Minoan Research Articles

Y-Chromosome Haplotypes in the Greek–Turkish Area

Various populations have contributed to the present-day gene pool in oriental Mediterranean (Aegean Sea) and are well documented for ancient history. The primary objective of the study is to report on the analysis of the paternal component of the variation (Y chromosome haplotypes) in contemporary populations in Greece, Crete, Turkey and Cyprus. A total of 245 males who hailed from five different locations in Turkey, Greece, and the islands of Crete and Cyprus were analyzed for Y-chromosome-specific haplotypes based on p49a,f TaqI polymorphism. The main haplotype observed (21.2%) in the Greek–Turkish area is haplotype VII. The second haplotype in terms of frequency (13.5%) is haplotype VIII, which is characteristic of Semitic populations. The third (11.4%), fourth (6.9%) and fifth (5.7%) haplotypes in frequency are haplotype XI (a typical eastern European haplotype), haplotype V (the North African haplotype) and haplotype XV (the Western European haplotype), respectively. The distribution of haplotype VII is significantly heterogeneous genetically among the five localities studied, with a peak of frequency (43.8%) in Crete. It is proposed that haplotype VII reflects the ancient Minoan civilization. Haplotype VII frequencies actually known are mapped in countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea.

Late Minoan III and Early Iron Age Cretan Cylindrical Terracotta Models: A Reconsideration

The present study explores the possible interpretation of the terracotta cylindrical models found in Late Minoan to Early Iron Age contexts (generally known as “(circular) hut models”) as reduced-scale models of tholos tombs. Theoretical issues concerning the relationship of an ‘architectural model’ with the archaeological context in which it is found are examined in order to support the above-mentioned suggestion. Archaeological data concerning the morphology, chronology, distribution, use and significance of the Late Minoan and Early Iron Age tholos tombs are explored in order to contribute to the discussion. The possible connection between the presence of the LM III tomb models in domestic contexts and the absence of contemporary intramural burials allows us to expand on the possible significance of these artefacts for our knowledge of LM mortuary practices and beliefs, especially those concerning the possible practice of ‘ancestor worship’. The presence of terracotta figurines of the ‘Minoan Goddess with Upraised Arms’ type attached in the interior of two examples (from SM Knossos and PG B Archanes) is considered as a late development within the tradition of these models and linked with the practice of placing MGUA figures in Early Iron Age tholos tombs (Rhotasi, Kourtes).

Pottery Wares from the Prehistoric Settlement at Ialysos (Trianda) in Rhodes

Among the vast amount of pottery yielded from the Late Bronze Age settlement of Ialysos (Trianda) on Rhodes, 233 samples have been selected for chemical analysis by means of Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) at the Bonn Laboratory. Thus, a rather comprehensive new data-base for pottery assemblages from Rhodes and other related production centres has been provided. Further evidence has been also suggested for the local mechanisms of pottery production and the patterns of continuity and changes from the LM IA, through to LMIB/LH IIA and LH IIB-III A1 to LH III A2/LH III B1 periods, in both the intra site and inter site relations of the island with Minoan Crete, the Greek mainland, the Argolid, Cyprus, and other eastern Mediterranean sites.The study sets the basis for further studies towards the identification of the rather complex system of the society of Ialysos and its interaction with some other yet unknown centers in the Aegean during the early stages of the Bronze Age and throughout the periods of the Minoan and Mycenaean expansion.

(A.L.) D'Agata and (J.) Moody with (E.) Williams Eds.Ariadne's Threads. Connections between Crete and the Greek Mainland in the Late Minoan III (LM IIIA2 to LM IIIC). Proceedings of the international workshop held at Athens, Scuola Archeologica Italiana, 5–6 April 2003. (Tripodes 3). Athens: Scuola archeologica italiana di Atene, 2005. Pp. 474, illus. €70. 960874055X.

