EPOS, HISTORY, METAHISTORY

IN AEGEAN BRONZE AGE STUDIES*

The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there

L.P. Hartley, “The Go-between”

The discovery of ancient Greece

The era of great travels to Greece began in the 17th century reaching its peak after the
mid-18th century with the rediscovery of the value system of the ancient world in the context
of the European Enlightenment. Both official expeditions and individual literati and artists
made the pilgrimage to lands in the Ottoman empire, once the famous centres of classical
and of (unknown yet) prehistoric Aegean civilisations, and recorded their impressions in
an unprecedented proliferation of travel memoir and visual representation. By then many
monuments lay covered, half-forgotten in the realm of superstition, remembered by the locals
only in folk tales about statues possessing the supernatural properties of giants, their presence
suspected rather than fully seen. What was instead tangible and real was the landscape, in its
luminous beauty and often dramatic geology, and the people of the present who were often
described by the European travellers with distaste, as impoverished and dubious descendants
of the ancient Greeks.
The search for antiquity began in every sense as a journey to a foreign country and
developed as an enterprise of appropriation. The Aegean lands were scrutinised by classicists,
marvelled in their contemporary naiveté by romantics, admired in their beauty by naturalists
and artists, or mined by local suppliers for valuable booty on behalf of treasure-minded

* This paper has benefited from the excellent contributions and exchange of ideas at the “Epos” meetings,
especially from our discussions with Edmund Bloedow, Marie-Louise Nosch, Carol Thomas, Aleydis van de
Moortel, Asaf Yasur-Landau, and John Younger. We thank Robert Laffineur, Kenneth Lapatin, and Sarah
Morris who organised that outstanding conference and saw it to the present publication. Ernestine Elster
offered her support and valuable comments on earlier drafts, and Tracey Cullen kindly shared references.
Any omissions and errors remain our responsibility.
 F.-M. TSIGGAKOU, The Rediscovery of Greece: Travelers and Painters of the Romantic Era (1981); R. STONEMAN,
Land of Lost Gods: the Search for Classical Greece (1987); ID., Literary Companion to Travel in Greece (1994);
ID., A Luminous Land: Artists Discover Greece (1998); H. ANGELOMATIS-TSOUGARAKIS, The Eve of the
Greek Revival: British Travelers’ Perceptions of Early Nineteenth-Century Greece (1990); R. EISNER, Travelers to
an Antique Land: the History and Literature of Travel to Greece (1991); O. AUGUSTINOS, French Odysseys:
Greece in French Travel Literature from the Renaissance to the Romantic Era (1994); H.-J. GEHRKE, “Anazhtwvnta~
th cwvra twn Ellhvnwn: episthmonikav taxivdia kai h shmasiva tou~ gia thn evreuna kai thn antimetwvpish th~
arcaioellhnikhv~ istoriva~ ston 19° aiwvna,” in E. KRUSOS (ed.), vEna~ nevo~ kovsmo~ gennievtai: h eikovna tou
ellhnikouv politismouv sth germanikhv episthvmh katav ton 19° ai. (1996) 59-82; F.M. TSINKAKOU, “Germanikev~
eikovne~ hv ana-parastavsei~ th~ Ellavda~” (ibid.) 315-319; K. SIMOPOULOS, Xevnoi taxidiwvte~ sthn Ellavda:
dhmovsio~ kai idiwtikov~ bivo~, lai>kov~ politismov~, Ekklhsiva kai oikonomikhv zwhv apov ta cronikav twn perihghtwvn
(1999) 5 vols.
 This image of the ancient Greeks probably derived from the impression that the architectural remains and
larger-than-life statues had on contemporary people: I. TH. KAKRIDIS, Oi arcaivoi vEllhne~ sth neoellhnikhv
lai>khv paravdosh (1978) 46; cf. G. ANDREADIS, Ta paidiav th~ Antigovnh~: mnhvmh kai ideologiva sth newvterh
Ellavda (1989) 270; R. ETIENNE and F. ETIENNE, The Search for Ancient Greece (1992) 79; Y. HAMILAKIS,
“Lives in Ruins: Antiquities and National Imagination in Modern Greece,” in S. KANE (ed.), The Politics of
Archaeology and Identity in a Global Context (Archaeological Institute of America Colloquia and Conference Papers 7:
2003) 63.
 “Knossos. 11 May 1864, 8 a.m: …It was near nine before we saw the lumpy shell of a tomb… and past nine
when we got up to Fortetsa where there are lots of middle-aged walls – or Byzantine – and many old stones
(the village was half deserted) and I don’t doubt it was the acropolis of Knossos once upon a time:” E. LEAR,
The Cretan Journal, quoted in STONEMAN (supra n. 1, 1998) 159.
 D. LOWENTHAL, The Past Is a Foreign Country (1985).
 Marianna NIKOLAIDOU and Dimitra KOKKINIDOU

collectors. Then, with the first systematic archaeological endeavours, the past was resurrected
in an experience nothing short of epiphany, revealing both an exotic escape and the ancestral
home of Western civilisation. The Greeks themselves, amid all the difficulties associated with
the organisation of a new state, took steps to protect the antiquities through the establishment
of the Archaeological Service (1833) and the Athens Archaeological Society (1837), and the
enactment of legislation that banned the export of antiquities. At the same time, this powerless
political entity had to ensure the favour of the Great Powers that had played a crucial part
in its realisation but were also preying on its heritage. A number of foreign archaeological
schools were founded in Athens and were granted proprietary rights to certain excavations,
since the Greek state itself lacked sufficient funds to cope with research needs. By negotiating
the symbolical capital of the past, Greece sought, on the one hand, to control foreign looting
activity and, on the other, to promote its Western image abroad. Within the country the ideal
of an ancestral heritage was crucial to forge much-needed bonds of community and ethnic
identity. Illustrious sites of the classical era naturally became the foci of large-scale exploration.
What came earlier remained confined to the realm of legend, and was deemed to lie beyond
the scopes of scholarly quest. It was not until the 1870s that Heinrich Schliemann, the wealthy
layman and daydreamer, swept everybody into what became known as Aegean prehistory or
proto-history.
In this paper we look at the epistemological stratigraphies of Aegean prehistory as these
have been formed in the course of more than a century of scholarship. We address some
key questions relevant to the “archaeology” of this discipline: how much has the Aegean past
been familiarised and which parts of it remain a foreign country? And, how do we go about
investigating this foreign country? Which territories do we choose to explore, appropriate,
respectfully leave as they are, domesticate, or simply ignore? How has this past been invented,
perceived, desired, described, and narrated for generations to come?

An analysis of archaeological imagination

The archaeology of the Bronze Age Aegean has seen three major epistemological trends,
the paths of which have often crossed or merged into each other. In a broad scheme, we have
proceeded from (1) an “epic” view of this era, as the archaeological verification of Homer
and, by extent, as a prelude to Greek antiquity, to (2) a strong interest in historic “objectivity”
which is to be gained through “scientific” testing of material data instead of relying on literary
testimony. Currently, (3) the feasibility of objectivity and of a single archaeological “truth” is
being challenged by critical reflections on the nature and scope of the discipline. These three
traditions we consider here not only in terms of their intellectual roots and resulting narratives;
we also examine how each has informed the performance of archaeology as an authoritative
discourse, in fieldwork, publication, museum practice, and educational endeavour.
Drawing upon the work of Hayden White, we have applied the concept of meta-history
to the analysis of archaeological thought. It is important to understand that meta-history
goes beyond the particulars of archaeological knowledge, as gained through the data, to the
cognitive and social modes in which this knowledge is constructed; that is, the very realm of
archaeological imagination, in a Platonic sense of ideas imagined in the mind before they find
explicit formulation. We reflect on how we learn what we know, how we articulate the acquired

