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This paper explores the potential of GIS-based analyses of legacy survey data to inform discussions of settlement patterning, demographic change and the social organisation of agricultural production in the ancient Mediterranean. Legacy survey data represent an important body of evidence for understanding the development of past settlement systems, while their digitisation presents opportunities for novel quantitative and spatial analyses. By combining data from three contiguous intensive surveys from the Mirabello area of eastern Crete, this study investigates trajectories of demographic change and subsistence practice in the Early Iron Age (EIA) and Archaic periods (ca. 1200–550 BC), utilising GIS-based modelling of minimal agricultural catchments, and considering the relationships between communities over multiple geographic scales. This analysis highlights a transition away from clusters of small, demographically interdependent hamlets and villages in the earlier part of the EIA, toward the consolidation of nucleated population centres by the Archaic. The investigation of these developments contributes to our understanding of the scale, territorial control and management of agricultural hinterlands in the formative stages of the Greek poleis. The methods employed have wider relevance for the study of agricultural systems in the ancient Mediterranean, and highlight the important ongoing contributions of legacy survey data to theorising ancient subsistence economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A deserted Cretan village provided the grounds to look beyond the ruins and study the abandonment and post-abandonment formation processes that transform settlements into archaeological sites. The long abandonment period, as well as the continuous human presence and intervention in the post-abandonment period of individual buildings and larger parts ofthe site, resulted in an evidence-rich environment, idealfor tracing the formation processes in the different stages of ruination. By drawing on a case study in the eastern Mediterranean basin, where only afew other observations have been undertaken, this paper highlights the historic and cultural distinctiveness offormation processes, emphasising the difficulty ofgeneralising about post-abandonment factors associated with sites. The paper attempts to give an account of the observed structures and artefact distributions, and draw conclusions regarding the anthropogenic impact that led to an advanced state ofdecay only 40 years after the abandonment of the settlement. In this context, it addresses the complexity in attributing cultural causes to their effects by linking cultural behaviour to the archaeological record and incoiporating informants' responses about the invisible abandonment andpost-abandonment stages. The paper concludes by underlining the spatiotemporal peculiarities and cultural circumstances of abandoned settlements and the importance of avoiding universal law-like generalisations when it comes to the interaction between humans and the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political geography of Crete during the period of the Bronze Age palaces has been a subject of wide-spread debate, not only with respect to the timing of the island's move towards greater social and political complexity, but also with regard to the nature of the political institutions and territorial configurations that underpinned palace-centred society, as well as their longer-term stability over the course of the second millennium BC. As such, the region provides an ideal context in which to consider the broader question of how we develop robust political geographies in pre- and protohistoric contexts. This paper proposes the need for a more deliberate interlocking of computational, comparative and material approaches, as a means of guiding our political model-building efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper details the sourcing by neutron activation analysis of 60 obsidian artifacts from Quartier Mu, an important Middle Bronze Age complex at Malia, central Crete. Four sources are represented--three Aegean (Sta Nychia and Dhemenegaki on Melos, plus Giali), and one central Anatolian (East Göllü Dağ), an unusually wide array in an Aegean Bronze Age context, and one that reflects the community's varied craft-working activities and overseas contacts. The raw materials enjoyed different uses, with clear evidence for the differential consumption of Melian obsidians. Furthermore, the East Göllü Dağ material attests connections with the kingdoms of central Anatolia at a crucial period of Crete's own (pre)history, the time of the first 'Minoan palaces'. It is suggested that the movement of this obsidian was embedded within diplomatic contacts and/or the metals trade: tin coming from the east, with Aegean silver channeled to the central Anatolian kārū and their Assyrian sponsors beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the photographs published by Sir Arthur Evans of the Bronze Age site of Knossos on Crete and gives special attention to those that exhibit evidence of alteration. The altered images are divided into three categories: Retouched for Clarity, Reconstruction, and Falsification. It is argued that although Evans most frequently altered excavation photographs for benign purposes, he also occasionally changed images of the site and archaeological materials in order to reflect his desired historical interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past fifty years, intensive Mediterranean archaeological surveys have yielded abundant and diachronic archaeological data. Although field methods have been continually debated and refined, the interpretation of survey results has focused primarily on site numbers and site size, with particular interest in reconstructing settlement hierarchies and in tracking episodes of nucleation and dispersal across the landscape. Artifact assemblages are largely used to date sites, while less attention has been devoted to assemblage diversity and site function. This study demonstrates the potential of legacy survey data to frame and answer new research questions via an analysis of 250 small rural sites of the first millennium BC recovered by intensive surveys on Crete from the 1970s through the early 2000s. I show that diachronic patterns of rural settlement in Crete depart strongly from those observed in mainland Greece and also differ between regions. I also reveal pronounced variation in the assemblages present at small sites across the island within Cretan regions and periods. This suggests that we cannot simply interpret all small sites as homogeneous farmsteads. Finally, I discuss the challenges and potential of using diversity measures as an exploratory tool for analyzing legacy survey data. Methods outlined here could be productively applied in other Mediterranean regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compares the accessibility of the Minoan Neopalatial (ca. 1750–1490 BC) Palaces of Knossos, Phaistos, Malia, Zakros and Galatas in central and eastern Crete. The study seeks to interpret the sites’ social meaning based on analytical observations of their spatial organisation, using cost-surface analysis functions available in Geographical Information System (GIS) software. The article focuses in particular on assessing the distinct accessibility patterns provided by the different, supposedly main entrances to the sites; on the effect of ‘lengthening access’ and its social implications in the Minoan built environment; and on the gendered use of space in the hall systems of the Palaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although aspects of Arthur Evans's vision of Minoan society have undergone modification during the course ofthe 20th century, his basic interpretation of the monumental building complex with courts at Knossos as a Palace-Temple, or the residence of both a political and religious authority, remains the dominant paradigm in Minoan archaeology. When set within the context of other contemporary Bronze Age societies in the eastern Mediterranean, however, Evans's model of a priest-king who resided in a Palace-Temple is actually highly unusual and anomalous. Indeed, it will be argued that the Palace-Temple model was invented by Evans as a distinctive, formative and intermediate stage between the Oriental Temple, which was the model then current in the Near East at the time of his writing, and what might be termed European kingship. The perception that Cretan culture and society was essentially European (and thus different from the East) formed a cornerstone of Evans's vision and its enduring popularity goes some way to explaining why the intellectual and empirical origins of Evans's Palace-Temple model have not previously been critically reassessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to build a structural mode/for the development of the Cretan polis through an analysis of the civic structure of Archaic Azoria. Azoria's civic structural network is compared to that ofthe early polis on mainland Greece. Insights gained from comparative modeling of elite-sponsored civic structure in these two regions are applied to Crete, allowing us to construct a more robust network of early 'polital' structure for that island. Results of this analysis indicate that Cretan elites constructed their positions within the Cretan polis through methods such as exclusion. They additionally show that the unique relationship between civic institutions and those of the Cretan inter-polital sanctuary highlights the role that the institutions within the andreion and within civic cult play in polis development, as well as elucidating the unique character of the family-community interface on Crete. Results of this analysis highlight important issues in the emergence of the Cretan polis, and suggest fruitful future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]