Set in stone: the role of relief-carved stone vessels in Neopalatial Minoan elite propaganda

Abstract

Two major works have been published that consider in detail Minoan relief-carved stone vessels, Peter Warren'sMinoan Stone Vases(1969) and Bernd Kaiser'sUntersuchungen zum minoischen Relief(1976). However, while both these texts provide useful catalogues of the vessels that had been discovered up to the time of their writing, neither provides an analysis of these vessels that considers the body of artefacts as a whole, rather than as a series of individual pieces. This trend has continued until the present day, with numerous articles appearing on the more famous pieces, such as the Harvester Vase and the Boxer Rhyton, but nothing examining the entire corpus of material. In this paper it is argued that when these vessels are considered together they produce an important indication of the sources of power that were used by the elite of Minoan society, specifically the male members of the elite, to justify and reinforce their elevated position in society, and furthermore, that the message of these vessels was aimed at other members of elite society as well as the non-elite.