This book provides the most complete overview of the Attica region from the Neolithic to the end of the Late Bronze Age. It paves the way for a new understanding of Attica in the Early Iron Age and indirectly throws new light on the origins of what will later become the polis of the Athenians.
This volume brings together papers that discuss social change. The main focus is on the Early Helladic III to Late Helladic I period in southern Greece, but also touches upon the surrounding islands. This specific timeframe enables us to consider how mainland societies recovered from a ‘crisis’ and how they eventually developed into the differentiated, culturally receptive and competitive social formations of the early Mycenaean period. Material changes are highlighted in the various papers, ranging from pottery and burials to domestic architecture and settlement structures, followed by discussions of how these changes relate to social change. A variety of factors is thereby considered including demographic changes, reciprocal relations and sumptuary behavior, household organization and kin structure, age and gender divisions, internal tensions, connectivity and mobility. As such, this volume is of interest to both Aegean prehistorians as to scholars interested in social and material change. The volume consists of eight papers, preceded by an introduction and concluded by a response. The introduction gives an overview of the development of the debate on the explanation of social change in Aegean prehistory. The response places the volume in a broader context of the EH III-LH I period and the broader discussion on social change.
Contents: Preface and Acknowledgments Introductory note Abbreviations A. OPENING LECTURE Liv Helga DOMMASNES Women in archaeology in Norway: twenty years of gendered archaeological practice and some thoughts about changes to come B. PLENARY SESSION - A TRIBUTE TO PAUL REHAK: PAST AND PRESENT GENDER ISSUES, A STATE OF ART Paul REHAK (ed. John YOUNGER) Some unpublished studies by Paul Rehak on gender in Aegean art Alexandra ALEXANDRI Envisioning gender in Aegean prehistory Dimitra KOKKINIDOU and Marianna NIKOLAIDOU Feminism and Greek archaeology: an encounter long over-due C. WORLDS OF WOMEN, MEN AND BEYOND: GENDER IDENTITIES, ROLES, INTERACTIONS, SYMBOLISMS Cyprus Diane BOLGER Beyond male/female: recent approaches to gender in Cypriot prehistory Giorgos VAVOURANAKIS A "speared Aphrodite" from Bronze Age Audemou, Cyprus Jordan Julia MULLER-CLEMM Cemetery A of Tell el-Mazar, Jordan. A gender-critical relecture Spain Paloma GONZALEZ-MARCEN and Sandra MONTON-SUBIAS Time, women, identity and maintenance activities. Death and life in the Argaric communities of southeast Iberia Margarita SANCHEZ-ROMERO Women in Bronze Age southeast Iberian peninsula : daily life, relationships, identities Aegean and the Balkans Christina MARANGOU Gendered/sexed and sexless beings in prehistory: readings of the invisible gender Aegean Louise A. HITCHCOCK Knossos is burning: gender bending the Minoan genius Penelope J.P. McGEORGE Gender meta-analysis of Late Bronze Age skeletal remains: the case of Tomb 2 in the Pylona cemetery on Rhodes Barbara A. OLSEN Was there unity in Mycenaean gender practices? The women of Pylos and Knossos in the Linear B tablets Kim S. SHELTON Who wears the horns? Gender choices in Mycenaean terracotta figurines Alexander UCHITEL The Minoan Linear A sign for "woman": a tentative identification Judith WEINGARTEN The Zakro master and questions of gender Marika ZEIMBEKI Gender, kinship and material culture in Aegean Bronze Age ritual D. FORMATION OF PAST GENDER: COMING OF AGE, CHILDHOOD, WOMANHOOD, MOTHERHOOD Francoise AUDOUZE and Frederic JANNY Can we hope to identify children's activities in Upper Palaeolithic settlements? Anne P. CHAPIN Constructions of male youth and gender in Aegean art: the evidence from Late Bronze Age Crete and Thera Katerina KOPAKA Mothers in Aegean stratigraphies? The dawn of ever-continuing engendered life cycles Maia POMADERE Ou sont les meres ? Representations et realites de la maternite dans le monde egeen protohistorique John G. YOUNGER "We are woman": girl, maid, matron in Aegean art E. READING AEGEAN GENDER: THROUGH WOMEN'S AND MEN'S EYES Isabelle BRADFER-BURDET Phedre ou la Goulue : l'antiquite travestie. Les femmes de l'Age du Bronze mises a nu par les archeologues du XXeme siecle Gerald CADOGAN Gender metaphors of social stratigraphy in pre-linear B Crete , or Is "Minoan gynaecocracy" (still) credible? Lucy GOODISON Gender, body and the Minoans: contemporary and prehistoric perceptions Christine MORRIS The iconography of the bared breast in Aegean Bronze Age art F. ENGENDERING AEGEAN FIELDWORK: THE CONTRIBUTION OF WOMEN ARCHAEOLOGISTS Susan Heuck ALLEN Excavating women: female pairings in early Aegean archaeology (1871-1918) Anna Lucia D'AGATA Women archaeologists and non-palatial Greece: a case-study from Crete "of the hundred cities" Metaxia TSIPOPOULOU Harriet Boyd's "granddaughters": women directors of excavations and surveys in Crete at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century.
