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Aegeus Society For Aegean Prehistory

ARTICLES | 2010

Minoan Genius on a LH III Pictorial Sherd from Phylakopi, Melos? Some Remarks on Religious and Ceremonial Scenes on Mycenaean Pictorial Pottery

Mario Benzi Pasiphae. Rivista di filologia e antichità egee 3 (2009) [2010]: 9-26.

The fragment discussed in this article was found in the earliest excavations at the Cycladic site of Phylakopi and is now preserved in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens (NM 11418). It was given only a summary description by Edgar in his discussion of the pottery from the site and was later discussed by Sakellarakis in his survey of the Mycenaean Pictorial Pottery in the National Museum, but until now it has attracted little or no attention by scholars. Sakellarakis assigns the fragment to a large deep bowl krater of FS 282.

Variations in the 13C/12C ratios of modern wheat grain, and implications for interpreting data from Bronze Age Assiros Toumba, Greece

Tim H.E. Heaton, Glynis Jones, Paul Halstead & Taxiarchis Tsipropoulos Journal of Archaeological Science 36.10 (October 2009): 2224-2233.

Variations in the 13C/12C ratios of wheat grain at different spatial and temporal scales are examined by analysis of modern samples, including harvests of einkorn and durum wheat from Greece, and serve as a guide to interpreting data for Bronze Age grains from Assiros Toumba.

‘We don’t talk about Çatalhöyük, we live it’: sustainable archaeological practice through community-based participatory research

Sonya Atalay World Archaeology 42.3 (2010): 418-429.

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) provides a methodology for engaging descendent and local communities as partners in archaeological research. This article, based on a five-year comparative research project that examines CBPR’s application to archaeology, demonstrates a collaborative model that involves reciprocity, is action based and aims to build community capacity while engaging communities in the process of archaeological research and heritage management.

The Minoan lion: Presence and absence on Bronze Age Crete

Andrew Shapland World Archaeology 42.2 (2010): 273-289.

Animal depictions are frequently treated by archaeologists either as direct reflections of human-animal relations or as symbolic of social realities. This paper offers a different way of conceptualizing animal depictions, as objects which mediate between society and human relationships with non-human animals.

Political geography and palatial Crete

Andrew Bevan Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 23.1 (2010): 27-54.

The political geography of Crete during the period of the Bronze Age palaces has been a subject of widespread debate, not only with respect to the timing of the island’s move towards greater social and political complexity, but also with regard to the nature of the political institutions and territorial configurations that underpinned palace-centred society, as well as their longer-term stability over the course of the second millennium BC.

Location and perspective in the Theran Flotilla Fresco

Thomas F. Strasser Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 23.1 (2010): 3-26.

The Flotilla Fresco from Akrotiri on Thera depicts 14 sea craft, with seven large ships seemingly en route between two landmasses. There are, however, strong arguments against the idea of a long-distance voyage, and instead this study supports the concept of a nautical ceremony.

Mycenaean Dimini in context: Investigating regional variability and socioeconomic complexities in Late Bronze Age Greece

Panagiota A. Pantou American Journal of Archaeology 114.3 (July 2010): 381-401.

Recent excavations at the Mycenaean town of Dimini in the Bay of Volos in Thessaly have led to the interpretation of this site by its excavator as the regional “palatial” administrative center. This article discusses the available archaeological evidence from all three known Mycenaean settlements in the Bay of Volos (Dimini, Kastro and Pefkakia) and considers aspects of settlement pattern, architecture, artifact distribution, burial practices, and craft specialization in those settlements.

Swords and Swordsmanship in the Aegean Bronze Age

Barry Molloy American Journal of Archaeology 114.3 (July 2010): 403-428.

Warfare and combat are often considered to have played central roles in the characterization of elite identities and the social evolution of Aegean Bronze Age polities of Crete and the Greek mainland. Iconography and mortuary practice provide insights into how warrior identity and violence were materially celebrated.

A Return to the Dark Ages? Reply to Thornton et al. 2010

Nissim Amzallag American Journal of Archaeology 114.2 (April 2010): 317-329.

A synthetic theory pointing out the central importance of metallurgy in the emergence of Bronze Age civilizations was recently published in the AJA (‘From Metallurgy to Bronze Age Civilizations: The Synthetic Theory’ [2009] 497-519). In reaction, six well-known authors (Christopher Thornton, Jonathan Golden, David Killick, Vincent Pigott, Thilo Rehren, and Benjamin Roberts) have written a rebuttal devoted mainly to defending the current localizationist paradigm challenged by the synthetic theory.

The provenance of some glass ingots from the Uluburun shipwreck

C.M. Jackson & P.T. Nicholson Journal of Archaeological Science 37.2 (February 2010): 295-301.

The discovery of a Late Bronze Age trading vessel at Uluburun near Kaş off the Turkish coast offers exciting possibilities for our understanding of Bronze Age trade. On board the ship was a large consignment of glass ingots that were assumed to originate either from Mesopotamia or Egypt.

The Master of Animals in Old World Iconography

Edited by Derek B. Counts & Bettina Arnold Budapest

The Master of Animals in Old World Iconography Old World iconography from the Upper Paleolithic to the Christian era consistently features symbolic representations of both female and male protagonists in conflict with, accompanied by or transmuted partly or completely into, animals. Adversarial relationships are made explicit through hunting and sacrifice scenes, including heraldic compositions featuring a central figure grasping beasts arrayed on either side, while more implicit expressions are manifested in zoomorphic attributes (horns, headdresses, skins, etc.) and composite or hybrid figures that blend animal and human elements into a single image.

Archaic State Interaction. The Eastern Mediterranean in the Bronze Age

Edited by William A. Parkinson & Michael L. Galaty Santa Fe, New Mexico

Archaic State Interaction. The Eastern Mediterranean in the Bronze Age In current archaeological research the failure to find common ground between world-systems theory believers and their counterparts has resulted in a stagnation of theoretical development in regards to modeling how early state societies interacted with their neighbors. This book is an attempt to redress these issues. By shifting the theoretical focus away from questions of state evolution to state interaction, the authors develop anthropological models for understanding how ancient states interacted with one another and with societies of different scales of economic and political organization.