Janine Bourriau - Invention and Innovation: The Social Context of Technological Change II, Egypt, the Aegean and the Near East, 1650-1150 B.C.

First published in the United Kingdom in 2004. Reprinted in 2016 by
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Front cover: Faience Argonaut from the Palace of Zakros, Crete

Contents

List of Contributors

SALLY-ANN ASHTON

Fitzwilliam Museum

Trumpington Street

Cambridge CB2 1RB

UK

JANINE BOURRIAU

McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research

Downing Street

Cambridge CB2 3ER

UK

YUVAL GOREN

Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures

Tel-Aviv University

Tel-Aviv 69978

Israel

GARETH HATTON

Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art

6 Keble Road

Oxford 0X1 3QJ

UK

MICHAEL HUGHES

4 Welbeck Rise

Harpenden

Herts. AL5 1SL

UK

DESPINA KAVOUSSANAKI

Laboratory for Archaeometry

Institute of Materials

NCSR Demokritos

15310 Ag. Paraskevi

Attikis, Greece

YANNIS MANIATIS

Laboratory for Archeometry

Institute of Materials

NCSR Demokritos

15310 Ag. Paraskevi

Attikis, Greece

HOLLEY MARTLEW

The Holley Martlew Archaeological Foundation

Tivoli House

Tivoli Road

Cheltenham

Glos. GL50 2TD

UK

MARINA PANAGIOTAKI

Department of Mediterranean Studies

University of the Aegean

1, Demokratias Street

85100 Rhodes

Greece

JACKE PHILLIPS

McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research

Downing Street

Cambridge CB2 3ER

UK

MARGARET SERPICO

Institute of Archaeology

University College London

3134 Gordon Square

London WC1H 0PY

UK

IAN SHAW

Department of Archaeology (SACOS)

University of Liverpool

14 Abercromby Square

Liverpool L69 3BX

UK

ANDREW SHORTLAND

Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art

6 Keble Road

Oxford 0X1 3QJ

UK

LAURENCE SMITH

McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research

Downing Street

Cambridge CB2 3ER

UK

RACHAEL THYRZA SPARKS

Pitt Rivers Museum

60 Banbury Road

Oxford 0X2 6PN

UK

MICHAEL TITE

Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art

6 Keble Road

Oxford 0X1 3QJ

UK

Preface and Acknowledgements

In September 2002, a second workshop on the theme of the social context of technological change was held at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge. It followed a meeting in Oxford, two years earlier which resulted in a book, The Social Context of Technological Change. Egypt and the Near East, 16501150 BC, edited by Andrew Shortland and published in 2001 by Oxbow Books. The format of both meetings was the same: each paper was followed by 20 minutes of discussion led by a participant who had read the paper in advance. The format is not yet a common one but it has the great merit of ensuring an informed discussion and helping to overcome the problem for an audience in absorbing complicated data for the first time and having enough energy left to ask sensible questions.

Discussion has been the core of these meetings so far since their aim is to relate the results of the specialist investigator to broad historical questions concerning the nature and development of ancient societies. Paradoxically, the spur for these meetings has come as much from two recent publications as from discussion: P. R. S. Mooreys, Ancient Mesopotamian Materials and Industries: the Archaeological Evidence, Oxford, 1994, 1999 and P. T. Nicholson and I. Shaw (eds), Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology, Cambridge, 1999, both evolving from Alfred Lucas, Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries, London 1926 (1st edition); London 1962 (4th edition expanded by J.R.Harris). Both publications illustrate the richness of textual, archaeological and scientific evidence which confronts students of the technologies of these great civilisations. Equally, they demonstrate the complexity of the sources; the difficulty of their interpretation and of the integration of the different kinds of evidence they provide. A good example of this is the source material for the study of glass-making (Moorey 1999, 189215; Nicholson and Henderson in Nicholson and Shaw (eds) 1999, 195224; and, in Andrew Shortlands volume: Robson; Shortland, Nicholson and Jackson; Shortland; and Rehren, Pusch and Herold. To make matters worse scholars have tended to confine themselves to a particular methodology and type of evidence and traditionally they have worked alone. This approach is appropriate for some investigations but not for all, as the multi-authorship of some of the papers indicate. However, the scientific research group model, in which a group of specialists come together, under direction, each contributing to the overall research design as well as to its performance, is still rare in archaeology.

For the Cambridge meeting it was decided to enlarge the discussion geographically to include the Aegean formally (several Aegean related papers had in fact appeared in the Shortland volume) and thematically to invite papers on natural products and raw materials. The time frame was not changed since it was felt that there was still much to explore in the period of the Late Bronze Age/New Kingdom. As a collection of papers there are some differences between this volume and the first. A majority of the papers draw on Egyptian evidence but this should be taken as a result of the stimulus of the wealth of Egyptian sources rather than a reflection of the editors interests. Moreover, two papers were given at the meeting, by Sariel Shalev, Metal production in the beginning of Iron Age Israel: facts and fictions, and by Neil Brodie and Ian Whitbread, Technological Traditions and Ceramic Exchange in Laconia, Greece during the Middle Bronze Age, which could not be included in the publication and they dealt respectively with the Aegean and the Levant.