(A.L.) D'Agata and (J.) Moody with (E.) Williams <i>Eds.</i>Ariadne's Threads. Connections between Crete and the Greek Mainland in the Late Minoan III (LM IIIA₂ to LM IIIC). Proceedings of the international workshop held at Athens, Scuola Archeologica Italiana, 5–6 April 2003. (Tripodes 3). Athens: Scuola archeologica italiana di Atene, 2005. Pp. 474, illus. €70. 960874055X.

Marvels of the system. Art, perception and engagement with the environment in Minoan Crete

This paper discusses the relationship between art, perception and human engagement with the environment in Minoan Crete through the depiction of landscapes and the ‘natural world’ in art. It is argued that the conventional approaches to Minoan ‘nature scenes’, based on the representation and expression theories of art, are overshadowed by modernist assumptions about art and human–environment relations. The paper then proceeds to discuss the workings of visual perception and the dynamics of human–environment systems. On that basis, the nature of human–environment relations in Minoan Crete is reconsidered and an ‘ecological’ approach to ancient art explored. A tentative suggestion is made that Minoan nature scenes might be understood as instruments for perceiving and knowing the environment, and some broader implications of the ecological perspective for the interpretation of the archaeological record of Minoan Crete are indicated.

Chronology for the Aegean Late Bronze Age 1700-1400 B.C.

Radiocarbon (carbon-14) data from the Aegean Bronze Age 1700-1400 B.C. show that the Santorini (Thera) eruption must have occurred in the late 17th century B.C. By using carbon-14 dates from the surrounding region, cultural phases, and Bayesian statistical analysis, we established a chronology for the initial Aegean Late Bronze Age cultural phases (Late Minoan IA, IB, and II). This chronology contrasts with conventional archaeological dates and cultural synthesis: stretching out the Late Minoan IA, IB, and II phases by approximately 100 years and requiring reassessment of standard interpretations of associations between the Egyptian and Near Eastern historical dates and phases and those in the Aegean and Cyprus in the mid-second millennium B.C.

Social Strategies and Spatial Dynamics in Neopalatial Crete: An Analysis of the North-Central Area

Neopalatial Crete possessed a high degree of homogeneity in its material culture, leading many to interpret political and social unification under the capital of Knossos. Recent studies on the regionalism of particular types of data have questioned this appraisal. This article builds upon such work with an interdisciplinary approach to north-central Crete, which includes the palatial sites of Knossos, Malia, and Galatas, other large and small settlements, ports, and ritual sites. The spatial distribution patterns of a wide range of data are analyzed, with specific reference to the formalized practices and conspicuous consumption resulting from elite social strategies. It is argued that early state-level societies, such as Minoan Crete, were not necessarily formed of well-demarcated territorial states possessing a single central place analogous with modern nation-states. Instead, the different types and scales of centralization are explored, with the separation of the ideological, political, and economic spheres. It is concluded that the intense ideological centralization around Knossos is coupled with a high degree of sociopolitical competition among the surrounding elites, leading to a wide spatial distribution of elite features. In contrast, Malia sits in a void of other large and elaborate settlements and ritual sites, but this centralization (if not monopolization) indicates the presence of far weaker power relations on the regional scale.

Archaeoseismology and Neocatastrophism

As we cannot know what will happen in the future, to estimate likely earthquake hazards we have to find out what happened in the past and extrapolate from there. Previous research has uncovered evidence of destructive earthquakes in areas of the eastern Mediterranean where only small events have been experienced recently, with the evidence drawn from realistic physical considerations and input data. For earthquakes before our era, however, historical and archaeological data, which are rarely unambiguous and always of little use to the scientist, have attracted interpretations that are influenced by the dogma of catastrophism, attributing to earthquakes the obliteration of the eastern Mediterranean region in the Bronze Age, large movements of peoples, and the demise of flourishing city-states. In the early part of the 19th century geology was under the influence of the dogma of catastrophism, the hypothesis that changes in the Earth occurred as a result of isolated major catastrophes of relatively short duration, as opposed to the idea implicit in uniformitarianism, that small changes are taking place continuously. Catastrophism passed off the scene, now more or less completely discarded, and uniformitarianism took over. The last few decades, however, have seen a gradual re-emergence of neocatastrophism, this time in the field of archaeoseismology, particularly for earthquakes before our era in the eastern Mediterranean, bringing back into prominence the ideas of Velikovsky (1950). To mention a few of the propounders of this dogma, Marinatos in the late 1930's postulated a catastrophic eruption of the volcano of Santorini and a seismic sea wave responsible for the demise of the Minoan civilization (Marinatos, 1939). Then followed Schaeffer (1948), who attempted to account for gaps in the sequence of civilizations in the 3rd or 2nd millennium in the Middle East within a relatively short period by a series of major seismic …