 K.P. BRACKEN, Antiquities acquired (1975); G. TOLIAS, (ed.), O puretov~ twn marmavrwn: marturive~ gia th
lehlasiva twn ellhnikwvn mnhmeivwn, 1800-1820 (1996); K. SIMOPOULOS, H lehlasiva kai katastrofhv twn
ellhnikwvn arcaiothvtwn (1997).
 A. KOKKOU, H mevrimna gia ti~ arcaiovthte~ sthn Ellavda kai ta prwvta mouseiva (1977); B.Ch. PETRAKOS,
Dokivmio gia thn arcaiologikhv nomoqesiva (Dhmosieuvmata tou Arcaiologikouv Deltivou 29: 1982); ID., H en Aqhvnai~
Arcaiologikhv Etaireiva: h istoriva twn 150 crovnwn th~, 1837-1987 (Biblioqhvkh th~ en Aqhvnai~ Arcaiologikhv~
Etaireiva~ 104: 1987); ID., “Ideografiva th~ ellhnikhv~ arcaiologiva~,” Arcaiologikhv Efhmeriv~ (1987) 24-197;
ID., “Ta prwvta crovnia th~ ellhnikhv~ arcaiologiva~,” Arcaiologiva 26 (1988) 90-99.
 Y. HAMILAKIS and E. YALOURI, “Antiquities as Symbolic Capital in Modern Greek Society,” Antiquity 70:
266 (1996) 117-129.
 H.V. WHITE, Metahistory: the Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973).
 EPOS, HISTORY, METAHISTORY IN AEGEAN BRONZE AGE STUDIES 

information into a story, what our narratives mean for our times, and how contemporary
mindsets shape what archaeologists want and eventually get to know about the past. The goals
of a research project are often determined by notions of archaeological reality that have been
prefigured well in advance:

· Essence of the discipline: what we think archaeology should be about in the first place.
· Objectives and materials that are deemed relevant to the scopes of “legitimate”
archaeology.
· Classifications for processing the selected “raw data” into a story about the past.
· Plots into which the archaeological narrative is to be cast.
· Agents of the story; strategies for their inclusion or exclusion from narratives.
· Role of the archaeologist and hierarchies of scholarly discourse.
Meta-history is about both literary and social analysis of archaeological narratives.
The variously emplotted and enacted stories about the past are only one interesting side
of archaeological imagination; equally interesting are the differently conceived roles of
professionals in the production of knowledge, and the interaction between experts and their
audiences.

Myth becomes history: an Archaeologia Homerica

The recent years have witnessed an increasing interest in the “origins” of Minoan and
Mycenaean prehistory, with lengthy biographies of the celebrated fathers of the discipline
(Schliemann10 and Evans11) and the restitution of less celebrated or even neglected pioneers,12
including women.13 These narratives portray the epic quality in the achievement of early
researchers, for many of whom archaeology was just one aspect of an extraordinary life of
exploration: courageous minds venturing into the social and topographical “wilderness” of
the Aegean lands coming upon chance (almost “miraculous”) findings that lead to grand
discoveries whereby myth was turned into history. Aegean archaeology indeed was born and
grew in the early years as an Archaeologia Homerica in more than one sense.14 Not only did the
epics provide the standard of reference by which the discipline’s scope and validity was defined

 M. PLUCIENNIK, “Archaeological Narratives and Other Ways of Telling,” Current Anthropology 40: 5 (1999)
653-678.
10 See C. RUNNELS, The Archaeology of Heinrich Schliemann: an Annotated Bibliographic Handlist (2002).
11 J.A. MACGILLIVRAY, Minotaur: Sir Arthur Evans and the Archaeology of the Minoan Myth (2000).
12 K. KOPAKA (ed.), “Mivnwo~ Kalokairinouv anaskafev~ sthn Knwsov,” Palivmyhston 9/10 (1989-90) 5-69; EAD.,
“O Mivnw~ Kalokairinov~ kai oi prwvte~ anaskafev~ sthn Knwsov,” in Pepragmevna tou Z’ Dieqnouv~ Krhtologikouv
Sunedrivou (Revqumno, 25-31 Augouvstou 1991) (1995) vol. 1, 501-511; EAD., “Stevfano~ Xanqoudivdh~: o
prwtergavth~ th~ krhtikhv~ arcaiologiva~,” Cretan Studies 7 (2002) 125-140; K. KOPAKA, “Nouvelle évidence
sur la fouille Kalokairinos à Knossos,” in J.-P. OLIVIER (ed.), Mykenaïka. Actes du IXe Colloque international sur
les textes mycéniens et égéens organisé par le Centre de l’Antiquité grecque et romaine de la Fondation Hellénique des
Recherches Scientifiques et l’Ecole française d’Athènes, Athènes (2-6 octobre 1990) (BCH Suppl. 25: 1992) 381-385;
EAD., “New Evidence on the Pottery from the Early Excavations at the Palace of Knossos,” BSA 88 (1993) 93-
102; M. J. BECKER and P.P. BENTACOURT, Richard Berry Seager: Pioneer Archaeologist and Proper Gentleman
(1997); N. MOMIGLIANO, “Evans, Mackenzie and the History of the Palace at Knossos,” JHS 116 (1996)
166-169; EAD., Duncan Mackenzie: a Cautious Canny Highlander and the Palace of Minos at Knossos (BICS Suppl.
72: 1999); I. GRUNDON, The Rash Adventurer: a Life of John Pendlebury (2001).
13 M. ALLSEBROOK, Born to Rebel: the Life of Harriet Boyd Hawes (1992); D.L. BOLGER, “Ladies of Expedition:
Harriet Boyd Hawes and Edith Hall at Work in Mediterranean Archaeology,” in C. CLAASSEN (ed.), Women
in Archaeology (1994) 41-50; M. PICAZO, “Fieldwork Is Not the Proper Reserve for a Lady: the First Women
Archaeologists in Crete,” in M. DÍAZ-ANDREU and M.-L. STIG SØRENSEN (eds), Excavating Women: a
History of Women in European Archaeology (1998) 198-213; D.W.J. GILL, “The Passion of Hazard: Women
at the British School of Athens before the First World War,” BSA 97 (2002) 491-510; ID., “Winifred Lamb,
1894-1963,” in G.M. COHEN and M.S. JOUKOWSKY (eds), Breaking Ground: Pioneering Women Archaeologists
(2004) 425-481; V. FOTOU and A. BROWN, “Harriet Boyd Hawes, 1871-1945,” (ibid.) 198-273.
14 H.L. LORIMER, Homer and the Monuments (1950); F. MATZ and H.-G. BUCHHOLZ (eds), Archaeologia
Homerica: die Denkmäler und das frühgriechische Epos (1967 ff, several volumes). Although these publications
appeared decades after the pioneering years they still share the early scholars’ preoccupation of marrying
Homer with the archaeological evidence.
 Marianna NIKOLAIDOU and Dimitra KOKKINIDOU

and measured; but doing archaeology as such was also experienced as a pursuit for klevo~: from
targeting research towards famed citadels and rich warrior graves, to peopling these sites with
mythic figures,15 to the archaeologists themselves braving hardships during Greece’s long war
adventures,16 or even falling in the battlefields.17
Legitimate research questions early revolved around the quest for origins and identities,
both past and present: the Aegean Bronze Age was confidently identified as pre-Hellenic,
a spectacular prelude to the climax of the Classical, and also exalted as the first European
civilisation, bearing the seeds that would come to full fruition in European modernity.18 The
remote past was thus familiarised, incorporated into the scholars’ package of cultural experience,
while at the same time contemporary socio-political aspirations would find fulfilment through
the archaeologist’s spade. With nationalisms blazing all over the Balkans and the European
interests in the area highly at stake, imagined ancestry from the gevno~ of heroes reaffirmed
a much-needed sense of superiority about the civilised “us” (Europeans, Greeks) versus the
barbaric “others” (Orient, Turks, Slavs). In the search for origins archaeology relied heavily on
folklore, philology, religious studies, art history, and freely projected back from ancient Greek
customs to the ethnographic present to forge the chain of continuity.19
Evolutionism and diffusionism provided the key principles for archaeological
categorisation and explanation: the tripartite periodisation into Early-Middle-Late phases was
transferred directly from Egyptian chronology to provide the time framework for the Aegean
Bronze Age as well. The ethnicity of the Minoans and Mycenaeans was hotly debated, notably
by Evans and Wace, and scholars ascribed cultural superiority to each group, respectively,
according to their proposed racial affinity with the “higher” civilisations of Egypt and the
Near East or with the Greeks of Homer. Pottery and other artefacts were dated, classified,
and evaluated with reference to the better understood assemblages from the Orient, and
recognisable foreign objects used as primary fossile directeur to local historical developments.
The production and consumption of material culture found in the Aegean was envisaged
within a network of migrations and diffusions from the “centres” to the “periphery” of the
Eastern Mediterranean. In sum, Aegean prehistory did not interest scholars so much on its own
historical merit, but rather for its relative place on the time-scale of European cultural progress
and the geo-cultural map of the Bronze Age Mediterranean. Thus, the diverse ethnic and social
landscapes of the region were largely left out of the routes of archaeological exploration, nor

