Daniel J. Pullen - Political Economies Of The Aegean Bronze Age: Papers From The Langford Conference, Florida State University, Tallahassee 22 24 February 2007

Published by
Oxbow Books, Oxford, UK

Oxbow Books and the individual authors, 2010

ISBN 978-1-84217-392-3
EPUB ISBN: XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Cover images:
Late Helladic III stirrup jar from Knossos, Image Trustees of the British Museum.
Obsidian blade segments from Korphos-Kalamainos, Image SHARP.
Late Helladic III stirrup jar from Mycenae, Image Kim Shelton.
Linear B tablet Jn 829 from Pylos, Courtesy of the Program in Aegean Scripts,
University of Texas, and the University of Cincinnati Department of Classics.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Langford Conference of the Department of Classics (2007 : Florida State University)
Political economies of the Aegean Bronze Age : papers from the Langford Conference, Florida
State University, Tallahassee, 22-24 February 2007 / edited by Daniel J. Pullen.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-84217-392-3 (alk. paper)
1. Bronze age--Aegean Sea Region--Congresses. 2. Aegean Sea Region--Economic conditions
-Congresses. 3. Aegean Sea Region--Politics and government--Congresses. 4. Aegean Sea
Region--Antiquities--Congresses. 5. Crete (Greece)--Economic conditions--Congresses. 6. Crete
(Greece)--Politics and government--Congresses. 7. Crete (Greece)--Antiquities--Congresses.
8. Minoans--Congresses. 9. Civilization, Mycenaean--Congresses. I. Pullen, Daniel J., 1954- II.
Title.
DF220.L36 2007
330.93801--dc22

2010002774

Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Hobbs the Printers Ltd, Tott on, Hampshire

Preface

The contributions to this volume were originally delivered at the Spring 2007 Langford Conference entitled Political Economies of the Aegean BronzeAge, held at the Florida State University in Tallahassee 2224 February 2007. Papers were circulated in advance, and a response prepared by James Wright. Subsequently the papers and the response were revised for publication (the contribution by Donald Haggis, Stability and the State: A Diachronic Perspective on Pre-State Society in the Aegean was not submitted for publication here). I would like to thank the authors for their timely responses and an anonymous reviewer for comments. Bill Parkinson, Dimitri Nakassis, and Michael Galaty also provided comments and editorial assistance.

I would like to thank the George and Marian Langford Family Endowment in the Department of Classics at the Florida State University for funding the conference, Patrick Byrne and Jeff Bray for helping make the conference a smooth-sailing operation, and Kevin Wohlgemuth for providing editorial assistance. My colleague Bill Parkinson, formerly of the Department of Anthropology at Florida State and now at the Field Museum of Chicago, deserves gratitude for letting me bounce ideas off him over many lunches and emails and for co-hosting the conference. I would also like to thank my colleagues and graduate students in the Classics and Anthropology Departments who pitched in and helped in many ways to make the conference the success that it was.

Daniel J. Pullen
March 2009

Contributors

PETER M. DAY

Department of Archaeology

University of Sheffield

Northgate House

West Street

Sheffield S1 4ET

UK

JAN DRIESSEN

Archologie et Histoire de lArt

Universit Catholique de Louvain

Collge Erasme

Place B. Pascal 1

1348 Louvain-la-Neuve

Belgium

MICHAEL L. GALATY

Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Millsaps College

1701 North State Street

Jackson

Mississippi 39210

USA

JOANNE M. A. MURPHY

Department of Classical Studies

University of North Carolina at Greensboro

PO Box 26170

Greensboro

North Carolina 27402-6170

USA

DIMITRI NAKASSIS

Department of Classics

University of Toronto

Lillian Massey Building 123A

125 Queens Park

Toronto

Ontario M5S 2C7

Canada

WILLIAM A. PARKINSON

Department of Anthropology

Field Museum of Natural History

Chicago

Illinois 60605

USA

DANIEL J. PULLEN

Department of Classics

The Florida State University

205 Dodd Hall

Tallahassee

Florida 32306-1510

USA

MARIA RELAKI

Department of Archaeology

University of Sheffield

Northgate House

West Street

Sheffield S1 4ET

UK

ILSE SCHOEP

Onderzoekseenheid Archeologie

Universitet katholieke Leuven

Blijde-Inkomststraat 21

3000 Leuven

Belgium

KIM SHELTON

Nemea Center for Classical Archaeology

Department of Classic

University of California

Berkeley

California 94720-2520

USA

THOMAS F. TARTARON

Department of Classical Studies

University of Pennsylvania

Cohen Hall 201

249 S. 36th Street

Philadephia Pennsylvania 19104-6304

USA

SIMONA TODARO

Dipartimento SAFIST

Facolt di Lettere e Filosofia

Universit di Catania

Via Biblioteca 4

95124 Catania

Italy

SOFIA VOUTSAKI

Institute of Archaeology

University of Groningen

Poststraat 6

9712 ER Groningen

The Netherlands

CHERYL A. WARD

Center for Archaeology and Anthropology

Coastal Carolina University

Conway

South Carolina 29528

USA

JAMES C. WRIGHT

Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology

Bryn Mawr College

Bryn Mawr

Pennsylvania 19010-2899

USA

Abstract

This volume brings together an international group of researchers to address how Mycenaean and Minoan states controlled the economy. The contributions, originally delivered at the 2007 Langford Conference at the Florida State University, examine the political economies of state (and pre-state) entities within the Aegean Bronze Age, including the issues of:

• centralization and multiple scales of production, distribution, and consumption within a polity
• importance of extraregional trade
• craft specialization
• role of non-elite institutions
• temporal/diachronic variation within regions
• Aegean political economy as a monolithic process
• political economy before the emergence of the palaces

The contributors address these issues from an explicitly comparative perspective, both within Minoan or Mycenaean contexts and across Minoan and Mycenaean contexts. The conclusions reached in this volume shed new light on the essential differences between and among Minoan and Mycenaean states through their political economies.

INTRODUCTION

Daniel J. Pullen

Goals of the Volume

The issues of state formation and the nature of states in the Aegean have emerged as major concerns in recent Aegean scholarship (Parkinson and Galaty 2007). The political economies of these states likewise have seen increased attention by Aegean scholars. Aegean states have always been recognized as secondary states, on the periphery of primary states in Egypt and the Near East, but until recently have received little attention outside the world of Aegean studies. The study of Aegean polities by Aegeanists all too often has focused on specific culture-historical patterns, has utilized an approach that obscures variation (