Bronzeworking on Late Minoan Crete: A Diachronic Study. By Lena Hakulin.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsBronzeworking on Late Minoan Crete: A Diachronic Study. By Lena Hakulin.Carole GillisCarole Gillis Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Archaeology Volume 109, Number 3July 2005 The journal of the Archaeological Institute of America Views: 2Total views on this site Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/AJS40026134 Views: 2Total views on this site Copyright © 2005 by the Archaeological Institute of America. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Inventing the Minoans

This study explores the modern history of Minoan culture and the myth of Minoan archaeology. Emerging from the cultural milieu of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the genesis of this culture formed in the mind of Arthur Evans soon after he began excavations at Knossos in 1900. By 1930, he had transformed the site previously excavated by Minos Kalokairinos and earlier known as Tou Tseleve he Kephala and Ta Pitharia into the so-called Palace of Minos, and from poorly preserved ruins into a brightly painted, multi-storied, concrete vision of the past. After Evans’s death, the restored palace became one of the most visited archaeological sites in the world and, in the process, the restoration assumed its own historical identity and became a major problem of conservation. Evans was the first not only to restore a monument to such an extent, but also to use actual archaeological remains as a medium of expression. Beyond giving posterity his vision of the past, Evans was to have a much greater influence on archaeological thought than is currently conceded. Evans viewed his Minoans as the first great European culture, but it was his disciple, V. Gordon Childe, who was to apply the concept of an archaeological culture systematically in his The Dawn of European Civilization (1925), thereby making it a working tool for all European archaeologists. At the brink of modernity, archaeology became entangled with a quest for European identity, and the legacy of that time continues to exert its influence on the present.

Ancient Archives and Archival Traditions: Concepts of Record-Keeping in the Ancient World

1. Ancient Archives and Concepts of Record Keeping: An Introduction 2. Archival Record-keeping at Ebla 2400-2350 BC 3. Archival Practices in Third-millennium Babylonia 4. Private and Public: The Ur-Utu Archive at Sippar-Amnanum (Tell Ed-Der) 5. Archives of Old Assyrian Traders 6. Documents in Government Under the Middle Assyrian Kingdom 7. Local Differences in Arrangements of Ration Lists on Minoan Crete 8. 'Archives' and 'Scribes' and Information Hierarchy in Mycenean Greek Linear B Records 9. Reflections on Neo-Assyrian Archives 10. Aramaic Documents of the Assyrian and Achaemenid Periods 11. Record-keeping Practices as Revealed by teh neo-Babylonian Private Archival Documents 12. Reconstructing an Archive: Account and Journal Texts from Persepolis 13. Cuneiform Arcgives in Hellenistic Babylonia: Aspects of Contents and Form 14. They Did Not Write on Clay: Non-Cuneiform Documents and Archives in Seleucid Mesopotamia 15. Greek Archives: From Record to Monument 16. Tomoi Synkollesimoi

Abandonment of Minoan palaces on Crete in relation to the earthquake induced changes in groundwater supply

Mysterious abandonment of palaces on Crete during the Late Minoan period was always a challenging problem for archeologists and geologists. Various hypotheses explained this event by effects of tsunamis, earthquakes or climatic changes that were caused by the volcanic eruption of the Santorini volcano. While each of them or their possible combination contributed to the abandonment of palaces and following Late Minoan crisis, there is another possible cause that appeared as a result of studies within the last 20–30 years. This cause is depletion of groundwater supply caused by persistent earthquake activity that took place during the Bronze Age. This explanation is supported by field observations and numerous studies of similar phenomena in other locations.

