ABSTRACT

This volume investigates smaller and larger networks of contacts within and across the Aegean and nearby regions, covering periods from the Neolithic until Classical times (6000–323 BC). It explores the world of technologies, crafts and archaeological 'left-overs' in order to place social and technological networks in their larger economic and political contexts. By investigating ways of production, transport/distribution, and consumption, this book covers a chronologically large period in order to expand our understanding of wider cultural developments inside the geographical boundaries of the Aegean and its regions of contact in the east Mediterranean.

This book brings together scholars’ expertise in a variety of different fields ranging from historical archaeology (using textual evidence), archaeometry, geoarchaeology, experimental work, archaeobotany, and archaeozoology. Chapters in this volume study and contextualize archaeological remains and explore networks of crafts-people, craft traditions, or people who employed various technologies to survive. Central questions in this context are how and why traditions, techniques, and technologies change or remain stable, or where and why cross-cultural boundaries developed and disintegrated. 

chapter |11 pages

Introduction

Tracing Social Networks through Studying Technologies

chapter 1|18 pages

Disentangling Neolithic Networks

Ground Stone Technology, Material Engagements and Networks of Action

chapter 2|18 pages

‘Thou Shalt Make Many Images of Thy Gods'

A Chaîne Opératoire Approach to Mycenaean Religious Rituals Based on Iconographic and Contextual Analyses of Plaster and Terracotta Figures

chapter 4|17 pages

A War of Words

Comparing the Performative Cross-Craft Interaction of Physical Violence and Oral Expression in the Mycenaean World

chapter 5|17 pages

Ke-ra-me-u or Ke-ra-me-ja?

Evidence for Sex, Age and Division of Labour among Mycenaean Ceramicists

chapter 6|20 pages

Links of Clay in Neolithic Greece

The Case of Platia Magoula Zarkou

chapter 7|17 pages

Storage Technologies as Embedded Social Practices

Studying Pithos Storage in Prehistoric Northern Greece

chapter 9|16 pages

Business as Usual

Cypriot Demand for Aegean Pottery during the Late Bronze Age