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Aegeus Society For Aegean Prehistory

ARTICLES | 2016

From reciprocity to centricity: the Middle Bronze Age in the Greek mainland

Sofia Voutsaki Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 29.1 (2016): 70-78

In this paper, I examine the role of reciprocal relations in processes of social change. More precisely, I discuss the transformation of modes of interaction and sumptuary behavior across a long period, from the collapse of the Early Bronze Age proto-urban societies, through the slow recovery during the Middle Bronze Age, to the intensification of social change during the transition to the Mycenaean period

Homeric reciprocities

Erwin Cook Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 29.1 (2016): 94-104

A modified version of Marshall Sahlins’s model of reciprocity, which maps the modes of reciprocity across kinship distance, helps elucidate reciprocity in Homer. With important qualifications, Homeric reciprocity can also elucidate the social realities of Archaic Greece.

‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’: reciprocity in Mycenaean political economies

Daniel J. Pullen Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 29.1 (2016): 78-88

Reciprocity has seen much less attention by Aegean archaeologists than other economic concepts such as redistribution, largely because of an assumption that reciprocity is characteristic of ‘egalitarian’ or less developed societies, as well as a related interest in political economies of more complex (palatial) societies, which are assumed to be characterized by redistribution.

Spherulites and aspiring elites: the identification, distribution, and consumption of Giali obsidian (Dodecanese, Greece)

Tristan Carter, Daniel A. Contreras, Kathryn Campeau & Kyle Freund Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 29.1 (2016): 3-36

This paper details the results of a survey of the obsidian sources on the island of Giali in the Dodecanese, Greece, together with a review of these raw materials’ use from the Mesolithic to the Late Bronze Age (ninth to second millennium Cal BC).

Reciprocity: a response

Sarah P. Morris Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 29.1 (2016): 111-118

This response to a set of wide-ranging papers on the dimensions of reciprocity in Bronze Age Greece introduces three areas for further research, in order to expand the framework in terms of gender, space, and time.

Iron Age reciprocity

Carla Antonaccio Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 29.1 (2016): 104-111

This paper focuses on reciprocity in the context of Bronze Age collapse and early Iron Age ‘reboot’. The highest level of Mycenaean hierarchy collapsed, but neither the entire system, nor the entire ideology, vanished with the palaces: the basileus and a warrior elite survived and moved into places of authority.

Reciprocity in Aegean palatial societies: gifts, debt, and the foundations of economic exchange

Dimitri Nakassis, Michael L. Galaty & William A. Parkinson Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 29.1 (2016): 61-132

This collection of papers is the third and final installment in a series meant to update the archaeological study of Aegean Bronze Age economies based on current research in economic anthropology and new archaeological and textual data from Minoan and Mycenaean states.

Middle Pleistocene sea-crossings in the eastern Mediterranean?

Duncan Howitt-Marshall & Curtis Runnels Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 42 (2016): 140–153

Lower and Middle Palaeolithic artifacts on Greek islands separated from the mainland in the Middle and Upper Pleistocene may be proxy evidence for maritime activity in the eastern Mediterranean.