great goddess", "horns of consecration", "altars", "temenos" and "double axes".
The authors conclude that established ideas about the prehistoric Aegean religion should be reconsidered, thus creating significant challenges for future research."

Âge d’or de la civilisation minoenne, la période néopalatiale (1600-1425 avant notre ère) révéla un paysage architectural foisonnant et complexe. Bien que cette architecture fut largement étudiée et commentée, à ce jour, elle reste l’objet de bon nombre d’interrogations et souffre de l’absence d’approches réellement systématiques et exhaustives. En se basant sur les principes de la théorie de la syntaxe spatiale et en les étoffant de méthodologies auxiliaires, cet ouvrage se propose d’analyser le bâti néopalatial sous ses formes les plus diverses. Ce faisant, il vise également à une meilleure compréhension du fonctionnement de la société minoenne au début de l’âge du Bronze Récent. Ce livre s’adresse à toute personne ayant un intérêt pour la civilisation minoenne, et en particulier son âge d’or et sa production architecturale. De manière plus générale, il sera également utile aux lecteurs s’intéressant aux rapports complexes entre la société et son espace bâti, ainsi qu’à l’application de l’analyse de la syntaxe spatiale dans le cadre de la recherche en archéologie.

Agricultural production and the palatial redistribution of staples have played a key role in the debate concerning the emergence of social complexity in Minoan Crete. However, much of the focus has fallen on major settlements where such products were consumed, rather than on the landscape where agricultural surplus was produced. While there is no shortage of landscape surveys on Crete, their emphasis has typically been on the distribution of rural settlements instead of on identifying landscape structures and arrangements—such as terraces, enclosures, and field systems—that might provide data about a territory's economic focus. A key aim of the new survey at Palaikastro has been to address this bias. By combining extensive archaeological survey with differential GPS (DGPS) measurements, high-resolution aerial photography, and microrelief generation and analysis, the project has identified hundreds of structures, forming an almost continuous fossilized landscape and providing important clues on landscape management practices. The results highlight the importance of pastoral practices, to which a large part of the landscape was dedicated. Agricultural arrangements were also documented in the form of terraced areas adapted for dryland agriculture and reflecting concerns for soil retention. We argue that a highly structured landscape, indicative of pressures in land use, was established during the Middle and Late Minoan periods across Palaikastro's territory.

This paper investigates the Egyptian valuation of imported Minoan and locally produced Minoanizing pottery: that is, why Egyptians found this pottery desirable, which Egyptians wanted it, and which were able to acquire it. In order to address these questions, this study first reviews the archaeological contexts of all Minoan and Minoanizing pottery in Egypt, and then compares this archaeological evidence to the textual and iconographic data on Egyptian attitudes towards Minoan goods. The results suggest that while ownership of this pottery may have carried some cultural cachet as a mark of cosmopolitan sensibilities, it was not restricted to the highest officials. Instead, the more widespread availability of Minoan and Minoanizing pottery may have enabled Egyptians from various socioeconomic backgrounds to participate in an internationalizing cultural milieu.