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A collection of sixteen papers focusing on the economic activities of prehistoric, Classical, Hellenistic and Roman Crete. The wide-ranging papers discuss the economy of prehistoric Crete, social development, production and symbolism in the pre-Palatial and Palatial periods, economic activities and social development in the Classical and Hellenistic periods, coinage and minting and relationships with other polities of the Aegean and east Mediterranean. ... Read more

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Papers by natural scientists, archaeologists, egyptologists and classicists discussing the newest evidence of the Santorini eruption. The papers fall into two sections. I: Evidence, geology, archaeology & chronology; II: Debate: typology, chronology, methodology. Contributors: Walter L. Friedrich & Jan Heinemeier, Philip P. Betancourt, Max Bichler, Thomas M. Brogan, Peter M. Fischer, Karen Polinger Foster, Hermann Hunger, Felix Hoflmayer,Rolf Krauss, Bernd Kromer, Alexander R. McBirney, Floyd W. McCoy, J. Alexander MacGillivray, Sturt W. Manning, Robert Merrillees, Raimund Muscheler, Christopher Bronk Ramsey, Nikolaos Sigalas, Chrysa Sofianou, Jeffrey S. Soles, Georg Steinhauser, Johannes H. Sterba, Annette Hen Sensen,Peter Warren, Malcolm H. Wiener. ... Read more

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From the familiar tales of Greece and Rome and the opulence of the major Chinese dynasties, to the great empires of Egypt and Mesopotamia, GREAT CIVILIZATIONS encompasses the rise and fall, victories and defeats, leaders and subjects, of many diverse and magnificent cultures. This comprehensive and colorful guide...provides a fascinating insight into the foundations, politics, peoples, and customs of the powers of the ancient world. ... Read more

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One of the most famous pieces of ancient Greek art, a gold and ivory statuette of the Snake Goddess, has been described as the most refined and precious relic of Minoan civilization. Alas, as Kenneth Lapatin reveals, not only is the Goddess almost certainly modern, but Minoan civilization as it has been reconstructed is largely an invention of the early twentieth century. The Goddess"s ivory and gold are of the wrong vintage, and the stories of her origins are even more recent and problematic. What makes this tale fascinating, however, is not the forgery but the motivations behind it. Sir Arthur Evans, the legendary excavator of Knossos, romanticized a sophisticated prehistoric society, and restorers working for him obligingly supplied its artifacts. Their creations formed the basis for further theories, which led to further deceptions. Evans hailed Minoan culture as "at once the starting-point and the earliest stage in the highway of European civilization," yet its icons were largely fashioned by modern rather than ancient Cretans to suit the desires of scholars, museums, and the art market. This astonishing book reads like a mystery, but it is also a major work of intellectual investigation, shedding light on the ways in which the past is reinvented to suit the needs of the present.Amazon.com Review
In Mysteries of the Snake Goddess, Kenneth Lapatin traces the murky origins (and seriously debunks the authenticity of) "the most refined and precious" surviving object of Minoan art. The gold-and-ivory figure, now residing in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, was discovered in the early 20th century by renowned archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans. Other, related figures (of equally dubious origin) retain pride of place in several North American and European museums. They are almost certainly forgeries, according to Lapatin, or at best, "neither entirely genuine nor fully fake." This is not a crime story but rather a tale of well-meaning overextrapolation. Evans, and others, took kernels of evidence to bake a large loaf of an idealized, matriarchal Cretan civilization. In short, Evans's desire to believe clouded his scientific caution. As well, Lapatin gently points out that very often our re-creations of the past are influenced by the ideas, mores, and, even, inadequacies of our present. His book is one of calm, inviting erudition that, mercifully, avoids the mean wrangling so common in academia. --H. O'Billovich ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Sorry, there is no evidence of matriarchy on Crete.
This is a fascinating, if disillusioning, detective story.But it confirms what I have long uneasily suspected when I lectured my students about Minoan art -- that many, indeed MOST of my assumptions rested on modern recreations of that art, rather than the hard evidence of the original objects.Lapatin convincingly demonstrates here what I suspected but didn't want to believe about the exquisite Boston ivory.More important, however, he helped me understand what I can trust and what I can't about the heavily restored sculpture and painting from Knossos.

Of course we all tend to interpret history in light of our own experiences; that's a fact of life.However, some historians and archaeologists go farther overboard than necessary.Evans, to give him the great credit he deserves, had a wonderful and empathetic imagination, and his discovery of an ancient civilization was an extraordinary achievement.But even in his own time, his determination to make such extensive restorations to the art and architecture was controversial.

