Minoan Archaeology

Perspectives for the 21st Century

Sarah Cappel, Ute Günkel-Maschek, Diamantis Panagiotopoulos

• Publisher: Presses universitaires de Louvain
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9782875585394
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

More than 100 years ago Sir Arthur Evans' spade made the first cut into the earth above the now well-known Palace at Knossos. His research at the Kephala hill as well as contemporary fieldwork at further sites on Crete saw the birth of a new discipline: Minoan Archaeology. Since these beginnings in the first decades of the 20th century, the investigation of Bronze Age Crete has experienced fundamental progress. The impressive wealth of new data relating to the sites and material culture of this Bronze Age society and its impact beyond the island's shores, the refinement of its chronology, the constant development of hermeneutical approaches to social, religious or political issues, and new methods and instruments employed for the exploration and conservation of the archaeological remains have shaped the dynamic trajectory of this discipline for more than a century. In March 2011 - exactly 111 years after the beginning of Evans' work at Knossos - a conference on Minoan Archaeology took place at Heidelberg with the aim to outline current trends and prospects of this scientific field, by setting up an open dialogue between renowned scholars and the young generation of researchers. The present volume brings together most of the papers presented during the conference. They are subsumed under six chapters highlighting current key issues in the study of Bronze Age Crete with a pronounced focus on the broad subject of society.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Bibliographic informations
• First pages
• Table of contents
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Introduction: “Minoan Archaeology”
• Conference Programme
• Dealing with “Minoan”: 111 Years of Minoan Archaeology
• Data in Progress: Exploring the Cretan Land- and Cityscape
• Let's Come Together: Places and Spaces of Social and Ritual Interaction
• Peer Pressure: Social Structures from a “Minoan” Perspective
• Be(hav)ing “Minoan”: Negotiating Life and Death Through Practice and Performance
• “Minoan” Material Entanglements: Documenting and Interpreting “Minoan” (?) Craftsmanship
• Closing Remarks
• List of Contributors