15 C. TSOUNTAS and J.I. MANATT, The Mycenaean Age: a Study of Monuments and Culture of Pre-Homeric Greece
(1897).
16 B. Ch. PETRAKOS, Ta arcaiva th~ Ellavdo~ katav ton povlemo 1940-44 (Biblioqhvkh th~ en Aqhvnai~ Arcaiologikhv~
Etaireiva~ 144: 1994); ID., H peripevteia th~ ellhnikhv~ arcaiologiva~ ston bivo tou Crhvstou Karouvzou (Biblioqhvkh
th~ en Aqhvnai~ Arcaiologikhv~ Etaireiva~ 150: 1995); M. NIKOLAIDOU and D. KOKKINIDOU, “Greek
Women in Archaeology: An Untold Story,” in DÍAZ-ANDREU and STIG SØRENSEN (supra n. 13) 235-265;
D. KOKKINIDOU and M. NIKOLAIDOU, “On the Stage and behind the Scenes: Greek Archaeology in
Times of Dictatorship,” in M.L. GALATY and C. WATKINSON (eds), Archaeology under Dictatorship (2004)
155-190.
17 John Pendlebury, the “Cretan Lawrence,” was shot in the first months of the Nazi occupation of Crete while
organising bands of guerrillas to fight the invaders. On his biography, see GRUNDON (supra n. 12).
18 J.L. BINTLIFF, “Structuralism and Myth in Minoan Studies,” Antiquity 58: 222 (1984) 33-38; J. MACENROE, “Sir
Arthur Evans and Edwardian Archaeology,” Classical Bulletin 71: 1 (1995) 3-18; O. POLYCHRONOPOULOU,
Archéologues sur les pas d’Homère: la naissance de la protohistoire égéenne (1999); MACGILLIVRAY (supra n. 11);
Y. HAMILAKIS (ed.), Labyrinth Revisited: Rethinking “Minoan” Archaeology (2002); J.K. PAPADOPOULOS,
“Inventing the Minoans: Archaeology, Modernity and the Quest for European Identity,” JMA 18: 1 (2005)
87-149; M. FOTIADIS, “Factual Claims in Late Nineteenth Century European Prehistory and the Descent
of a Modern Discipline’s Ideology,” Journal of Social Archaeology 6: 1 (2006) 5-27; Y. HAMILAKIS and N.
MOMIGLIANO (eds), Archaeology and European Modernity: Producing and Consuming the “Minoans”, Creta
Antica 7 (2006).
19 M.P. NILSSON’S seminal work on Bronze Age religion offers a prime example: The Minoan-Mycenaean
Religion and its Survival in Greek Religion (1950, 2nd rev. ed); ID., Geschichte der griechischen Religion (3rd ed.
1967) 1 and (2nd ed. 1961) 2; ID., The Mycenaean Origins of Greek Mythology (with a new introduction and
bibliography by E. Vermeule 1972); cf. A. KURIAKIDOU-NESTOROS, H qewriva th~ ellhnikhv~ laografiva~:
kritikhv anavlush (1978).
 EPOS, HISTORY, METAHISTORY IN AEGEAN BRONZE AGE STUDIES 

was the possibility of multicultural fruition20 considered as a guiding tool for navigating the
lands of the Aegean.
Emplotting Aegean prehistory as unidirectional journeys of migration, battle, progress and
decay inevitably relied on a heroic cast: Minos, Minotaur, Ariadne, Clytemnestra, Agamemnon
lent their names and fate to excavated palace rooms, graves, shrines,21 and Homeric geography
dictated the first attempts at archaeological topography.22 It is as if archaeologists assumed the
role of an epic poet or shaman,23 resurrecting the ancestral legends from the ground, staging
them in their recovered material surroundings. The sense of kinship with the celebrated past
brought along claims of appropriation: since the Aegean Bronze Age was established as the
first European civilisation, it was the heritage of the whole civilised West, therefore all should
be entitled to partake of the archaeological “treasures” instead of leaving their care to the
Greek state alone. This rationale provided some archaeologists with the excuse to engage in
illicit digs and the trade, even forgery, of antiquities to enrich their private collections or those
of institutions abroad.24
Adventurous archaeology was fed with the ideas of 19th century romanticism, nationalism,
and colonialism. Western intellectuals sought for a place in the past where imagination could
take refuge and eventually settle in, while Greek archaeologists made it their national mission
to connect this idealised past with the troubled present.25 Scholars were breaking new grounds,
literally and epistemologically, so that archaeological narratives of the period often fuse epic
accounts of the Bronze Age with the archaeologist’s personal saga. Nowhere is this fusion
more striking than in the works of Evans. The voluminous “Palace of Minos” and extensive
concrete restorations at Knossos dogmatised aspirations that the man had pre-figured even
before he set foot on Knossos in 1894,26 and reworked for the following forty years into what

20 S.P. MORRIS, Daedalos and the Origins of Greek Art (1992); E.H. CLINE and D. HARRIS-CLINE (eds), The
Aegean and the Orient in the Second Millennium. Proceedings of the 50th Anniversary Symposium (University of
Cincinnati, 18-20 April 1997) (Aegaeum 18, 1998).
21 Such a qivaso~ of epic personalities links together writings as diverse in style as, for example, the exuberant
pages by Evans and sober, meticulous reports by Tsountas: A.J. EVANS, The Palace of Minos at Knossos:
a Comparative Account of the Successive Stages of the Early Cretan Civilisation as Illustrated by the Discoveries at
Knossos (1921-1936) 5 volumes; TSOUNTAS and MANATT (supra n. 15).
22 Beyond the obvious examples of Schliemann and Evans (supra n. 10-11), see, among others, V. BÉRARD,
Les navigations d’Ulysse (1927-29) 4 volumes; LORD RENNELL OF RODD, Homer’s Ithaca: a Vindication of
Tradition (1927); N. PLATON, Problhvmata tina th~ omhrikhv~ gewgrafiva~ kai topografiva~: A. To provblhma th~
Iqavkh~ kai twn periv authvn nhvswn. B. H nhvso~ th~ Kaluyouv~ (1949) unpublished doctoral dissertation, National
and Capodistrian University of Athens. Homeric geography and topography have been continuously revised
over the years; for recent approaches, see M. KORFMANN (ed.), Troia: Archäologie eines Siedlungshügels
und seiner Landschaft (2006); J.V. LUCE, Celebrating Homer’s Landscapes: Troy and Ithaca Revisited (1998); H.
WATERHOUSE, “From Ithaca to Odyssey,” BSA 91 (1996) 301-317; O. DICKINSON; A.P. CHAPIN and L.A.
HITCHCOCK, this volume.
23 Evans, for instance, experienced and spoke of archaeology at Knossos in terms of magic and ecstatic illusions;
see various quotes in A.C. BROWN, Arthur Evans and the Palace of Minos (1983); MACGILLIVRAY (supra
n. 11).
24 K. LAPATIN, Mysteries of the Snake Goddess: Art, Desire and the Forging of History (2002).
25 K. KOTSAKIS, “The Powerful Past: Theoretical Trends in Greek Archaeology,” in I. HODDER (ed.),
Archaeological Theory in Europe: the Last Three Decades (1991) 65-90; ID., “Ideological Aspects of Contemporary
Archaeology in Greece,” in M. HAAGSMA, P. DEN BOER and E. M. MOORMAN (eds), The Impact of
Classical Greece on European and National Identities. Proceedings of an International Colloquium Held at the
Netherlands Institute at Athens (2-4 October 2000) (2003) 55-70; D. KOKKINIDOU, “Past and Present in Greek
Archaeology: An Overview,” Journal of the Modern Greek Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand 5/7
(1997-99) 197-213; ID., Parelqovn kai exousiva: ovyei~ th~ ellhnikhv~ arcaiologiva~ sthn ellhnikhv koinwniva kai
ekpaivdeush (2005); KOKKINIDOU and NIKOLAIDOU (supra n. 16); ID., “Feminism and Greek Archaeology:
An Encounter Long Over-Due,” in K. KOPAKA (ed.), Engendering Prehistoric “Stratigraphies” in the Aegean
and the Mediterranean. Proceedings of an International Symposium (Rethymno, 3-5 June 2005) University of Crete,
Department of Sociology, Department of History and Archaeology, and Department of Philosophy and Social Studies
Undergraduate Programme on “Gender in the Social Sciences” (forthcoming); S. ANDREOU, “The Landscapes
of Modern Greek Prehistory,” in J.F. CHERRY, D. MARGOMENOU and L.E. TALALAY (eds), Prehistorians
Round the Pond: Reflections on Aegean Prehistory as a Discipline. Papers presented at a Workshop Held in the Kelsey
Museum of Archaeology (14-16 March, 2003) (Kelsey Museum Publication 2: 2005) 73-92.
26 A. BROWN, Before Knossos… Arthur Evans’ Travels in the Balkans and in Crete (1993).
 Marianna NIKOLAIDOU and Dimitra KOKKINIDOU