One more observation: the less we know about an ancient civilization, the easier it is for us to idealize it.Even as recently as the 1960's, Crete was usually described as a peaceable kingdom, despite the rather suspicious fact that its royal symbol was the battle axe.As for matriarchy, I hate to disappoint a previous reviewer, but the evidence for matriarchy in ancient Crete consists of two statuettes that come from secure archaeological proveniences, and a great many forgeries.The fact that the people of ancient Crete worshiped goddesses doesn't make them unusual; so did the citizens of classical Athens, whose city housed one of the most magnificent images of that goddess ever created.But their women had about the same legal rights as their goats.

Final note: Read this and then read Arthur Phillips's entertainingly black-comic novel "The Egyptologist," for a take on the same phenomenon that Lapatin describes here.

the appendix alone should have sufficed
To describe Lapatin's book, in one word: disingenuous.

Claiming his book to be the exposure of the ivory "Boston Snake Goddess" as a fake (which is not in dispute), Lapatin actually goes well beyond this to embark on his personal exercise of disingenuous cynicism. As an example of the disingenuity of the kind of argument presented by Lapatin throughout this book I will proffer one example:
In the body of his text on page 46 he acknowledges that Ventris deciphered Linear B and discovered it to be Greek; and even writes that the writing turned out to be inventory lists (understood because they are Greek). However, an illustration of a tablet of Linear B is accompanied by the caption "the first Greek script?", thus insinuating that it may not be Greek at all.

His book does not get any better. He relies on the ignorance by the majority of his readership of ancient societies to disparage the motivations of scholars who have come before him.In his chapter entitled "The Divine Mother" he claims that the conclusion of the existence of a matriarchic society in Krete was part of a nineteenth century desire to find "evidence of the central importance of woman's biological powers in prehistoric society." p.69. He finds "proof" for this bywriting "[Evans] writes repeatedly of 'the older matriarchal stage of social development'..." p.70. Bizarrely, even though he damns Evans for his matriarchic conclusions, Lapatin himself concludes that "There is indeed ample archaeological evidence for a predominant female deity (or deities) on Krete..." p. 73!

By pages 88-89, Lapatin forgets what he wrote (on p. 73) and writes:
"...ideas about the proper role of women in society have evolved in the past onehundred years. For the past is constantly reshaped to suit the needs of the present ... Feminists and others seeking alternatives to an oppressive patriarchal, Judeo-Christian tradition have embraced the idea of a kinder gentler, matriarchal world..." Thus, Lapatin is suggesting that there were no matriarchic societies in antiquity. He is wrong. Tacitus wrote, (nearly) 2000 years before the birth of Lapatin. In his "Germania" he describes the tribe of Sitones in which "woman is the ruling sex." (Germania, section 45).

And, in Lapatin's book we do not even encounter Elam. The religion of Elam, from c. 2200 - c. 700 BC was administered by priestesses; the Elamite godhead was matriarchic; and they worshipped the snake. In Elam the texts have been deciphered. The head goddess was Pinikir, "mistress of the heavens". "[Snakes] appear on jar-stoppers and on the lids of vessels as symbols of protection against evil. Snakes rear up as guardians... twine around altar plates..." (p. 41 "The Lost World of Elam", Walther Hinz).

Lapatin by way of gross omissions claims that the scholars of the past were mindless products of their age. Only by excluding matriarchic societies which did coexist with those in Krete (as those at Elam) and which continued to exist (in parts of Europe) long enough to be recorded by Tacitus, is Lapatin able to "prove" his point. Lapatin's argument is void. It cannot therefore be said that Evans and others were fabricating a history to give women their share in human history. Thus, the overriding question here is: what motivates Lapatin? For it certainly isn't the truth. Indeed, the only conclusion anyone can draw is that Lapatin is projecting what motivates himself onto to others instead.

Snake Goddess, Fake Goddess?
Readable, concise, and absorbing account of the way archaeological interpretation and the manufacture of forgeries is influenced by current trends and fashions.

Sheds light on the extent to which Minoan discoveries were 'tailored' to fit their discoverers' expectations. Very important reading for anyone who is interested in 'interpreting' the art and artifacts of Knossos and Minoan culture. Otherwise, one would never know that many of the now-accepted images of Minoan culture were highly 'edited' and even created by Arthur Evans and his employees at Knossos.

