Aegean Bronze Age Art

Offers an innovative theory for ancient art and its creativity, demonstrated through the rich material and visual culture of the protohistoric Aegean.

This textbook is a compilation of the author's more than 35 years of teaching and excavation experience in the field of Aegean Bronze Age art history and archaeology. It is geared toward an audience of undergraduate and graduate students as an introduction to the Bronze Age art objects and architecture that have been uncovered on Crete, the Greek peninsula, and the Cycladic Islands.

The Art and Archaeology of the Aegean Bronze Age offers a comprehensive chronological and geographical overview of one of the most important civilizations in human history. Jean-Claude Poursat's volume provides a clear path through the rich and varied art and archaeology of Aegean prehistory, from the Neolithic period down to the end of the Bronze Age. Charting the regional differences within the Aegean world, his study covers the full range of material evidence, including architecture, pottery, frescoes, metalwork, stone, and ivory, all lucidly arranged by chapter. With nearly 300 illustrations, this volume is one of the most lavishly illustrated treatments of the subject yet published. Suggestions for further reading provide an up-to-date entry point to the full richness of the subject. Originally published in French, and translated by the author's collaborator Carl Knappett, this edition makes Poursat's deep knowledge of the Aegean Bronze Age available to an English-language audience for the first time.

Aegean Painting in the Bronze Age is intended as a handbook for the art historian and archaeologist, with a full catalogue of examples (arranged according to site), critical discussion of the problems of chronology, a comprehensive bibliography, maps, drawings of details, and more than 100 photographic plates, 23 in color. This is the only book to give a synthesis of painting and pictorial art from its beginnings in Prepalatial Crete to the collapse of Bronze Age civilization in the Aegean. Immerwahr traces the development of Aegean painting from its origins in Crete through its spread to the Cycladic islands and to the Greek mainland, where it gave rise to the specific Mycenaean style. She studies primarily wall painting but refers also to painting on pottery and the pictorial art of seal engraving. The question of foreign influence from Egypt and Mesopotamia is discussed in connection with the origins of Minoan painting, and the new frescoes from Akrotiri on Thera are used to supplement the much more fragmentary paintings from Sir Arthur Evan's excavations at Knossos. Immerwahr also explores the interrelationship of the Minoan Cretans, the Cycladic islanders with their Minoanized enclaves on Thera and Melos, and the early Greek Mycenean mainlanders.

The papers published here are dedicated to the memory of Ellen N. Davis, one of the most valued and beloved Aegean scholars of her generation. All of the articles are in some way inspired or influenced by Davis' own contributions to the field. In the area of metalwork, several papers investigate interconnections within and around the Aegean during the Early, Middle, and Late Bronze Ages (Betancourt, Ferrence, and Muhly, Weingarten, Kopcke), while others examine metal ware in its social context (Wiener). Papers on wall painting range from studies of pigments and optical illusions (Vlachopoulos), to representations of water (Shank). Anthropomorphic representations, or their absence, of goddesses or priestesses (Jones), rulers (Palaima), or initiates (Koehl) are also studied here with new eyes and fresh insights.

This book is a comprehensive up-to-date survey of the Aegean Bronze Age, from its beginnings to the period following the collapse of the Mycenaean palace system. In essays by leading authorities commissioned especially for this volume, it covers the history and the material culture of Crete, Greece, and the Aegean Islands from c.3000–1100 BCE, as well as topics such as trade, religions, and economic administration. Intended as a reliable, readable introduction for university students, it will also be useful to scholars in related fields within and outside classics. The contents of this book are arranged chronologically and geographically, facilitating comparison between the different cultures. Within this framework, the cultures of the Aegean Bronze Age are assessed thematically and combine both material culture and social history.

The Greek Bronze Age, roughly 3000 to 1000 BCE, witnessed the flourishing of the Minoan and Mycenean civilizations, the earliest expansion of trade in the Aegean and wider Mediterranean Sea, the development of artistic techniques in a variety of media, and the evolution of early Greek religious practices and mythology. The period also witnessed a violent conflict in Asia Minor between warring peoples in the region, a conflict commonly believed to be the historical basis for Homer's Trojan War. The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean provides a detailed survey of these fascinating aspects of the period, and many others, in sixty-six newly commissioned articles. Divided into four sections, the handbook begins with Background and Definitions, which contains articles establishing the discipline in its historical, geographical, and chronological settings and in its relation to other disciplines. The second section, Chronology and Geography, contains articles examining the Bronze Age Aegean by chronological period (Early Bronze Age, Middle Bronze Age, Late Bronze Age). Each of the periods are further subdivided geographically, so that individual articles are concerned with Mainland Greece during the Early Bronze Age, Crete during the Early Bronze Age, the Cycladic Islands during the Early Bronze Age, and the same for the Middle Bronze Age, followed by the Late Bronze Age. The third section, Thematic and Specific Topics, includes articles examining thematic topics that cannot be done justice in a strictly chronological/geographical treatment, including religion, state and society, trade, warfare, pottery, writing, and burial customs, as well as specific events, such as the eruption of Santorini and the Trojan War. The fourth section, Specific Sites and Areas, contains articles examining the most important regions and sites in the Bronze Age Aegean, including Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos, Knossos, Kommos, Rhodes, the northern Aegean, and the Uluburun shipwreck, as well as adjacent areas such as the Levant, Egypt, and the western Mediterranean. Containing new work by an international team of experts, The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean represents the most comprehensive, authoritative, and up-to-date single-volume survey of the field. It will be indispensable for scholars and advanced students alike.

Are we to believe that Late Minoan Crete was over-run with dancers and bull leapers? As Senta German shows, dancing and bull-leaping were the most prevalent themes of Late Bronze Age glyptic art although, aside from their demonstration of a social and perhaps symbolic activity, they also had a much deeper function in Late Minoan society.