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This volume came about based on the recognition that the rise and spread of Covid-19, in order to both take advantage of the authors’ lived experiences and to situate the world’s recent experience of plague and its effects within a long-term historical framework as provided.by the texts and archeological evidence of the ancient Near East, Asia, and the Mediterranean. Our research has lead contemporary scholarship to consider the possibility that there will be an increasing acceleration of new and highly transmissible plagues, viruses and other diseases linked to the mass travel and trade that characterizes hyper-globalisation. As historians and archaeologists studying the civilisations of the most distant past, we felt that we had something to contribute to this conversation through providing a historical perspective, with the twin goals of relieving the social anxiety caused by pandemics and taking advantage of our present experiences to see how we might view our own research in a fresh, new light. Archaeologists and scholars of ancient history know that epidemic plagues and other environmental catastrophes are nothing new: disease and illness are clearly represented in the archaeological and historical record.

From an ecological standpoint, islands once held allure as imagined laboratories for the isolated study of social and cultural change. However, in The Corrupting Sea, Horden and Purcell have compellingly demonstrated that in reality islands were places of “strikingly enhanced interaction … central to the history of the Mediterranean.” Although their detailed meta-history focuses on the historic periods, much of what they discuss can be identified in prehistory. Our contribution focuses on the unique role that island-scapes play in shrinking maritime space among the disparate cultures of the Mediterranean, bringing ancient west and east together through cultural and economic entanglement. Through strong interaction, islands could promote security, but in isolation, they could be a source of danger. However, from Sicily to Cyprus, like the Magical Mystery Tour, islands had “everything you need,” because they were connected nodes in a globalized, unrestricted flow of people and goods, the ancient version of capital, where “satisfaction was guaranteed.”

This article discusses categories of migration and colonization in the Mediterranean Bronze Age, through a discussion of archaeological evidence, fragmentary texts, and theoretical models. Different categories of migration and colonization are defined and illustrated with examples.

Palaiopyrgi is the most prominent hill in the chain of hills marking the centre of the Eurotas valley, rising to a height of 214 m, about 7 km south of Sparta; its summit offers an unhindered view to all directions, towards the Menelaion to the north, Ayios Vasileios to the south-west and Vouno Panayias to the east. About 350 m to the north lies the famous Mycenaean tholos tomb of Vapheio, one of the very few tholos tombs known and the only one thoroughly excavated so far in Laconia, with which the hill has been associated. Midway between the Vapheio tholos tomb and Palaiopyrgi lies a quarry of conglomerate, consisting of a semi-worked column base, curved cuttings and separation channels. Based on the stone quarried, the extraction technique, the size of the column base, part of the pottery found in association with it and its proximity to the tomb and the hill of Palaiopyrgi, the quarry was dated in the Mycenaean times, leading to the conclusion that material extracted from this and other conglomerate shelves exposed in the wider area, may have been used for extensive building activities on the hill itself in that period. In 2016‑2017, an intensive survey was carried in the area between the tholos tomb and Palaiopyrgi, having the quarry at its centre. The article discusses existing archaeological evidence from the area of Vapheio-Palaiopyrgi and its implications for social and political change in the Eurotas valley, with special reference to its central location in the valley and to the transition to the Mycenaean era, taking into consideration recent developments of research in the area.

Worked stone architecture in Philistia is rare and usually limited to highly visible elements such as column bases, ritual features such as altars, and pavements. Our contribution presents a study of a selected group of minimally preserved but nonetheless important Iron I monumental buildings in Areas A and C at Tell es-Safi/Gath. These remains are situated within the context of what is known about “Sea Peoples’” architecture in the Mediterranean as seen at the 12th century BCE “Anaktoron” at Pantalica, Sicily and architectural changes in Sardinia. Our study demonstrates that monumental architecture was more widespread in the early Philistine period than originally thought.