If anything the book is too concise and focused on the Snake Goddess. I'd like to have seen a bit more on Evans' background and life. I'd stop short of calling it an 'expose',' but it certainly shows how archaeologists -- especially the gentleman adventurers of the nineteenth and early twentieth century -- were able to play fast and loose with the 'facts' to their own advantage. In fairness to Evans, he comes off as a well-meaning, if egotistical type more guilty of self deception than guile. But his complicity in the illicit trade in relics is documented.

The Importance of a Forgery
For over eighty years, within the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, pride of place has been given to the Snake Goddess, a statue that is sixteen centimeters tall. She is a spectacular sculpture, long regarded as the pinnacle of Minoan art from the sixteenth century BCE. She is of delicately carved ivory decorated with gold, a sensuous figure in a wide skirt of multiple tiers, a narrow, belt-encircled waist, and a bodice cut so low that her ample breasts are visible. She holds snakes in her outstretched arms. She pouts. She is one of the most famous pieces of ancient art in the world, a superb example of Cretan Bronze Age sculpture.

Except she isn't. Kenneth Lapatin, President of the Boston Society of the Archeological Institute of America, has been studying her for a decade, and casting doubts on her authenticity. Now he has published a book-length explanation, _Mysteries of the Snake Goddess: Art, Desire, and the Forging of History_ (Houghton Mifflin Company) of how the experts of art and archeology have been fooled, and with the book's exhaustive notes and appendices, this account is devastating. It also tells plenty about how archeology is done, what sort of characters do it, how we view the ancient past, and how wishful thinking, perhaps even more than greed, has perpetrated the forgery. The details of the origin of the statue are still unclear, and probably always will be. But Lapatin has dug into as much as can be known of its shadowy past, and has provided an expert's details. He can write, for instance, "Eyes with drilled pupils _and_ canthi have no parallel in Aegean sculpture and do not appear in ancient statuary before the second century A.D." He gives an excellent section on why science can provide only limited evidence in this case (although none of it points to the statue's authenticity).

Lapatin does more than just debunk, for in his fascinating and original book, he shows how the Goddess is still important. She isn't the find Sir John Evans, the excavator of Knossos, and others thought she was. However, "She has provided a canvas on which archeologists and curators, looters and smugglers, dealers and forgers, art patrons and museum-goers, feminists and spiritualists, have painted their preconceptions, desires, and preoccupations for an idealized past." We may have to admit we know less about Minoan culture, but we can always learn more about human nature.

Good on the details.Sketchy for the bigger picture.
Lapatin does a good job in sleuthing through the surviving letters and other documentary evidence.He reaches the conclusion, mirrored by the lab report contained in an appendix to the book, that the "Boston Snake Goddess" is almost certainly a twentieth century forgery.

He reveals that it is impossible to carbon-date the ivory of the figurine itself, because of the techniques used to restore it.Ivory fragments associated with the find but not used in the reconstruction date back about four hundred years.The chemical composition of the gold in the find does not match ancient gold.The facial expression is unlike genuine examples of Minoan art, lacking either the archaic smile or the manga-style eyes of genuine artifacts.

His verdict is stated with caution, but the evidence seems to weigh against the authenticity of the Goddess.He also catalogues a number of similar statues, some of which are definite forgeries, and others have similarly dubious histories.

These images nevertheless reappear over and over again, not only in historical, but also in popular literature.They were adopted into popular culture, in fantasy novels, and as feminist symbols.They even became the keystone of enthusiasts' attempts to revive the worship of this apparently invented deity.

Where his argument breaks down iswhen he attempts to present the broader context.He asserts that Evans, the chief excavator at Knossos, was influenced by prevailing intellectual trends in positing ancient Crete as an idyllic society practicing a goddess-worshipping earth religion.In fact, though, he presents very little of Evans's own conclusions in making this argument.Where his theory comes from, and why it was wrong, is treated much less thoroughly in this slim book.Influential successors obviously influenced by Evans's theories, like Robert Graves, are not discussed at all.