Zois has aptly termed an “ecstatic vision:”27 Minoan society was peaceful, nature-oriented
but also technologically advanced, elegant, theocratic and an enlightened monarchy, its very
name steeped in the ancient mythology of law and order under a powerful hgemwvn, the perfect
ancestor for the British Empire. In the darker recesses of this kovsmo~, however, Minotaur cast its
demonic spell upon both Minoan royalty and the aristocrat-scholar himself.28 In the surrealist
movement of the 1930s the Minotaur also features as a prominent symbol of the uncontrollable
forces at work beneath the surface of reason, demanding release and threatening the flimsy
façade of lovgo~.29 At the onset of the 21st century A.D. the Minotaur, together with a host of
other Minoica, has finally been domesticated by a resourceful market ready to supply the home
of the modern consumer with a colourful array of archaeo-kitch.30

History becomes lovgo~: archaeology loses (some of) its innocence31

After World War II, as a disillusioned Europe was settling down to rebuild itself from
the ruins, archaeologists were also slowly turning away from gods and demons to look instead
into more practical matters of order, material existence, authority, patterns in the past that
would help make sense of the mess in the present.32 Under the bitter experiences of wartime
archaeology loses the innocence of youth, is forced to come of age into pragmatism and
reality. The realms of archaeological imagination were accordingly reconfigured and redefined
radically. From then on archaeology was perceived foremost as science and as anthropology.33
New Archaeology and Marxism were on the cutting edge of epistemology; functionalism,
modernism, neo-evolutionism, and historical materialism provided the dominant paradigms
of thinking.34 Modern archaeology distanced itself from traditional classics, turned instead
to the ethnographic present for a window into the prehistoric past (ironically, the “big bang”
in Mycenaean archaeology did originate in classics, with the decipherment of Linear B and
subsequent epigraphic research opening up unprecedented views onto palatial economies
and administrations). Research agendas shifted the focus to processes and patterns of
environmental adaptation, subsistence, technology, and social complexity. These topics were
put into an entirely new perspective through the incorporation of ground-breaking scientific
techniques in archaeological method: radiocarbon dating, dendrochronology, chemical
analyses, petrography, geophysical surveys, paleonvironmental and paleoanthropological
studies, statistics and computation, and experimental study of technologies.
The wealth of new data thus gained were categorised and processed according to the key
principle of objectivity, which was to be achieved through detached observation and testing of
evidence against working hypotheses. As in the case of laboratory research, the results of each
testing were expected to conform to already observed patterns so that human behaviour should
be predictable across cultures sharing similar conditions such as geology, climate, and resources.
Cultural remains were treated as measurable values which can be computed and explained in
the light of middle-range norms, theoretical constructs that have been preset as a guiding tool

27 A.A. ZOIS, Knwssov~. To ekstatikov ovrama: shmeiwtikhv kai yucologiva mia~ arcaiologiva~ (1996).
28 In MACGILLIVRAY’S (supra n. 11) view Evans found in the creature a metaphor for his repressed
homosexuality.
29 Characteristically, the front cover of the first issue of Verve, principal venue of surrealist art and literature,
featured a powerful drawing of Minotaur by Picasso: illustrated in M. ANTHONIOZ, Verve: the Ultimate Review
of Art and Literature, 1937-1960 (1988) 20. An exhibit on “Picasso’s Greatest Print: The Minotauromachy in
All Its States” is currently on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (November 2006 – February
2007).
30 A cursory search on the internet brings up a treasury of Minoica for sale, including a repertoire of Minotaurs
(in one case brandishing the double axe in front of labyrinth castles!), fanciful replicas of “Minoan” topless
ladies (including a series of Barbie dolls!), a host of domestic accessories decorated with dolphins and other
motifs, and a whole New Age imagery of the Goddess-cum-Minotaur, to name but a few examples.
31 D.L. CLARKE, “Archaeology: the Loss of Innocence,” Antiquity 47: 185 (1973) 6-18.
32 Discussion and references in Y. HAMILAKIS, “What Future for the ‘Minoan’ Past? Rethinking ‘Minoan’
Archaeology,” in HAMILAKIS (supra n. 18) 2-28.
33 L.R. BINFORD, “Archaeology as Anthropology,” American Antiquity 28: 2 (1962) 217-255.
34 B.G. TRIGGER, A History of Archaeological Thought (1989) 244-328.
 EPOS, HISTORY, METAHISTORY IN AEGEAN BRONZE AGE STUDIES 

to the researcher. The archaeological data were then plotted onto narratives that highlighted
the material and operational dimensions of human existence: culture was described as “man’s
extra-somatic means” of adaptation to biology and environment, and the whole spectrum of
behaviour was constructed as a system of interlinked functional parts. Emphasis was obviously
given to the economic and social infrastructures, which were valued as the primary source
of reliable archaeological evidence. On the other hand, super-structural elements such as
symbolism and ideology were deemed inaccessible to the modern mind and quite inappropriate
for investigation. When archaeologists did have to deal with such phenomena, they approached
them as a mere reflection of infrastructure and their purported function within a wider system,
for example, as mechanisms of social cohesion or coercion.35 Interest in cultural adaptive
processes resulted in stories of indigenous development, in diametrical opposition to earlier
diffusionist scenarios.36 For example, complexity in the Bronze Age was no longer seen as an
influx from the Orient but as the progression, or revolutionary quantum leap, of autochthonous
structures, from egalitarianism in the Neolithic to hierarchical organisation later on.37 The
agents of historical change are now real-life personages of authority (always assumed male):
‘“Big Men’ and Chieftains … – egocentric, pushy individuals stirring up the sluggish peasants
towards civilisation,”38 lineage leaders and other officials, resourceful entrepreneurs – one
could say that all these types echoed role models of success in contemporary society. Alongside
these elites ordinary people (also implicitly male) are admitted into the cast, especially in Marxist
accounts: Neolithic villagers in control of their labour in an idealised world of equality,39 or
commoners (farmers, workers, soldiers) manipulated by Bronze Age palatial elites.40 In any
case, the archaeological script was structured along sharp lines of categorisation: ritual versus
mundane, practical versus symbolic, form versus function, equality versus vertical ranking.

