Seals Craft And Community In Bronze Age Crete

Early Minoan Crete is re-envisioned as a space of social innovation, in which change occurred through people and objects.

Since the earliest era of archaeological discovery on Crete, vivid renderings of animals have been celebrated as defining elements of Minoan culture. Animals were crafted in a rich range of substances and media in the broad Minoan world, from tiny seal-stones to life-size frescoes. In this study, Emily Anderson fundamentally rethinks the status of these zoomorphic objects. Setting aside their traditional classification as 'representations' or signs, she recognizes them as distinctively real embodiments of animals in the world. These fabricated animals-engaged with in quiet tombs, bustling harbors, and monumental palatial halls-contributed in unique ways to Bronze Age Aegean sociocultural life and affected the status of animals within people's lived experience. Some gave new substance and contour to familiar biological species, while many exotic and fantastical beasts gained physical reality only in these fabricated embodiments. As real presences, the creatures that the Minoans crafted artfully toyed with expectation and realized new dimensions within and between animalian identities.

"The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age civilization that arose on the island of Crete and flourished from approximately the 27th century BCE to the 15th century BCE. It was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century through the work of British archaeologist Arthur Evans."--Wikipedia.

The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean provides a comprehensive overview of our current understanding of the Bronze Age Aegean (ca. 3000-1000 BC) and describes the most important debates and discussions within the discipline. Presented in four separate sections within the Handbook, the sixty-six commissioned articles cover topics ranging from chronological and geographical to thematic to site-specific. The volume will be indispensable for scholars and advanced students alike.

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

This collection of papers explores whether the Lévi-Straussian notion of the House is a valid concept in aiding the comprehension of the social structure of Bronze Age Aegean societies. The volume succeeds in stressing the advances made in the study of social structure of the Aegean on the basis of material remains.