For a readable summation of the influence of Frazer's -Golden Bough-, and the other literary sources of the sort of beliefs that apparently influenced Evans, Ronald Hutton's -The Triumph of the Moon- does a much better job. ... Read more

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History of Greece - Aegean civilization, Helladic period,Cycladic civilization, Minoan civilization, MycenaeanGreece, Ancient Greece, Greek Dark Ages, Archaic Greece,Classical Greece, Hellenistic Greece, Roman Greece,Byzantine Greece, Byzantine Empire, Frangokratia, OttomanGreece, History of modern Greece, Greek War ofIndependence,Kingdom of Greece, Second Hellenic Republic, 4th ofAugustRegime, Axis occupation of Greece during World WarII, GreekCivil War, Greek military junta of 1967-1974, Historyof theHellenic Republic ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A POOR THING BUT MINOAN
Joking aside, this is an absolutely wonderful book. How many people it will appeal to I have no idea. On the one hand it is not going to rival Tolkien or J K Rowling for sales. On the other hand as scholarly revolutions, and scholarly controversies, go it is one of the famous ones, and one that in its time made banner newspaper headlines.

This is the second edition of a book that had to be extensively rewritten because the evidence was pouring in even as the author wrote the work. Palmer had been very quick to support the decipherment, by a young amateur Michael Ventris, of the Linear B tablets found both on the Greek mainland and at the Palace of Minos at Cnossos on Crete, famously excavated by Sir Arthur Evans, as being in the Greek language. This had a radical impact on the history (or prehistory) of the Bronze Age in Greece, because if these tablets are Greek it is patently impossible to suppose that the Greek invasion of Crete took place at some later date. As recast, the book now takes us through the decipherment process, the identification and location of the Mycenaean fortress of Pylos on the south-west Peloponnese, the early history of Crete and finally the origin of the Greeks themselves and a theory of the nature of the Linear A tablets, which Palmer believes to be in the Anatolian Indo-European language Luvian. This was, at least, the position in 1965. I have been out of touch with the issue since then, but whatever refinements have been made in subsequent scholarship, this book surely represents a watershed second only to the work of Ventris himself.

It is a book for scholars (some of whom clearly need it badly) but also for a certain type of lay reader. Palmer concedes that the book is to some extent demanding, but I would ascribe that more to the amount of detail than to anything else, and the detail is largely a matter of a plethora of place-names which can be followed from the maps. There is also a great deal of detail regarding the interpretation of the archaeological evidence. This should in fact be intelligible and enjoyable to anyone who enjoys following a good advocate's reasoning - Palmer himself uses the analogy of his readers as a jury at several points. Greek words and names are given in Roman script, and in general Palmer's vast learning is carried lightly and presented with skill and tact. As I remember him from real life, his mind is a little bit quick for mine and I sometimes had to scramble to keep abreast of the steps of his reasoning, but in general he is clear enough. He is careful not to burden the reader with excessive philological detail in particular, but I suspect a footnote about `labio-velars' would actually have helped readers puzzled about how i-qo becomes `hippos' the Greek for a horse, and it would not have hurt to let out that the syllable shared by the words for `and' and `four' is `te'.

What made the book famous of course, is that in some places it flatly contradicts Evans based on the evidence of Evans himself and his collaborator Mackenzie. This is what produced the newspaper features claiming that Palmer had debunked Evans. In fact one should expect that, although Palmer, as if butter would not melt in his mouth, claims innocently that in fact Evans made two compensating errors and thus arrived not far off the truth. What it also produced was some scholarship of the worst kind in some quarters. Challenges to Ventris's decipherment had already been mounted, which is perfectly fair to that extent but which should not have descended to attacks on his integrity without very good evidence indeed. Palmer himself came under some knee-jerk straight-into-denial attack from a colleague at Oxford, the posthumous apostle of Evans. I never saw a better in-fighter than Palmer. He is afraid of nobody and nobody upsets him. The calm serious academic manner never deserts him and he is all the more effective for it.

I wonder where it has all gone since 1965, but I'll be surprised if this book is not still the major monument along the road. In this highly favourable assessment you will of course bear in mind that my teacher was, well, Palmer. ... Read more

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Pottery of ancient Greece. Ancient Greece, Art in ancient Greece, Greek art, Minoan pottery, Minyan ware, Protogeometric art, Geometric Art, Orientalizing Period, Black-figure pottery, Red-figure pottery, White ground technique, Hellenistic art, Typology of Greek Vase Shapes, Greek Dark Ages ... Read more

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Language and Ancient Greeks

This historical essay reviews the development of the art and science of grammar and philosophical views toward language among the Ancient Greeks. Although the early Greek writers, including Homer and Hesiod, commented on language (for example, in the Iliad Homer referred to the Miletians and other Ionians as "barbarophonoi," literally, “foreign speaking”), it was not until the fifth century B.C. that the explicit study of language emerged in Ancient Greece when rhetoric arose as a profession.

