Cretan States? Cretan political communities in a comparative frame
By James Whitley (Cardiff University)
The study of political communities in Archaic and Classical Crete is no longer a neglected field within ancient history and classical archaeology. Several monographs, archaeological (Wallace 2010), epigraphic (Gagarin and Perlman 2016) and historical (Seelentag 2015) attest to its relevance to wider interdisciplinary debates in the study of the ancient Mediterranean. The study of Cretan poleis now provides a useful counter-narrative to the excessive concentration on Athens and Sparta as the only political communities worthy of study.
“East Greek” pottery and the earliest mints of Crete
By Paula Perlman (University of Texas at Austin)
A recent study of “East Greek” pottery of the archaic and Classical periods from coastal sites in southern Turkey, the Levant, Cyprus, and Egypt demonstrates that a significant portion of this pottery (almost 10%) was produced in central Crete (Gilboa et al. 2017). These vases provide for the first time archaeological evidence for commercial relations between Cretan communities and communities of the eastern Mediterranean in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE.
Mochlos in Archaic and Late Classical Times: A Site-Focused Study of Connectivity
By Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan (American School of Classical Studies at Athens)
After the Late Bronze Age settlement on the islet of Mochlos is abandoned in the middle of the 13th century B.C., there is no evidence of activity there until the early 7th century B.C. (The islet was then still connected to the shore by a narrow peninsula.) These nascent steps include acts of ancestral veneration in Late Minoan III tombs and in the abandoned houses of the Bronze Age settlement. The latter activity on the south side of the island is echoed by new occupation on the summit of the islet (Upper Mochlos) at about the same time or slightly later.
The epigraphy of Gortyn between order and disorder: buildings, alphabets and the hands of scribes in a polis of archaic Crete
By Giovanni Marginesu (Università degli Studi di Sassari)
The discovery of the Law Code by Federico Halbherr in 1884 inaugurated the study of Cretan epigraphy, and in 1950 the publication of the Inscriptiones Creticae by Margherita Guarducci established the canonical ordination of the corpus of Gortynian legal inscriptions. The fourth volume of IC is inspired by various criteria (mainly palaeographical, topographical, and archaeological) and by the idea that Cretan writing practice evolved over time. The reader is left with the impression that the epigraphical history of Gortyn is that of a community searching for a
Cretan Austerity Revisited: A Pottery Perspective
By Brice Erickson (University of California at Santa Barbara)
The concept of austerity has been with us in studies of Archaic and Classical Crete in one form or another since the 1950s. Austerity has no real basis in the ancient literary depictions of Archaic Crete such as Aristotle’s account, nor does it figure in the rich epigraphic sources for Cretan political and social institutions. Instead, the concept emerged as archaeologists revealed enough about the 6th and 5th centuries BC to postulate a decline in artistic production in comparison to the Orientalizing renaissance of the 8th and 7th centuries.