My tongue and cheek biography

This article is the first to use evidence from the Coronavirus to look at the role of pandemic in contributing to social and economic collapse that marked the end of the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean, ca. 12th century BCE. This was an event that resulted in the destruction of the Mycenaean kingdoms, the desolation of the Cretan coastline, the fall of Troy, and the destruction of many maritime and coastal gateway cities around the Mediterranean.

This paper, which is based on my professorial lecture, considersr the emergence of globalized connectivities in the Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1700–1300 BCE) which was arguably the first age of globalization in human history. It was also one of the first ages of social acceleration characterized by a confluence of increasing technological and economic interdependency, yet fragile in its susceptibility to climate change, plagues, authoritarian city-states, and small empires ruled by kings claiming divinity or divine authority. Thus, the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean was also an economically fragile era with a high concentration of wealth distributed among supra-regional global elite plutocrats unified more by wealth and shared symbolism than by cultural tradition or ideology. That era was susceptible to populist resistance in the form of piratical activity and banditry. This paper explores the globalist and populist aspects, along with the effects of plagues and pandemics on the ancient Mediterranean and in current times. It is published in a collection of papers dedicated to my former teacher, Professor John Hospers.

Engraved signs begin to appear in the Aegean, mostly on worked stone blocks, as early as the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 1900-1700 BCE) in Crete. Their numbers proliferate in the Late Bronze Age on Crete, and they appear in smaller numbers in the Aegean islands and Mycenaean mainland. Although they have been conventionally termed “mason’s marks” in the literature, they did not function as such in the traditional sense in terms of aiding in the placement of blocks in the construction of a building. Their varying contexts, multiple designs, and varied visibility within a building have resulted in divergent interpretations linked to their symbolic significance, religious meaning, or to the social and/or ethnic identities of the masons. By the 13th century BCE, mason’s marks appear, primarily in token amounts, in monumental administrative centers and cult sites in Cyprus. In Israel, Yigal Shiloh documented their appearance in palatial architecture at Megiddo and Samaria. In addition, one appears on a block from the great horned altar in Beersheba. The marks from Israel received detailed attention from Norma Franklin, who associated them with guilds of Carian builders, an association that has not irrefutably been confirmed or disputed. This paper considers the marks anew based on their appearance in Cyprus, where twenty-five possible marks have been documented in their varying contexts, and concluding that meanings assigned to them may vary and need not be mutually exclusive.

This article introduces the emergence of the Minoan (ca. 1900-1450 BCE) and Mycenaean civilizations (ca. 1600-1200 BCE). They are viewed against the background of their interactions with each other and with surrounding regions. Technology transfer accompanied their quest for copper that began in the Aegean by the Neolithic era, followed by the quest for tin and other exotic items such as spices and raw materials. These quests were key drivers in the development of complexity in Aegean society. They were accompanied by advances in maritime technology beginning with the change from the long boats of the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, to the acquisition deep-hulled ship with mast by the Minoans (ca. 1900 BCE), to the Mycenaean galley of the late 15th century BCE, to the galley with brailed sail (ring attachment that improved maneuverability of the sail) by the end of the Bronze Age (12th century BCE). Interactions driven by trade, diplomacy, and raiding promoted the emergence of globalized maritime trading networks. Such networks played a key role in linking the Aegean with Anatolia, Cyprus, Egypt, and the Levant to the east and the cultures of Italy, Sardinia, and Sicily to the west.

Lakonia is remembered in Homeric epic as the locale where Queen Helen was abducted to Troy, becoming the face that launched 1,000 ships. In Bronze Age reality (ca. 3000–1200 BCE), Lakonia was one of the earliest areas on the Greek mainland to be influenced by Minoan civilization, achieve social complexity, and progress toward Mycenaean statehood. We examine how these cultural developments were supported by Lakonia’s riverine topography. The perennial Eurotas River connected intervisible Bronze Age sites in the Spartan Plain with coastal port cities, thereby facilitating flows of ideas, people, and trade, particularly with Minoan Crete via the island of Kythera. We argue that Minoan interest in Lakonian raw materials resulted in the acquisition of finished prestige goods and specialized knowledge by Lakonian elites and contributed to emerging Lakonian social complexity. We conclude that Lakonia’s riverine landscape was an important factor in its early development toward Mycenaean statehood.