New pottery from the Psychro Cave and its implications for Minoan Crete

Recently discovered pottery from David Hogarth's 1899 excavation in the Psychro Cave is published in this study. The great majority of these vases can, on the basis of their fabric and decoration, be traced to Malia, Knossos and the Lasithi Plain. During the MM I-LM I A period most of the fine ware pottery dedicated at the Psychro came from Malia. The monumental size of the sanctuary and the large number (and the elite character) of the votives indicates that during MM I B-LM I A Psychro was the main extra-urban sanctuary for the polity centred at Malia. During LM I B-III A1/2 virtually all of the decorated vases from Psychro are Knossian. This change suggests that Mycenaean Knossos assumed control of the sanctuary during this time, and that some of these vases are those referred to in the Linear B tablet from Knossos KN. Fp 1 that lists dedications of oil sent to Dictaean Zeus.

Christa Wolfs Kurze Reise in Den Mythos(Verpasste) Chancen Des Kassandra-Projekts

Christa Wolf's Cassandra Project – her story Cassandraand the series of lectures entitled Voraussetzungen einer Erzahlung: Kassandra (Frankfurter Poetik-Vorlesungen) – has tended to be viewed in the scientific debate in the context of contemporary discourse theories and to be described as a ‘mythical (counter-)model’ which, seen from a specifically female angle, yields a critical perspective on mythical traditions informed by male ideologies. According to academic consensus, the Cassandra Project undermines mythological traditions and is itself anything but a myth – it is a new discourse. However, this article endeavours to show that the Cassandra Project – especially when primarily read in the light of the implications of the Voraussetzungen – succeeds to a certain extent in linking the critical position of a female subject to remythicisation. As a result, even Wolf's literary language transcends the level of a discourse. In accordance with her aesthetic, anthropological and ultimately social goals, experiences and perceptions (during her journey to Greece) play a crucial part in this remythicisation. Here she fundamentally parts company with post-structuralist doctrine, in which linguistic discourses predominate, ruling out myth and remythicisation. At the same time, however, in allowing the Cassandra Project to be dominated by the ‘conditioning of suffering’, which corresponds to the dominant (male) Western discourse and history of ‘learning through suffering’, Wolf has let slip an important opportunity. Her manner of remythicisation ultimately fails to make use of the potential – actually referred to in the Voraussetzungen – of the forgotten/repressed myth, discourse and reality of the peaceful, happy and highly female-oriented Minoan culture of ancient Crete, the first ‘cradle of Europe’.

Assessing the role of architecture in conspicuous consumption in the middle minoan I–II periods

Summary. This paper uses Middle Minoan architecture to explore the degree to which the conceptualization and reconstruction of the First Palaces on Crete have been unduly influenced by the model of the Minoan palace as the centralized political, economic and religious authority. It is generally assumed that this model, first formulated on the basis of the LM II–III palace at Knossos, also serves to explain the First Palaces despite the fact that relatively little attention has hitherto been paid to their external and internal characteristics. Detailed reassessment of the available data strongly suggests that the First Palaces differed from their Late Bronze Age counterparts in several important ways. Particularly striking is the absence of so‐called ‘palatial’ architectural features (e.g. ashlar masonry, Minoan Hall, Lustral Basin, etc.), which hitherto had been thought to form an integral part of the First Palaces. Rather, the earliest evidence for these architectural features seems to be found in elite residences in settlement contexts (e.g. Malia). This observation urges a reassessment not only of the term ‘palatial’ architecture but also of the nature and location of power in Middle Bronze Age Crete and the role played by architecture as a medium of elite conspicuous consumption.