The history of the Ancient Near East covers a huge chronological frame, from the first pictographic texts of the late 4th millennium to the conquest of Alexander the Great in 333 BC. During these millennia, different societies developed in a changing landscape where sheep (and their wool) always played an important economic role. The 22 papers presented here explore the place of wool in the ancient economy of the region, where large-scale textile production began during the second half of the 3rd millennium. By placing emphasis on the development of multi-disciplinary methodologies, experimentation and use of archaeological evidence combined with ancient textual sources, the wide-ranging contributions explore a number of key themes. These include: the first uses of wool in textile manufacture and organization of weaving; trade and exchange; the role of wool in institutionalized economies; and the reconstruction of the processes that led to this first form of industry in Antiquity. The numerous archaeological and written sources provide an enormous amount of data on wool, textile crafts, and clothing and these inter-disciplinary studies are beginning to present a comprehensive picture of the economic and cultural impact of woollen textiles and textile manufacturing on formative ancient societies.
This revised and expanded edition of the classic 1999 edited book includes all the chapters from the original volume plus a new, updated, introduction and several new chapters. The current book is an up-to-date review of research into Mycenaean palatial systems with chapters by archaeologists and Linear B specialists that will be useful to scholars, instructors, and advanced students. This book aims to define more accurately the term "palace" in light of both recent archaeological research in the Aegean and current anthropological thinking on the structure and origin of early states. Regional centers do not exist as independent entities. They articulate with more extensive sociopolitical systems. The concept of palace needs to be incorporated into enhanced models of Mycenaean state organization, ones that more completely integrate primary centers with networks of regional settlement and economy.
Winner of the 1990 American Book Award What is classical about Classical civilization? In one of the most audacious works of scholarship ever written, Martin Bernal challenges the foundation of our thinking about this question. Classical civilization, he argues, has deep roots in Afroasiatic cultures. But these Afroasiatic influences have been systematically ignored, denied or suppressed since the eighteenth century—chiefly for racist reasons. The popular view is that Greek civilization was the result of the conquest of a sophisticated but weak native population by vigorous Indo-European speakers—Aryans—from the North. But the Classical Greeks, Bernal argues, knew nothing of this “Aryan model.” They did not see their institutions as original, but as derived from the East and from Egypt in particular. In an unprecedented tour de force, Bernal links a wide range of areas and disciplines—drama, poetry, myth, theological controversy, esoteric religion, philosophy, biography, language, historical narrative, and the emergence of “modern scholarship.” This volume is the second in a three-part series concerned with the competition between two historical models for the origins of Greek civilization. Volume II is concerned with the archaeological and documentary evidence for contacts between Egypt and the Levant on the one hand, and the Aegean on the other, during the Bronze Age from c. 34000 BC to c. 1100 BC. These approaches are supplemented by information from later Greek myths, legends, religious cults, and language. The author concludes that contact between the two regions was far more extensive and influential than is generally believed. In the introduction to this volume, Bernal also responds to some reviews and criticism of Volume I of Black Athena.
Athenian governance and culture are reconstructed from the Bronze Age into the historical era based on traditions, archaeological contexts and remains, foremost the formal commensal and libation krater.
A new island archaeology and island history of Bronze Age and early Iron Age Cyprus, set in its Mediterranean context. In this extensively illustrated study, A. Bernard Knapp addresses an under-studied but dynamic new field of archaeological enquiry - the social identity of prehistoric and protohistoric Mediterranean islanders.