An introduction to the chronology and geography of the ancient Aegean.

An interview on the Sea Peoples as pirates with commentary on the recent study of Philistine DNA. In this interview, James Blake Wiener speaks to Professor Louise Hitchcock – one of the world’s leading experts on the Bronze Age Mediterranean and the ancient Aegean – about the Sea Peoples and their legacy in reshaping the ancient Eastern Mediterranean.

The Minoans appear to have placed a special and even ritual premium on curated objects that stimulated memory, such as heirlooms and antiques. Some imported Old and Middle Kingdom Egyptian objects, for example, were curated by the Minoans for centuries before deposition, often in tombs. Minoan stone bull’s-head and relief rhyta – never found intact, and with pieces always missing – appear to have been intentionally smashed, with pieces given to witnesses as mementos of the occasion; some of these pieces were curated for generations before being deposited in ritual contexts. In the same way, antique Minoan objects were sometimes curated into the Mycenaean period, as exemplified by Neopalatial vessels found in LM III contexts, or by the fragments of Minoan stone bull’s-head rhyta found in LH III contexts on the mainland. This practice of curation, however, is not specific to the Aegean; it is in fact common to a large number of cultures, both ancient and modern. Two LH IIIA2/B alabastra found at Ugarit, for example, had been curated there for nearly a century before the city’s destruction. Fragments of animal-headed cups were curated in Philistia, only to be deposited later in ritual contexts. The tomb of Tutankhamun contained a number of curated objects, including a lock of hair from his grandmother Tiye, and travertine vessels from the reign of his great-great-great grandfather Tuthmosis III. Among the Samburu of Kenya, antique Venetian trade beads—prized for their exoticness and distance-value—have been passed down through generations of women at their weddings as symbols of fertility and abundance. The Haya of Tanzania curate the clothing of a deceased head of household; the clothing is subsequently worn by his successor as a means of transferring power to the new generation. After libations at a shrine, the Aymara of Bolivia curate and display the empty libation vessels next to the effigy of the deity, where they serve as reminders (both to the deity and to futur

The oldest words for future in Sumerian, Akkadian, Hebrew, Hittite, and ancient Greek can be translated as the back of the day or that, which is behind you. Thus, the future has always been conceived in terms of its relationship to the past. Although the act of remembering the past may lead to remorse and trauma, it can also create a sense of stability through nostalgia, identity maintenance, and belonging. One of us (Hitchcock under submission) has proposed that the Late Bronze Age collapses not from any one catastrophe, but that its social and political structures could not withstand the multiplicity of the changes confronting it. Drought, famine, disease, earthquakes, piracy, and popular uprisings may have all been suggested as being among these changes. Thus, it became necessary for the Late Bronze Age to develop or transform into something else. This transformation was neither peaceful, stable, short-termed, or uniform in character. Yet communities that survived these collapses clung to certain symbols (e.g. horns of consecration), ritualized practices (e.g., feasting, fragmentation, and ruin cult), and ways of life (e.g. curation of architecture) – and in some cases invented behaviors seemingly relating to the past - to preserve some stability in a sea of change. The result is that the preserved remnants of the past provided continuity with the past while forming a gradual transition to the future. Our paper considers how the social memory of what it meant to be Minoan, Mycenaean, and even ‘Mycenoan’ in the transition to the Late Bronze Age was hanging by a thread. Using examples from the Aegean, Cyprus and the ‘Sea Peoples’, we also examine the struggles to find meaning and purpose in the remnants of the Late Bronze Age as the concept of collective and self-identity gradually undergoes a transformation to the great civilizations of the Iron Age.

An examination of the role of crowds in the Bronze Age as related to crowd psychology.

Festschrift for Prof Aren M Maeir

Summary of the second season of the Vapheio-Palaiopyrgi Survey.

