Valasia IsaakidouOxford Journal of Archaeology 36.1 (2017): 43-59
Early Bronze Age southern Aegean mortuary assemblages have yielded three distinctive classes of bone artefact. Comparison with contemporary unworked bone assemblages and contextually or formally related objects in other materials reveals complex cultural associations, the symbolic meaning of which is explored through heuristic use of ethnographic analogues.
Bartłomiej LisOxford Journal of Archaeology 36.3 (2017): 243-266
The study highlights survival of pottery traditions with roots in the Middle Helladic period well into the Late Bronze Age, a fact that has not received appropriate attention in the scholarly discourse. It captures the very last stage of their existence, as just a few decades later the production and consumption are entirely dominated by Mycenaean pottery.
Guy D. MiddletonOxford Journal of Archaeology 36.4 (2017): 395-412
In this paper, I introduce the various categories of evidence and draw on them to support an imaginative reconstruction of an event that happened, but which is not recorded in any historical sources – the death and burial of a great king of Mycenae.
A. Fletcher, D. Baird, M. Spataro & A. FairbairnCambridge Archaeological Journal 27.2 (May 2017): 351-369
Fragments of possible fired clay found at Boncuklu Höyük, central Turkey, appear to derive from rudimentary vessels, despite the later ninth- and early eighth-millennium cal. bc and thus ‘Aceramic’ dates for the site. This paper will examine the evidence for such fired clay vessels at Boncuklu and consider their implications as examples of some of the earliest pottery in Anatolia.
Erika WeibergCambridge Archaeological Society 27.3 (August 2017): 479-494
Late Early Bronze Age (EB IIB–III, 2500–2000 bc ) evidence from the northeast Peloponnese and central Crete present two coeval sequences of events with very different societal outcomes. By drawing on resilience theory and the model of adaptive cycles, this article explores when and why the paths of mainland Greece and Crete diverged around 2200 bc, leading to an eventually destabilizing change on the mainland and a more sustainable one on Crete.
The question of ‘-isations’, such as ‘Romanisation’, has been a concern of archaeologists for many years; here it is ‘-isations’ of the prehistoric Aegean world that are the focus of attention.
Katerina Douka, Nikos Efstratiou, Mette Marie Hald, Peter Steen Henriksen & Alexandra KaretsouAntiquity 91.356 (2017): 304-321
The results from Crete and western Anatolia suggest that an earlier, small-scale Aceramic colonisation preceded the later Neolithic reoccupation of Knossos.
Antony Harding & Helen Hughes-BrockAntiquity 91.359 (2017): 1382-1385
In August 1998 the German archaeological world was stunned when two amateur archaeologists found decorated gold-sheet ornaments on a hill in Bavaria north of Munich, near a farm named Bernstorf, in the commune of Kranzberg. A Bronze Age fortified enclosure was known there, local amateurs having excavated it earlier in the 1990s; later, permission was granted for gravel extraction, trees were cleared and it was in this disturbed area that the gold appeared.
Recent analysis of Iron Age textiles from Italy and Greece indicates that, despite the use of similar textile technologies at this time, Italy shared the textile culture of Central Europe, while Greece largely followed the Near Eastern traditions of textile production.
Jörg WeilhartnerAmerican Journal of Archaeology 121.2 (April 2017): 219-236
Communal feasting has provoked much interest among scholars of Aegean prehistory. Discussions of the archaeological, archaeozoological, and textual data of the Mycenaean Palatial period have provided important insights into the role of this ritual practice as part of a sociopolitical strategy of the Mycenaean elite.
Sylviane DédérixAmerican Journal of Archaeology 121.1 (January 2017): 5-37
The results of the GIS analyses emphasize that circular tombs were as a rule constructed near optimal paths. Nevertheless, the spatial pattern testifies to synchronic and diachronic variations, which, examined in the light of the distribution of non-Cretan grave goods, support the conclusion of previous research that different social strategies underlay the appearance and adoption of this burial type throughout the study area.
Bartłomiej LisAmerican Journal of Archaeology 121.2 (April 2017): 183-217
Through the analysis of the cooking pottery repertoire, I investigate the issue of how food was manipulated by those competing for status. I argue that the appearance of innovative cooking utensils and their sets can be associated with changes in food-preparation practices, leading to more elaborate cuisine.
This paper offers new high-resolution oxygen and carbon isotope data from Stalagmite S1 from Mavri Trypa Cave, SW Peloponnese. Our data provide the climate background to the destruction of the nearby Mycenaean Palace of Nestor at Pylos at the transition from Late Helladic (LH) IIIB to LH IIIC, ~3150–3130 years before present (before AD 1950, hereafter yrs BP) and the subsequent period.
Given the latest archaeological evidence, one should expect terms pertaining to water management and hydraulic engineering in the Linear B corpus. Identification of such terms will aid in current and future interpretations.
A long-standing consensus among Mycenaean scholars is that a-re-ja, an epithet of Hermes in the Pylos tablet Tn 316, must be somehow related to Ares, the war god. Hermes Areiās would be either a derivative in *-ās of Ares or, according to a recent suggestion, an abbreviated compound in the first member of which Ares would figure. The present paper argues for a different solution, taking a-re-ja (dat.) /aleii̯āi/ as an apposed noun epithet of the root *h2leu̯- ‘to ward off’.