Book Review: Soil science and archaeology: three test cases from Minoan Crete

Book Review: Soil science and archaeology: three test cases from Minoan Crete

A Mortuary Perspective on Political Changes in Late Minoan II–IIIB Crete

In this article, I explore political developments on Crete in the Final and Postpalatial periods (the ceramic phases Late Minoan II to IIIB) through the evidence of high status mortuary practices. Patterns in tomb architecture, burial assemblages, and cemetery distributions provide insights into various changes in elite ideologies and in the island's political geography. In analyzing political dynamics, I consider agendas that operated on the intra-island level, to balance the frequent tendency to focus on external (mainland) agency in explaining the cultural and political transformations that occurred on Crete during this period. At the start of the Final Palatial period, new burial customs were introduced at the dominant center of Knossos. The new customs appear to have functioned as a medium for status competition in a horizon of political instability. Following an initial phase of mortuary experimentation, however, changes in the later Final Palatial period suggest a standardization in elites' strategies of mortuary self-representation at this center. Beyond Knossos, similar tomb practices began to occur at several centers in the later Final Palatial period, with an increase in mortuary display in the early Postpalatial phase that seems to indicate resurgent regional elites seizing the political opportunities attendant upon Knossos's collapse. Other aspects of the Postpalatial political geography highlighted are a shift in the focus of mortuary ostentation toward the far west of the island in LM IIIB, and more generally, evidence for further, local elites beyond the known regional centers across the island.

:* the Minoan civilization in Greek primary education

This paper discusses the representation and teaching of the Minoan civilization (Crete, c. 3000–1400 BC) in Greek primary education. Unlike Classical civilization, the Minoan civilization is a period less charged with nationalistic connotations. As primary education seems freer to experiment with the transmission of cultural knowledge than universities, I examine how this part of the past is taught. After an account of the current ‘Minoan’ educational experience (within and outside the curriculum), an analysis of primary school historical/archaeological education and the cognitive processes that have led to it is attempted. A theoretical model of the interplay of archaeology and the public is proposed, so as to place this pedagogy in a wider framework. Finally, issues of narrative, corporeality and cultural symbols are raised.

CONTEXTUALISING THE LARNAX: TRADITION, INNOVATION AND REGIONALISM IN COFFIN USE ON LATE MINOAN II–IIIB CRETE

Summary. This paper analyses coffin use in the tombs of Late Bronze Age Crete in terms of both mortuary traditions on the island and regional variations in cultural practices. It argues that the revival of coffin use in the Final and Post‐palatial periods (in ceramic terms, Late Minoan II–IIIB) constituted a recourse to an earlier burial custom within negotiations of rapidly changing mortuary practices across the island. However, this ‘re‐invention’ involved significant modifications to the form and significance of the coffin. The paper then explores spatial variations in choices of coffin types, as one potential window onto the issue of intra‐island regionalism in social and cultural practices.

Faulting and effects of earthquakes on Minoan archaeological sites in Crete (Greece)

Examination of damages affecting the buildings of the archaeological sites of Phaistos and Agia Triada (southern Crete) suggests that these Minoan settlements were probably destroyed by two major seismic events characterized by MKS intensities of IX–X and occurred at the end of the Protopalatial (1700 BC) and the Neopalatial (1450 BC) periods. Geological and morphological studies carried out in the neighbouring areas show the occurrence of E–W trending Quaternary normal fault segments (Spili and Agia Galini faults) that control the present topography and morphology, and exhibit steep young scarps mostly Holocene in age. These fault segments are related to a NW–SE extension direction, which is consistent with that indicated by the available focal mechanisms of the earthquakes occurring in this area in the last 50 years. Combining structural and seismic data we can infer that the Spili and Agia Galini fault segments could represent good candidates to be considered active faults generating large earthquakes ( M≅6.5) that were responsible for the damages of Phaistos and Agia Triada. This hypothesis suggests that the Minoan palatial centres were destroyed by several large earthquakes related to ruptures along distinct fault segments rather than by a single catastrophic event that caused the abrupt destruction of the Minoan civilisation in the eastern Mediterranean.