The co-occurrence of the ethnic designations Cherethite and Pelethite and the association of the Philistines with Caphtor in the Old Testament point to a specifically Cretan origin or affiliation for at least some of the Philistines in literary tradition. This identification, although bolstered by the discovery that the Philistines produced their own version of Mycenaean IIIC pottery, has rightly come under criticism from those reluctant to simplistically associate pots with peoples. However, additional categories of archaeological evidence indicating an Aegean origin for the Philistines are well-rehearsed and include the reel-style of loom weights, drinking habits, consumption of pork, Aegean-style cooking pots, use of hearths and bathtubs, temple architecture, and megaron-style buildings. Yet, in contrast to the strong identification of the Philistines with Crete in the literary tradition, these Aegean characteristics of Philistine culture point to Mycenaean Greece. This paper examines the current state (as of 2011) of our understanding of the specific connections between Crete and Philistia with regard to recent discoveries and interpretations of Philistine culture, with particular reference to the author’s excavations at Tell es-Safi/Gath and study of other Philistine material in Israel. Among the categories of evidence examined in this paper are architectural features, particularly hearths, but also spatial syntax, plaster, and tool use; the spatial manipulation of artifacts such as the practice of curating animal head cups and seal use, ritual action, and recently discovered inscriptional evidence. It is argued that key features of Minoan culture survived in Philistine culture, embedded among other cultural practices that can be associated with the Mycenaeans, Cypriots, and Canaanites, and that they form an important record of the Cretan and Minoan contribution to human civilization.

An anthropological approach to a culture extrapolates social structures, traditions, and general organising principles of that culture from the careful observation of patterns of behaviour as described in case studies. In the absence of a living culture to record, archaeologists extrapolate this information from behaviour reconstructed from spatially determined patterns in the deposition of material remains and from patterns found in the general organizing principles of historically documented cultures, using arguments based on analogy. This contribution builds on our previous research on the “Sea Peoples” as a piratical culture in order to apply an anthropological approach to understanding the cultural identities of the various tribal groups involved in maritime activities at the end of the Bronze Age who are popularly known as the “Sea Peoples”, and place this within the broader context of the current discussions on the transition between the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age in the Mediterranean.

This paper proposes to examine identity as a category is structured through processes of ritualized behavior, belief, and encounter with the ‘Other’, an approach that opposes the Cartesian duality of mind and body. Instead, it is influenced by the ideas of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, that human identity, including thought, is lived through the body as a practice of embodied experience and of Anthony Giddens, that there is a duality of structure that constrains and enables human behavior. To the extent that individuals are capable of changing their lives through manipulating the spatial organization of their culture, they are modifying their routines and transforming their identities. Thus, examining the habits orchestrated by architectural spaces and the ritualized use of objects with a clear archaeological context present the best sources of evidence for understanding the Aegean connections to Philistine identity. Behavior and belief can be interpreted through analyzing the spatial distribution of artifacts in their archaeological contexts such as courtyards and temples in order to reconstruct the daily routines of individuals living out their lives. These routines can then be compared to those of the Aegean, Cyprus and the Levant in order to identify similarities and differences, distinguishing the introduction of new social strategies, from the persistence of indigenous ones. Another consideration is continuity in the perseverance of Bronze Age routines and preferences in contrast to the transformation of Philistine culture through both unconscious and conscious changes in the formulation of their material culture. Such transformation emerged in the Iron Age as a process of preserving social memory, appropriation of various artifacts and social practices, entanglement of foreign and local objects and uses of those objects, and encounters with alterity. Symbolic items and ritual behaviors to be considered in this paper include the triton shell and double axe, curation

Chronologically, the volume's scope extends from pre-historical antiquity in the third millennium B.C.E. through the rise of Islam in the seventh century C.E. An interdisciplinary approach draws out the common issues and elements between ...

Chronologically, the volume's scope extends from pre-historical antiquity in the third millennium B.C.E. through the rise of Islam in the seventh century C.E. An interdisciplinary approach draws out the common issues and elements between ...