Minoans: Life in Bronze Age Crete / Edition 1

by Rodney Castleden

Overview

Thoroughly researched, Rodney Castleden's Minoans: Life in Bronze Age Crete here sues the results of recent research to produce a comprehensive new vision of the peoples of Minoan Crete.

Since Sir Arthur Evans rediscovered the Minoans in the early 1900s, we have defined a series of cultural traits that make the ‘Minoan personality’: elegant, graceful and sophisticated, these nature lovers lived in harmony with their neighbours, while their fleets ruled the seas around Crete. This, at least, is the popular view of the Minoans. But how far does the later work of archaeologists in Crete support this view?

Drawing on his experience of being actively involved in research on landscapes processes and prehistory for the last twenty years, Castleden writes clearly and accessibly to provide a text essential to the study of this fascinating subject.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415088336
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/17/1992
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

1 Introduction 2 The people 3 Life in the countryside 4 Life in the towns 5 Life in the harbour towns and overseas 6 The religious life 7 The Minoan personality

Editorial Reviews

"Displaying sound scholarship, Castleden cites excavations and theories in detailed but accessible prose. . . . A more complex, even contradictory, image of the Minoans than appears in other works."
-"Booklist
"Strongly recommended for all ancient history collections."
-"Choice
"Well researched, well illustrated, and bang up to date as far as recent discoveries are concerned."
-"Minerva

From the Publisher

In this companion to The Knossos Labyrinth (Routledge, 1990), Castleden gives us an outline of the Minoan culture that, he alleges, is more consistent with recent archaeological evidence: that Knossos was a temple, not a palace, in which occurred not only athletic games and graceful rites, but also human sacrifice and other behaviors pointing to a previously unsuspected dark side to the Minoan personality; and that the Minoan world view and distinctive artistic vision were stimulated by the widespread eating of opium. His revision is not implausible. In early cultures the line between church and state tended to be hazy; so with its architecture. On the other hand, in his zeal to reexamine all traditional theories Castleden frequently proposes scenarios drawn more from psychosocial inference than evidence, yielding arguments less compelling than the originals. A nation of addicts could scarcely have had the energy to execute drug-induced creativity, much less to develop the commercial empire that was ancient Crete under the Minoans. Thought-provoking nonetheless.--Jo-Ann D. Suleiman, Sanad Support Technologies, Rockville, Md.

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