Citadels versus works and days: two plots about prehistoric Dimini

A case in point is the site of prehistoric Dimini for which two radically different stories
have been written. The first narrative, by the pioneer excavator Tsountas in the early 20th
35 C. RENFREW, “Preface,” in C. RENFREW (ed.), The Archaeology of Cult: The Sanctuary at Phylakopi (1985) 1-
26; A.B. KNAPP, Copper Production and Divine Protection: Archaeology, Ideology and Social Complexity on Bronze
Age Cyprus (1986).
36 Especially C. RENFREW, The Emergence of Civilisation: the Cyclades and the Aegean in the Third Millennium B.C.
(1972); D.R. THEOCHARIS (ed.), Neolithic Greece (1973).
37 The revolutionary model was proposed by J. F. CHERRY, “Evolution, Revolution and the Origins of Complex
Society in Minoan Crete,” in O. KRZYSZKOWSKA and L. NIXON (eds), Minoan Society. Proceedings of the
Cambridge Colloquium 1981 (1983) 33-45; ID., “The Emergence of the State in the Prehistoric Aegean,”
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 210 (1984) 18-48; ID., “Polities and Palaces: Some Problems in
Minoan State Formation,” in C. RENFREW and J.F. CHERRY (eds), Peer Polity Interaction and Socio-Political
Change (1986) 19-45. Neo-evolutionist scenarios were developed by T.M. WHITELAW, “The Settlement at
Phournou Koryfi, Myrtos, and Aspects of Early Minoan Social Organisation,” in KRZYSZKOWSKA and
NIXON (op. cit.) 323-345, and RENFREW (supra n. 36). Scepticism on both paradigms was expressed by
A.A. ZOIS, “Gibt es Vorläufer der Minoschen Paläste auf Kreta? Ergebnisse neuer Untersuchungen,” in
D. PAPENFUSS and V.M. STROCKA (eds), Palast und Hütte. Beiträge zum Bauen und Wohnen in Altertum
(Berlin, November 1979) (1982) 207-215. Authority, ranking and complexity provided the key themes for
a number of international conferences and influential resulting publications, during the 1980s and early
1990s: Minoan Thalassocracy; R. HÄGG and N. MARINATOS, The Function of Minoan Palaces. Proceedings
of the Fourth International Symposium at the Swedish Institute in Athens (10-16 June 1984) (1987); P. REHAK
(ed.), The Role of the Ruler in the Prehistoric Aegean. Proceedings of a Panel Discussion at the Annual Meeting of the
Archaeological Institute of America, Louisiana (28 December 1992) (Aegaeum 11, 1995); Politeia. The Politeia
papers, however, do exhibit some promising interest in social groups beyond the enclaves of “elites.”
38 As BINTLIFF has aptly remarked on Renfrew’s explanatory paradigms which introduced the “anti-
sentimentalist” perspective into Aegean prehistory, in contrast to earlier romantic visions of peaceful rulers
and compliant folk (supra n. 18) 37.
39 G.H. CHOURMOUZIADIS, “Eisagwghv sto neoliqikov trovpo paragwghv~ I,” Anqrwpologikav 1 (1980) 118-129;
ID., “Eisagwghv sto neoliqikov trovpo paragwghv~ II,” Anqrwpologikav 2 (1981) 39-54; G.H. HOURMOUZIADIS,
“Die Spezialisierung im Neolithikum,” in PAPENFUSS and STROCKA (supra n. 37) 125-135.
40 See notable exceptions in KRZYSZKOWSKA and NIXON (supra n. 37), a collection of innovative papers
engaging with a broad cast of food-producers, crafters and artists, warriors, traders and travellers, ritual
specialists, and leaders – men and women in their varied social milieus.
 Marianna NIKOLAIDOU and Dimitra KOKKINIDOU

century,41 was cast into an epic plot drawing upon his fundamental work on the Mycenaean
citadels of southern Greece. Tsountas envisaged the hill of Dimini as the forerunner of a
Bronze Age akrovpoli~, its multiple surrounding walls protecting a central court with the ruler’s
mevgaron. Excited to have traced the history of Mycenaean fortifications so far back in time but
also a meticulous field archaeologist, Tsountas estimated the original height and thickness of
the Dimini enclosures and found it compatible with the war and siege tactics described in the
“Iliad.”
Seventy years later Hourmouziadis, chief proponent of Marxism in Greek archaeology,
formulated a historic materialist plot about Dimini as a result of his own fieldwork at the hill
and surroundings.42 He convincingly demonstrated that the multiple perivboloi largely belong
to different phases of building activity and that the mevgaron is the visual result of adjacent
rooms that were added on over the centuries, from the Late Neolithic to the later Bronze
Age. Instead of a single-period heroic akrovpoli~ we are thus presented with the demystified
and complex stratigraphy of a site occupied in the long term, its physiognomy and function
conceivably changing along the way. This possibility of fluctuating meanings, however, was not
brought forward in Hourmouziadis’ narrative which revolved around economy, function and
social relations of production; where Tsountas saw defensive walls, he postulated an exclusively
practical use for the enclosures and intermediate spaces as “loci of ecotechnic activity.”43
Hourmouziadis’ Marxist plot also carries an epic dimension, only that the inspiration
comes not from Homer’s “Iliad” but from Hesiod’s “Works and Days,” exalting the labours
of ordinary “man.”44 Tuned to the intellectual and social interests of the time, the “agro-
economic” epic was employed as a metaphor that bridged human endeavour in the remote
past with the ethnographic present but left out the achievements of “heroes.” For the first
time in Aegean studies archaeological agendas now corresponded directly to the political
commitment of their proponents. Involved Marxist scholars, including Hourmouziadis and
Zois, brought archaeological explanation down from the heights of aristocratic splendour to
ordinary people’s essential needs for sustenance and comfort, which they documented through
scrupulous investigation at sites such as Dimini45 and Vasiliki,46 respectively. On the other end
of the spectrum, we may see a correlation, as Bintliff pointed out long ago, between the model
of elite leadership in Renfrew’s “The Emergence of Civilisation” with this scholar’s personal
achievement within the British Conservative Party.47
The either/or formulations that dominated archaeological discource in the 1960s and
1970s would fall in place within the wider polarised worldview of the Cold War era, whereas
positivist and materialist agendas appear well in accordance with the socio-economic aspirations
of the post-war middle classes, members of which were increasingly joining the archaeological
ranks. During these years the profession opened up numerically and socially, to include also
an ever-growing number of women.48 As the social reality and experience of post-WWII
archaeology was changing in many significant ways, the whole perception of the past was also
revolutionised, with profound impact on later developments.49

41 Ch. TSOUNTAS, Ai proi>storikaiv akropovlei~ Sevsklou kai Dimhnivou (1908).

42 G.H. CHOURMOUZIADIS, To neoliqikov Dimhvni: prospavqeia gia mia neva prosevggish tou neoliqikouv ulikouv
(1979).
43 Supra n. 42, especially figs. 3-4.
44 A photographic essay under the title “Works and Days” was included in THEOCHARIS (supra n. 36) pls.
142-172, documenting traditional Greek farmers and crafters in action.
45 Supra n. 42.
46 A.A. ZOIS, Basilikhv I: neva arcaiologikhv evreuna ei~ to Kefavli plhsivon tou cwrivou Basilikhv Ieravpetra~
(1976).
47 BINTLIFF (supra n. 18) 34.
48 NIKOLAIDOU and KOKKINIDOU (supra n. 16); T. CULLEN, “A Profile of Aegean Prehistorians, 1984-
2003,” in CHERRY et al. (supra n. 25) 43-72.
49 A. SHERRATT, “The Relativity of Theory,” in N. YOFFEE and A. SHERRATT (eds), Archaeological Theory:
Who Sets the Agenda? (1993) 119-130.
 EPOS, HISTORY, METAHISTORY IN AEGEAN BRONZE AGE STUDIES 

From epos to long-term history: a critique of lovgo~

Over the past two decades, advances in settlement archaeology and regional studies50
have been leading us away from essentialist dichotomies, such as those encoded in the Dimini
narratives, to new paradigms of polysemy and multivalence. We have come to appreciate the
potential for multiple values in human environments: subsistence and production, interaction,
defense, territorial demarcation, structuring of space, and symbolic signification.51 The
extremely long occupation of so many Aegean sites, often from prehistory to late antiquity and
beyond, highlights the power of tovpo~ (the landscape) and its shvmata (monuments, artefacts that
circulate or are deposited therein): to condense and create memory, identity and community.52
Also the realisation came that objects have a voice, symbolism is encoded in objects by choice
to convey messages that texts (often accessible to a privileged few) or oral language cannot
communicate. Indeed, artefacts do not passively reflect culture, they structure it.53
Regional, ethnoarchaeological, and symbolic studies of material culture thus brought
a new conceptualisation of archaeology as long term history,54 which has inspired a series of
important regional projects and publications.55 Although firmly rooted in processualism, this
new awareness has nevertheless challenged the former’s normative frameworks and optimistic
reliance on “hard” science to reveal universal facts. Inspiration now comes from the social
sciences – history, sociology, cultural anthropology, linguistics – to evaluate cultural relativity
as we trace the diverse trajectories of ancient societies on the global map of archaeology.
We are called on not only to “decode” structure but further emplot past lives in context and
in action (wherein only structures become meaningful and relevant).56 The time-depth that
we now acknowledge for archaeology, as history before and beyond texts, is paralleled by
the broadening of the archaeological imagination into post-processual, cognitive, and social

