Stylianos Alexiou's translation of Shakespeare's battle cry against time at the start of Sonnet 16 makes an apposite, if metaphorical, introduction to an essay around his pioneering paper (1979,1980,2002) on war, defence and the improbability - the “myth”, to use his word - of Minoan peace.
Within the very rich flora of Greece, the Aegean and especially Crete there are many scented plants suitable for the making of aromatics, perfumes, scented oils and unguents. The evidence for the Aegean Bronze Age is essentially of three kinds, botanical, epigraphic (Linear B) and archaeological, all interrelated.
Στη μακρόχρονη έρευνα της προϊστορικής Κρήτης ο χώρος της απλής κατοικίας και η ζωή που αυτός περιέκλειε προσήλκυσαν περιορισμένο ενδιαφέρον. Για λόγους που έχουν αναλυθεί, υπό την επίδραση του βικτωριανού εξελικτισμού της εποχής τού Α. Evans και του πολιτισμικο-ιστορικού παραδείγματος του V. G. Childe, η αρχαιολογική έρευνα στο νησί στράφηκε από νωρίς στο θεωρούμενο ως απόγειο της προϊστορικής ζωής του, χρονικά κυρίως στις περιόδους λειτουργίας των ανακτόρων και από πλευράς υλικής παραγωγής στο περιβάλλον των ανακτόρων και της ελίτ.
Παρά τον μεγάλο αριθμό μελετών για τα λίθινα αντικείμενα στην προϊστορική Κρήτη, οι περιοχές εξόρυξης των πρώτων υλών για την κατασκευή τους, έχουν αποτελέσει ελάχιστα μέχρι σήμερα αντικείμενο έρευνας. Οι σύντομες, συνήθως, αναφορές περιορίζονται σε ένα αυστηρό πλαίσιο θετικιστικών προσεγγίσεων, παραγνωρίζοντας έτσι τη σημασία τους ως πολιτισμικών τοπίων, με κοινωνικές, πολιτικές, συμβολικές και άλλες όψεις και συνακόλουθα τον ρόλο τους σε ευρύτερα κοινωνικο-οικονομικά δίκτυα.
Kostis S. ChristakisΚρητικά Χρονικά 34 (2014), 201-218
The extensive and well-built storerooms of Cretan Bronze Age palaces, the stores in the central complexes of peripheral settlements, and storerooms in many of the excavated elite mansions and ordinary houses highlight the importance that social groups placed on the production, collection, processing and storage of agricultural and pastoral goods.
Thomas P. LeppardWorld Archaeology 46:4 (2014), 484-501
The spread of the Neolithic throughout Mediterranean Europe involved, at least to some degree, the physical movement of farmers westwards. This mobility has often been attributed to demographic or climatic factors, and long-term environmental changes of this type surely provided the backdrop against which subsistence practices and behavioral strategies developed.
This paper investigates the question of human mobility from a practice-centered perspective, and argues for the value of such approaches in elucidating how new ideas and objects enter a community and become ‘local’ over time.
Louise A. Hitchcock & Aren M. MaeirWorld Archaeology 46:4 (2014), 624-640
Historical accounts indicate pirates were able to create culturally mixed tribal entities and identities by incorporating new followers from different cultures into their social structure.
Analyses of performance (and performance events) depicted in the iconography from Minoan Crete most often focus upon religious aspects of these activities. In this article, a performance approach is adopted; this alternative viewpoint emphasizes the significance of performances for materializing ideologies, reinforcing elements of the socio-political order and the negotiation of power relations.
A Danish eighteenth-century find of some bronze figurines tells the story of the practising of similar ritual performances across Bronze Age Europe from Egypt to Scandinavia. The Danish figurines, as well as Swedish rock carvings, show backwards-bending female acrobats doing backward handsprings.
Peter Grave, Lisa Kealhofer, Ben Marsh, Ulf Dietrich Schoop, Jürgen Seeher, John W. Bennett & Attila StopicAntiquity 88:342 (December 2014), 1180-1200
The island of Cyprus was a major producer of copper and stood at the heart of east Mediterranean trade networks during the Late Bronze Age. It may also have been the source of the Red Lustrous Wheelmade Ware that has been found in mortuary contexts in Egypt and the Levant, and in Hittite temple assemblages in Anatolia.
David Frankel & Jennifer M. WebbAntiquity 88:340 (June 2014), 425-440
When fire swept through a workshop at Ambelikou Aletri on Cyprus in the nineteenth or twentieth century BC it brought a sudden halt to pottery production, leaving the latest batch of recently fired vessels.
Paolo Cherubini, Turi Humbel, Hans Beeckman, Holger Gärtner, David Mannes, Charlotte Pearson, Werner Schoch, Roberto Tognetti & Simcha Lev YadunAntiquity 88:339 (March 2014), 267-273
The massive eruption of the volcano beneath the island of Thera (Santorini) in the middle of the Aegean Sea provides a fundamental datum point in the history of the Late Bronze Age civilisations of the eastern Mediterranean.
Walter L. Friedrich, Bernd Kromer, Michael Friedrich, Jan Heinemeier, Tom Pfeiffer & Sahra TalamoAntiquity 88:339 (March 2014), 274-277
Cherubini et al. question the reliability of identifying annual growth increments in olive trees, and therefore voice caution against the result of the wiggle-match of the four sections of a branch of an olive tree to the 14C calibration curve.
