Ancient Crete: From Successful Collapse to Democracy's Alternatives, Twelfth–Fifth Centuries BC

by Saro Wallace

• ISBN13: 9780521112048
• ISBN10: 0521112044
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-08-31
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

'Ancient Greece' with its associations of city states, democratic governance, and iconic material culture, can no longer be envisaged as a uniform geographical or historical entity. The Classical city-states of Crete differed considerably in culture, history and governance from those of central Greece. In this book, Saro Wallace reaches back into Crete's prehistory, covering the latest Bronze Age through the Archaic periods, to find out why. It emphasizes the roles of landscape, external contacts, social identity construction and historical consciousness in producing this difference, bringing together the wealth of new archaeological evidence available from the island with a variety of ancient text sources to produce a vivid and up-to-date picture of this momentous period in Crete's history.

Table of Contents

Crete Between East and West, State Collapse, and State Emergence:

Introduction

Method and structure

Text perspectives

Chronology, terminology, and dating methods

The Late Bronze Age Cretan landscape and its use

The broader framework: structures of landscape use by the LBA-EIA transition

'Positive' Collapse and Its Effects, c.1200-1000 BC: The Restructuring of Space and Place:

Approaches to studying collapse - explanation and characterization

The changing use of space: introduction

Settlement pattern in Crete

Subsistence in the new settlement environment

Settlement change outside Crete: islands and peninsulas

Mainland central Greece: settlement priorities during and after collapse

Constructing post-collapse society: inside Cretan settlements, c.1200-1000 BC

Ceremonial and ritual practice within settlements

Beyond settlements: the changing cultural landscape

Mortuary space and practice in Crete and other areas

The structure of collapse in Crete

After the Fall: Interactions with Other Mediterranean Regions in the Twelfth to Eighth Centuries BC:

Introduction

Long-distance contacts before and after the collapse horizon, c.1300-1000 BC

The social role of exotica

Exchange structures inside post-collapse Crete

Lift-off: east Mediterranean trade and the central Aegean from the tenth century

Nothing to declare? - Crete in the tenth through eighth centuries

Modes and routes of exchange within Crete in the later EIA

Crete's membership in the 'orientalising' and colonial worlds from the seventh century

'Proto-poleis'? - The Growth of Social Complexity in Crete from the Tenth through the Seventh Centuries:

Main sources of evidence discussed

Settlement patterns (1): the nucleation phenomenon

Settlement patterns (2): small sites and small-group identity

Subsistence and land-use in the expanding polities

Inside settlements

The mortuary record

The ritual landscape and the construction of political identity

The early Archaic horizon: correlates of state development and growth in the archaeological record

The polis as place and as concept in Crete

The value of 'classic' state formation models to PG-early Archaic Crete, viewed in its Mediterranean context

Constructing Difference: The History, Structure, and Context of Cretan States in the Later Archaic through Classical Periods:

Introduction

Problems in generalization and comparison

The central Greek polis structure over time: tensions between tyranny/kingship and participative governance

Special aspects of the Archaic to Classical Cretan polis

Cretan identities in historical perspective

Serfdom and slavery in the construction of Late Archaic to Classical society: comparisons between Crete and other Aegean areas

The public feasting tradition and its political significance in Crete and other areas

A final comparison: democracy and its alternatives in the Aegean world

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