50 P.N. KARDULIAS (ed.), Beyond the Site: Regional Studies in the Aegean Area (1994); T. CULLEN (ed.), Aegean
Prehistory: A Review (2001); J.F. CHERRY, “Archaeology beyond the Site: Regional Survey and its Future,” in
J.K. PAPADOPOULOS and R.M. LEVENTHAL (eds), Theory and Practice in Mediterranean Archaeology: Old
and New World Perspectives (2003) 137-159; M.L. GALATY, “European Regional Studies: A Coming of Age?,”
Journal of Archaeological Research 13: 4 (2005) 291-336.
51 O. RACKHAM and J. MOODY, The Making of the Cretan Landscape (1996); P.N. KARDULIAS and T. SHUTES
(eds), Aegean Strategies: Studies of Culture and Environment on the European Fringe (1997); D. KOKKINIDOU
and M. NIKOLAIDOU, “Neolithic Enclosures in Greek Macedonia: Violent and Non-violent Aspects of
Territorial Demarcation,” in J. CARMAN and A. HARDING (eds), Ancient Warfare: Archaeological Perspectives
(1999) 89-99; K. KOTSAKIS, “What Tells Can Tell: Social Space and Settlement in the Greek Neolithic,” in
P. HALSTEAD (ed.), Neolithic Society in Greece (1999) 66-76.
52 A. KURIAKIDOU-NESTOROS, “Shmavdia tou tovpou kai h logikhv tou ellhnikouv topivou,” in A. KURIAKIDOU-
NESTOROS, Laografikav melethvmata (n.d.) 15-40; M. ROWLANDS, “The Role of Memory in the Transmission
of Culture,” WorldArch 25: 2 (1986) 141-151; J. CHAPMAN, “Objectification, Embodiment and the Value
of Places and Things,” in D.W. BAILEY and S. MILLS (eds), The Archaeology of Value: Essays on Prestige and
the Process of Valuation (1998) 106-130; Fragmentation in Archaeology: People, Places and Broken Objects in the
Prehistory of South-Eastern Europe (2000); P.M. DAY and D. WILSON, “Landscapes of Memory, Craft and
Power in Prepalatial and Protopalatial Knossos,” in HAMILAKIS (supra n. 18) 143-166.
53 I. HODDER (ed.), Symbolic and Structural Archaeology (1982); I. HODDER (ed.), The Archaeology of Contextual
Meanings (1987); D. MILLER, Artefacts as Categories: a Study of Ceramic Variability in Central India (1985); C.
TILLEY, Material Culture and Text: the Art of Ambiguity (1991); ID., Metaphor and Material Culture (1999).
54 I. HODDER (ed.), Archaeology as Long Term History (1987); J.L. BINTLIFF (ed.), The Annales School and
Archaeology (1991); A.B. KNAPP (ed.), Archaeology, Annales and Ethnohistory (1992).
55 J.F. CHERRY, J.L. DAVIS and E. MANTZOURANI (eds), Landscape Archaeology as Long-term History: Northern
Keos in the Cycladic Islands from Earliest Settlement to Modern Times (1991); D.C. HAGGIS, “Archaeological Survey
at Kavousi, East Crete: Preliminary Report,” Hesperia 65: 4 (1996) 373-432; E. ELSTER and C. RENFREW
(eds), Prehistoric Sitagroi: Excavations in Northeast Greece, 1968-1970: The Final Report, vol. 2 (2003); L.V.
WATROUS, D. HADZI-VALLIANOU and H. BLITZER (eds), Plain of Phaistos: Cycles of Social Complexity in
the Messara Region of Crete (2004); J.L. DAVIS, S.E. ALCOCK, J. BENNET, Y. LOLOS, C.W. SHELMEDRINE
and E. ZANGGER, The Pylos Regional Archaeological Project <http://classics.uc.edu/PRAP/>; L. NIXON, J.
MOODY, S. PRICE and O. RACKHAM, The Sphakia Survey <http://sphakia.classics.ox.ac.uk>.
56 I. HODDER, Symbols in Action: Ethnoarchaeological Studies of Material Culture (1982); P.M. WARREN, Minoan
Religion as Ritual Action (1988); A.-L. D’ AGATA, “Late Minoan Crete and Horns of Consecration: a Symbol
in Action,” in EIKON 247-256.
10 Marianna NIKOLAIDOU and Dimitra KOKKINIDOU

orientations. Despite their differing perspectives and varied merits57 such orientations have
all contributed to shift focus on lives and things long forgotten. 58 A growing number of
scholars:59
· Question the feasibility of a single “truth,” allowing instead for a variety of contextualised
“readings” of the evidence60 and coming to terms with ambiguity as part of archaeological
reality.61
· Emphasise the role of agency62 striving to perceive the past with human faces, individuals
in their corporeal and cultural existence.63
· Address gender, in its varied manifestations beyond the binary categories
of “femininity” and “masculinity,”64 childhood,65 ethnicity,66 the many layers of

57 See YOFFEE and SHERRATT (supra n. 49).

58 J.F. DEETZ, In Small Things Forgotten: The Archaeology of Early American Life (1977).
59 On current Aegean research, see PAPADOPOULOS and LEVENTHAL (supra n. 50); E. BLAKE and A.B.
KNAPP (eds), The Archaeology of Mediterranean Prehistory (2005).
60 M. NIKOLAIDOU, O diplov~ pevleku~ sthn eikonografiva twn minwikwvn skeuwvn: proseggivsei~ sth dunamikhv
tou minwikouv qrhskeutikouv sumbolismouv (1995) unpublished doctoral dissertation, Aristotle University
of Thessaloniki; L.A. HITCHCOCK, “Engendering Domination: a Structural and Contextual Analysis of
Minoan Neopalatial Bronze Figurines,” in J. MOORE and E. SCOTT (eds), Invisible People and Processes:
Writing Gender and Childhood into European Archaeology (1997) 113-130; ID., Minoan Architecture: a Contextual
Analysis (2000).
61 L.A. HITCHCOCK, “It’s a Drag to be a King: Engendering Ambiguity in Minoan Crete,” in M. DONALD
and L. HURCOMBE (eds), Gender and Material Culture: Representations of Gender from Prehistory to the Present
(2000) 69-86.
62 M.A. DOBRES and J. ROBB (eds), Agency in Archaeology (2000); S. SILLIMAN, “Agency, Practical Politics
and the Archaeology of Cultural Contact,” Journal of Social Archaeology 1: 2 (2001) 190-209; J L. DORNAN,
“Agency and Archaeology: Past, Present and Future Directions,” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
9: 4 (2002) 303-329.
63 R.E. TRINGHAM, “Households with Faces: The Challenge of Gender in Prehistoric Architectural Remains,”
in J.M. GERO and M.W. CONKEY (eds), Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory (1991) 93-131; EAD.,
“Men and Women in Prehistoric Architecture,” Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review 3: 1 (1991) 9-28;
EAD., “Engendered Places in Prehistory,” Gender, Place and Culture 1: 2 (1994) 169-204; A.B. KNAPP and L.
MESKELL, “Bodies of Evidence on Prehistoric Cyprus,” CAJ 7: 2 (1997) 73-104; D. KOKKINIDOU and M.
NIKOLAIDOU, “A Sexist Present, a Human-less Past: Museum Archaeology in Greece,” in M. DONALD and
L. HURCOMBE (eds), Gender and Material Culture in Archaeological Perspective (2000) 33-55; Y. HAMILAKIS,
M. PLUCIENNIK and S. TARLOW (eds), Thinking through the Body: Archaeologies of Corporeality (2002); M.
NIKOLAIDOU, “Palaces with Faces in Protopalatial Crete: Looking for the People in the First Minoan
States,” in HAMILAKIS (supra n. 18); A. WHITTLE, The Archaeology of People: Dimensions of Neolithic Life
(2003); D.W. BAILEY, Prehistoric Figurines: Representation and Corporeality in the Neolithic (2005).
64 R.A. SCHMIDT and B.L. VOSS (eds), Archaeologies of Sexuality (2000); T.A. DOWSON (ed.), “Queer
Archaeologies,” WorldArch 32: 2 (2000); T.A. DOWSON (ed.), “Debates in World Archaeology,” WorldArch
37: 4 (2005); contributions by B.J. CLARK and L. WILKIE, B.L. VOSS, B. ALBERTI, and S.E. HOLLIMON
in S.M. NELSON (ed.), Handbook of Gender in Archaeology. Section on “Identities” (2006). On current
gender perspectives in Aegean studies, see L.E. TALALAY, “The Gendered Sea: Iconography, Gender and
Mediterranean Prehistory,” in BLAKE and KNAPP (supra n. 59) 130-155; KOPAKA (supra n. 25).
65 SCOTT and MOORE (supra n. 60); B.A. OLSEN, “Women, Children and the Family in the Late Aegean
Bronze Age: Differences in Minoan and Mycenaean Constructions of Gender,” WorldArch 29: 3 (1998) 381-
392; L. NIXON, “Women, Children and Weaving,” in MELETEMATA 561-567; K.A. KAMP, “Where Have All
the Children Gone? The Archaeology of Childhood,” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 8: 1 (2001)
1-34; J.E. BAXTER, The Archaeology of Childhood: Children, Gender and Material Culture (2004); J. WILEMAN,
Hide and Seek: the Archaeology of Childhood (2005).
66 S. JONES, The Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing Identities in the Past and Present (1997); L.E. TALALAY,
“Reflections on Identity and Ethnicity in the Ancient World: All for One or One for All? (Re)constructing
Identity in the Ancient World,” Graduate Student Symposium, Department of Classics and Near Eastern Archaeology,
Bryn Mawr College (17-18 October 1997) <http://www.brynmawr/Acads/Arch/guesswho/symposium.htm>;
L. A. HITCHCOCK, “A Near Eastern Perspective on Ethnicity in Minoan Crete: The Further Tale of Conical
Cups…,” in MELETEMATA 371-379.
 EPOS, HISTORY, METAHISTORY IN AEGEAN BRONZE AGE STUDIES 11