In the classical period, philosophers, sophists, and rhetoricians studied language mainly only insofar as it related to their understanding of reality and knowledge. Among the Greeks, it was not until the Hellenistic era (the period following the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. and lasting until the death of Cleopatra VII and the fall of the Ptolemaic kingdom in 30 B.C.) that significant developments took place in the study of grammar and linguistics developed as a discipline in its own right.

In this essay, the author provides a sketch of early and classical Greek philosophies of language, the study of language in Hellenistic and Alexandrian scholarship (including Stoic views on language), and commentary on the relationship between language and Greek identity.

On the Decipherment of Linear B

A thousand years before the beginning of classical Greek civilization and the second period of Greek literacy that was launched with the arrival of the Phoenician alphabet on Greek’s ancient shores sometime during the late ninth century B.C. arose what would eventually become continental Europe’s first literate society. During the Late Bronze Age in southern Greece, the Mycenaean civilization flourished, spreading its culture and its writing system to the nearby island of Crete, where writing had already developed several hundred years earlier among the Minoans. This earliest Greek writing system, which died out with the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization and the start of the Greek Dark Age around 1200 B.C., was thence unknown until the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans unearthed a cache of clay tablets inscribed with a curious script, which he coined “linear script of class B,” during his excavation of Knossos on the island of Crete in the year 1900.

For years, Evans tried in vain to decipher the ancient script whose discovery made him famous. It was instead the keen insight of the American classicist and archaeologist Alice Kober, and the persistence and genius of a young British architect named Michael Ventris, that were required to crack the Linear B code. In 1953, Michael Ventris succeeded in deciphering most of Linear B’s 87 syllabic signs and a significant number of the script’s logographic signs—a stunning achievement considering that no bilingual inscription was available to aid Ventris’ efforts. Unfortunately, Ventris died in an automobile accident just three years after his remarkable achievement, which stands to this day as one of the most extraordinary displays of cryptographic legerdemain ever seen.

This critical-historical essay looks at the missteps and flawed approach of Arthur Evans that opened the door to Ventris’ eventual decipherment while shining a bright light on Kober’s invaluable contributions, which are often understated or even ignored by scholars in the field. Throughout the essay, the author approaches the history of the script’s decipherment with fairness and realism, highlighting Evans’ successes and failures, acknowledging the impact of Kober’s work, and recognizing the enormity and historical significance of Ventris’ profound achievement. ... Read more

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Joseph and Maria Shaw received the Archaeological Institute of America's Gold Medal for a lifetime of outstanding achievement in January of 2006. This volume is a collection of the papers presented at the Gold Medal Colloquium held in their honor during the 2006 Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in Montreal, Quebec. Additional articles have also been written for this volume. Many of the articles pertain to different aspects of Aegean Bronze Age architecture, harbors, frescoes, and trade, which are all keen interests of the Shaws. ... Read more

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The Hagia Photia Cemetery takes its name from the nearby village on the northeast coast of Crete, 5 km east of modern Siteia. This large Early Minoan burial ground with over fifteen hundred Cycladic imports was discovered in 1971. A total of 263 tombs were excavated as a rescue excavation in 1971 and 1984. Among the 1800 artifacts are some of the earliest known Cretan discoveries of several types: the grave goods come mostly from the Kampos Group, an assemblage of artifacts known mainly from the Cyclades. Similarly, the tombs represent an architectural style and a series of burial customs that are foreign to Crete but familiar from elsewhere within the Aegean. In fact, the cemetery has such close parallels from the Cyclades that it has often been regarded as a Cycladic colony. The burial contents are an extremely interesting body of evidence for the study of the formative phases of Minoan Crete. ... Read more

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Ritual is a fascinating subject, with a tendency to set the imagination racing and raise expectations for exciting treatment. Minoan archaeology and more particularly the so-called "peak sanctuaries" have been the object of much such interest and speculation, but also of considerable creative research. In this book, Evangelos Kyriakidis rigorously assesses old and new ideas about these sanctuaries, testing and enriching such ideas by connecting them with the extant material and underpinning them with a solid theoretical basis. General theoretical issues such as the attribution of ritual value to a prehistoric activity, the assessment of degrees of ritual establishment and the creation of ritual institutions are developed with the peak sanctuary material in mind. The results are then compared and contrasted to other studies on the social and political dynamics of Minoan Crete, providing a new insight into ritual in the area as a whole. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An in-depth assessment of Minoan archaeology as witnessed in its so-called "peak sanctuaries"
Featuring 50 black-and-white illustrations, Ritual in the Bronze Age Aegean: The Minoan Peak Sanctuaries is an in- depth assessment of Minoan archaeology as witnessed in its so-called "peak sanctuaries". Since so little is known with absolute certainty about Minoan Crete, all speculations are constructed with minute attention to detail and supporting evidence. Archaeology Lecturer Evangelos Kyriakidis examines theoretical issues concerning the attribution of ritual value to prehistoric activity; further chapters scrutinize "Going Further with Ritual: Praxis and Belief" and "The Rise and Fall of the Minoan Peak Sanctuaries". An extensive appendix offers a great deal of data to help clarify scholarly perspectives, and a thorough bibliography and index round out this superior reference in its field. Enthusiastically recommended for college library and archaeology studies shelves.

