Stone Vessel Production: New Beginnings and New Visions in New-Palace Crete

Jacke Phillips In A. J. Shortland (ed.) 2017. The Social Context of Technological Change. Egypt and the Near East, 1650-1150 BC, Oxford: 73-91.

The end of the Old Palace and beginning of the New Palace period on Crete saw, amongst other key events in Minoan history, fundamental changes in the popularity of certain ceramic vases, a statement also true for stone vessels. Amongst other developments was the revival of the importation and, presumably, direct use of Egyptian stone vessels. The imports also began to be employed as models (to varying degrees) both for some new Minoan vessel forms and integrated with existing Minoan forms to produce new hybrid shapes, as well as being physically converted into popular Minoan types. Although some practices are found to an extremely limited degree at the beginning of Minoan stone vessel manufacture, they had begun to die out by the early Old Palace period. The New Palace revival of foreign stone vessel importation and inspiration fits within a larger picture of social and technological development on the island.