identity;67 give voice to the disenfranchised in the presentation of their own past.68
· Redefine power and complexity to include diverse social, political, and ritual
authorities.69
· Approach ancient technology from a socially- and symbolically-informed perspective.70
· Combine meticulous recording, measuring, and experimental study with the willingness
to engage in interpretative dialogues with the data.71
· Advocate the recovery of ancient cognition, in a wide spectrum of behaviours.72
· Rethink religion and ritual in their complex semantic, behavioural, and social
dimensions.73
· Recognise the impact of modern experiences on scholarly constructs about the past.74

Archaeology’s loss of political innocence75

It is exactly the willingness to reflect critically on our scholarship76 that opens the path to
archaeology’s loss of political innocence. We are on track when we address issues such as:
· The power of the past for the present.
· The nature and role of archaeology as authoritative endeavour securing privileged
access to important knowledge and the negotiation thereof).77

67 S.J. SHENNAN (ed.), Archaeological Approaches to Cultural Identity (One World Archaeology 1989: 10); M.
ROWLANDS, “The Politics of Identity in Archaeology,” in G.C. BOND and A. GILLIAM (eds), Social
Construction of the Past: Representation as Power (1994) 129-143; M. RONAYNE, “Object Lessons: the Politics
of Identity in Archaeological Discourse,” Assemblage: The Sheffield Graduate Journal for Archaeology 2 (1997)
<http://www.assemblage.group.shef.ac.uk/2/2ronayn.html>; D.W. BAILEY, Balkan Prehistory: Exclusion,
Incorporation and Identity (2000); L. MESKELL, “Archaeologies of Identity,” in I. HODDER (ed.), Archaeological
Theory Today (2001) 187-213; EAD., “The Intersections of Identity and Politics in Archaeology,” Annual
Review of Anthropology 31, 279-301.
68 S. A. SCHAM, “The Archaeology of the Disenfranchised,” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 8: 2
(2001) 183-213.
69 C. KNAPPET, “Assessing a Polity in Protopalatial Crete: the Mallia-Lasithi State,” AJA 103: 4 (1999) 615-639;
J. DRIESSEN, I. SCHOEP and R. LAFINNEUR (eds), Monuments of Minos: Rethinking the Minoan Palaces.
Proceedings of the International Workshop “Crete of the Hundred Palaces,” Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve
(14-15 December 2001) (Aegaeum 23, 2002); D.C. HAGGIS, “Integration and Complexity in the Late Palatial
Period: a View from the Countryside in Eastern Crete,” in HAMILAKIS (supra n. 18) 120-142. Phenomena
of complexity in non-state societies are discussed by C. PERLÈS, The Early Neolithic in Greece: the First Farming
Communities in Europe (2001).
70 P. LEMONNIER (ed.), Technological Choices: Transformation in Material Culture since the Neolithic (1992); B.
PFAFFENBERGER, “Social Anthropology of Technology,” Annual Review of Anthropology 21 (1992) 491-516;
M.-A. DOBRES and C. HOFFMAN, “Social Agency and the Dynamics of Prehistoric Technology,” Journal of
Archaeological Method and Theory 1: 3 (1994) 211-258; M.-A. DOBRES, Technology and Social Agency: Outlining
a Practice Framework for Archaeology (2000). A plethora of fresh insights into Aegean technologies and their
crafters have been published in TEXNH; also M. NIKOLAIDOU, “Ritualised Technologies in the Aegean
Neolithic? The Crafts of Adornment,” in E. KYRIAKIDIS (ed.), The Archaeology of Ritual (UCLA Institute of
Archaeology, Cotsen Advanced Seminar) (in press).
71 K.P. FOSTER and R. LAFFINEUR (eds), METRON: Measuring the Aegean Bronze Age. Proceedings of the 9th
International Aegean Conference, Yale University (18-21 April 2002) (Aegaeum 24, 2003); cf. the ground-breaking
work by K.D. VITELLI, Franchthi Neolithic Pottery (1993) vol. 1 (1999) vol. 2.
72 C. RENFREW and E.B.W. ZUBROW (eds), The Ancient Mind: Elements of Cognitive Archaeology (1994).
73 A. PEATFIELD, “Rural Ritual in Bronze Age Crete: the Peak Sanctuary at Atsipadhes,” CAJ 2: 1 (1992) 59-87;
NIKOLAIDOU (supra n. 60); R. LAFFINEUR and R. HÄGG (eds), POTNIA: Deities and Religion in the Aegean
Bronze Age. Proceedings of the 8th International Aegean Conference, Göteborg University (12-15 April 2000) (Aegaeum
22, 2001); KYRIAKIDIS ed. (supra n. 70).
74 Supra n. 18 and 25.
75 K. KRISTIANSEN, “The Past and its Great Might: an Essay on the Use of the Past,” Journal of European
Archaeology 1: 1 (1993) 3.
76 I. HODDER, The Archaeological Process: Towards a Reflexive Method (1998); I. HODDER (ed.), Towards Reflexive
Method in Archaeology: the Example of Çatalyöhök (2000); CHERRY et al. (supra n. 25).
77 Cf. M. FOUCAULT, The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972).
12 Marianna NIKOLAIDOU and Dimitra KOKKINIDOU

· The moral and ethical implications of archaeologists’ work for the worlds of the past
and in the world of today.78
· The rationales for evaluating different aspects of the past, such as categories of artefacts,
regional cultures, peoples or time periods. Archaeological classifications, far from the “neutral”
organising devices that they were purported to be, are indeed the first necessary steps to
interpretation, thus value-laden and even biased.
· Who sets the agenda in the disciplinary community?79 What about those voices unheard
because of language barriers,80 ignored or silenced for their “disturbing” attitudes?81

Metaphors for meta-historic analysis

To lose one’s political innocence means, among other things, to question the validity of
the archaeological narrative itself, as one text clear and unambiguous to all. Being aware of
the allusive (and often elusive) ways in which meaning is encoded in past remains and in the
stories we weave about them, we prefer to cast archaeological endeavour in meta-narratives of
action and performance:
1. Archaeology as journey: for many the return to the archetypical origins of Hellenism
or Europeanness, for others a colonising expedition. Those embarking on the novsto~ to the
mythical homeland have been guided by ideals of cultural and/or ethnic continuity that seem to
transcend historical time and place.82 Alternative paradigms would obviously be as distracting as
the Sirens in the “Odyssey,” and indeed have for long been banned from the horizon of scholars
bound on such a pilgrimage.83 On the other hand, professionals looking in the past for a land of
opportunities have developed rigid divisions between centres and peripheries, conceived from
the modernist perspective of the dominant West: the Aegean Bronze Age was initially imagined
as the provincial echo of Egypt and the Orient; then Macedonia was envisaged in the margin
of the Mycenaean world, lingering between Balkan “barbarity” and the “civilised” southern
Aegean. For over a century a host of historical, political, and social factors have converged in the
construction of such archaeological boundaries; but the identity labels have invariably been written
by those in authority today, to imply domination by “our ancestors” and passive acceptance by