An in-depth assessment of Minoan archaeology as witnessed in its so-called "peak sanctuaries"
Featuring 50 black-and-white illustrations, Ritual in the Bronze Age Aegean: The Minoan Peak Sanctuaries is an in- depth assessment of Minoan archaeology as witnessed in its so-called "peak sanctuaries". Since so little is known with absolute certainty about Minoan Crete, all speculations are constructed with minute attention to detail and supporting evidence. Archaeology Lecturer Evangelos Kyriakidis examines theoretical issues concerning the attribution of ritual value to prehistoric activity; further chapters scrutinize "Going Further with Ritual: Praxis and Belief" and "The Rise and Fall of the Minoan Peak Sanctuaries". An extensive appendix offers a great deal of data to help clarify scholarly perspectives, and a thorough bibliography and index round out this superior reference in its field. Enthusiastically recommended for college library and archaeology studies shelves.
... Read more

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This book is the tenth volume in the series of excavation reports about the harbor town of Pseira, which is located on the island of the same name, just off the northeast coast of Crete. The book focuses on the excavation and interpretation of the architecture and material culture in Block AF. This southern group of buildings is one of the most important areas in the settlement because of its long succession of building phases. Block AF provides the fullest sequence of building phases from any one area at Pseira, with habitation extending from before MM II to LM III. It has examples of complex architectural details including a "pillar crypt," elaborate upstairs floors, a well-preserved U-shaped staircase, and a well-designed kitchen, all of which contribute significantly to our knowledge of East Cretan building practices. In addition to domestic pottery, the houses furnish examples of stone tools, stone vessels, loom weights, inscriptions in Linear A, cult objects, animal bones, marine shells, and a wide range of material recovered from water sieving. This latter category, with burned grain, fish bones, shells, and other categories of materials, fills many gaps in our knowledge of Pseiran life. ... Read more

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This report discusses the architecture of the Bronze Age settlement on Pseira, a small island off the coast of Crete. It considers the phases of construction during the MM III through LM IB periods, the building materials and techniques, and the function of the large enigmatic structure known as the Plateia Building. ... Read more

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An in-depth study of the Late Minoan IA cross-draft kiln found in excavation at Kommos, Crete. The kiln is of a type popular during the Neopalatial period and its good state of preservation has allowed the authors to speculate about its original internal layout and use as well as about the roof that covered it. Much of the large quantity of obviously locally produced pottery found associated with the kiln is analyzed in detail, allowing for the first time the study of the shapes, decoration, and technical characteristics of vases known to have been fired in a specific LM IA kiln. The book presents an integrated program of analytical techniques used both to illustrate the range of firing temperatures, the compositional similarities and differences in the clay used, and aspects of the firing process and to make suggestions about the upper kiln structure. Offered here is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of their technology and organization of ceramic production at the beginning of the Late Minoan period, which will form a basis for studies of pottery provenience and exchange. ... Read more

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Richard B. Seager excavated the Minoan cemetery at Pseira in 1907, but the work was never published. The Temple University excavations (1985-1994) under the direction of Philip P. Betancourt and Costis Davaras conducted an intensive surface survey of the cemetery area, cleaned and drew plans of all visible tombs, and excavated tombs that had not been previously excavated. The results of the cemetery excavations on the small island off the northeast coast of Crete are published in two volumes.Pseira VI publishes the methodology that was employed for the investigation, the topography of the cemetery area, the little that can be reconstructed of Seager's campaign, the ceramic petrography for the cemetery pottery, and the results of the intensive surface survey. The survey shows that the cemetery was first used in the Neolithic period, and it was abandoned in Middle Minoan II. It also demonstrates that the cemetery was larger than the area suggested by the 33 tombs found by Seager, and it shows that the customs included burial in jars, even though no examples have been excavated. ... Read more