78 T. MURRAY, “Communication and the Importance of Disciplinary Communities: Who Owns the Past?,”
in YOFFEE and SHERRATT (supra n. 49) 105-116; Y. HAMILAKIS, “La trahison des archéologues?
Archaeological Practice as Intellectual Activity in Postmodernity,” JMA 12: 1 (1999) 60-79; ID., “Iraq,
Stewardship and the ‘Record’: an Ethical Crisis for Archaeology,” Public Archaeology 3: 2 (2003) 104-111; M.
PLUCIENNIK (ed.), The Responsibility of Archaeologists: Archaeology and Ethics (2001); A. WYLIE, Thinking
through Things: Essays in the Philosophy of Archaeology (2002); M. FOTIADIS, “On our Political Relevance?,” in
CHERRY et al. (supra n. 25) 161-168; L.J. ZIMMERMANN, K.D. VITELLI and J. HOLLOWELL-ZIMMER
(eds), Ethical Issues in Archaeology (2003); GALATY and WATKINSON (supra n. 16); Y. HAMILAKIS and P.
DUKE (eds), Archaeology and Capitalism: from Ethics to Politics (2006).
79 YOFFEE and SHERRATT (supra n. 49).
80 It is a sad reality that much important archaeological literature remains largely unread if not written in one
of the “global” languages (mainly English and, to a lesser degree, French, German, Spanish, or Italian).
Publications of local archaeologists in their mother tongue are mostly skimmed through by foreign
colleagues for new “data” but are seldom studied for the ideas they present. There is therefore little chance
that such works take an appropriate place (with the prestige and authority implied) in the “Weltliteratur” of
archaeology: cf. M. KUNDERA, “Die Weltliteratur: How We Read One Another,” The New Yorker (8 January
2007) 28-35.
81 A most obvious case in point are those archaeologists who suffered persecution by dictatorial regimes (supra
n. 16); ditto the long struggle of feminist scholars for recognition within “democratic” academia.
82 On the archetypical qualities of myth, see M. ELIADE, Myth and Reality (1963).
83 Greek archaeology as an indigenous enterprise practised by state-employed scholars has largely remained
indifferent to frameworks of thinking that did not stress the alleged continuity of “Hellenism” through the
ages, and it is only during the last few decades that has been catching up with international developments
(supra n. 25). Heritage holds a pervasive significance in Greek society, spanning a broad socio-political
spectrum: KOKKINIDOU and NIKOLAIDOU (supra n. 16); KOKKINIDOU (supra n. 25).
 EPOS, HISTORY, METAHISTORY IN AEGEAN BRONZE AGE STUDIES 13

the “others.”84 Recently, however, the centre-versus-periphery paradigm is giving way to the
concept of world systems with fluid boundaries, shifting loci of power, multi-layered encounters
and balances affecting all parties involved.85 We may accordingly rethink similar lines of
distinction in the international field of the profession, wherein countries that are central sources
of primary data often become peripheral to the production of theory and interpretation of
these data.86 It would be fruitful to re-conceptualise the current world system of archaeology in
its multitude of regional realities, each one experienced within a specific social and intellectual
milieu but all variously traded and negotiated across the globe.87
2. Archaeology as drama88 involves (1) patrons: states, private sponsors, local officials, and
interest groups; (2) actors: archaeologists, science specialists, architects, artists, conservators,
technicians, workmen, administrators – people with different backgrounds, affiliations, and
public image;89 (3) a director or directors who authorise and orchestrate things, either on the
micro-level of particular projects or on the macro-level of state or international archaeologies90
(4) audiences, including professional peers, interested amateurs, the wider public –diverse
groups or individuals being granted differential access to performance and expected to
respond or participate differently; (5) setting and staging: archaeological findings are selected
and arranged carefully in the scenery, and cast members ascribed ranked roles on the stage
or behind the scenes; (6) venues: fieldwork, scholarly conferences and publications, museum
exhibits, media communications, educational outreach, and public ceremonies that draw on
archaeological “authenticity” to legitimise their ideological and political appeal;91 (7) aesthetics
and style: keeping step with changing tastes of both actors and audiences, archaeological
performances have ranged from academic solemnity to various degrees of popularisation
(sometimes bordering the kitsch). Interesting recent trends move away from iconographic
84 K. KOTSAKIS, “The Past Is Ours: Images of Greek Macedonia,” in L. MESKELL (ed.), Archaeology under Fire:
Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East (1998), 44-67; M. FOTIADIS,
“Imagining Macedonia in Prehistory, ca. 1900-1930,” JMA 14: 2 (2001) 115-135; J.K. PAPADOPOULOS (ed.),
The Early Iron Age Cemetery at Torone: Excavations Conducted by the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens
in Collaboration with the Athens Archaeological Society (2005) 2 volumes.
85 G. ALGAZE, The Uruk World System: the Dynamics of Early Mesopotamian Civilization (1993); A. SHERRATT,
“What Would a Bronze Age World System Look Like? Relations between Temperate Europe and the
Mediterranean in Later Prehistory,” Journal of European Archaeology 1: 2 (1993) 1-57; P.N. KARDULIAS (ed.),
World-Systems Theory in Practice: Leadership, Production, and Exchange (1999). Re-evaluations of Macedonia’s
cultural profile: S. ANDREOU, “H mukhnai>khv keramikhv kai oi koinwnive~ th~ Kentrikhv~ Makedoniva~ sthn
uvsterh epochv tou calkouv,” in N. KYPARISSI-APOSTOLIKA and M. PAPAKONSTANTINOU (eds),
The Periphery of the Mycenaean World. 2nd International Interdisciplinary Colloquium (Lamia, 26-30 September
1999) (2003) 191-210; L. STEFANI and N. MEROUSIS, “Topivo sthn omivclh: h 2h cilietiva sthn pediavda th~
Kentrikhv~ Makedoniva~” (ibid.) 227-242; L. STEFANI, S.M. BALAMOTI and A. KONSTANTINIDOU, “To
ereunhtikov provgramma tou proi>storikouv oikismouv Aggelocwrivou: oi gewrgokthnotrofikev~ drasthriovthte~ kai
oi diatrofikev~ sunhvqeie~ sto Aggelocwvri th~ UEC,” To Arcaiologikov vErgo sth Makedoniva kai Qravkh 18
(2004) 431-438; PAPADOPOULOS (supra n. 84).
86 As has been eloquently remarked, this pattern makes the =interaction with foreign scholarship unbalanced
in another way: “Northerners practice the archaeology of, say Peru or Greece, but Peruvian and Greek
archaeologists have no corresponding opportunity to work in, say Oklahoma or Shropshire. It is no good to
say they are not interested in Tulsa and Shrewsbury because interests are pragmatic, determined as much as
by what is possible as by what is appealing:” M.J. SHOTT, “Two Cultures: Thought and Practice in British
and North American Archaeology,” WorldArch 37: 1 (2005) 8.
87 C. CHIPPINDALE, “Ambition, Deference, Discrepancy, Consumption: the Intellectual Background to a
Post-Processual Archaeology,” in YOFFEE and SHERRATT (supra n. 49) 27-36.
88 C. TILLEY, “Excavation as Theatre,” Antiquity 63: 239 (1989) 275-280; M. PEARSON and M. SHANKS,
Theatre/Archaeology: the (Re)articulation of Fragments of the Past as Real-Time Event (2001); M. SHANKS, “Three
Rooms: Archaeology and Performance,” Journal of Social Archaeology 4: 2 (2004) 147-180.
89 CULLEN (supra n. 48) has demonstrated that socio-political statistics on the archaeological community can
provide important insights into the workings of the profession; it would be useful to have similar profiles for
the other groups who participate in archaeology’s cast.
90 On Greek archaeologists as “national intellectuals,” see A.N. KARAKASIDOU, “Sacred Scholars, Profane
Advocates: Intellectuals Molding National Consciousness in Greece,” Identities 1: 1 (1994) 35-61; HAMILAKIS
(supra n. 78, 1999).
91 The most spectacular ritual venue in the last years was the opening night at the 2004 Athens Olympics
featuring, among others, Minoan-inspired taurokaqavyia, processions of “Snake Goddesses” and “Blue
Ladies,” re-enacted on a larger-than-life scale and targeted at a world-wide audience.
14 Marianna NIKOLAIDOU and Dimitra KOKKINIDOU

representations of the past to sensory perceptions of ancient corporeality and kinetics, whereby
digital technologies offer a rich potential.92
3. Archaeology’s chaîne opératoire encompasses the complex processes of learning and
practicing the discipline, from (1) academic education and professional training to (2) acquisition
of “raw materials” through fieldwork, (3) technical steps for processing the data into products
of knowledge and authority, (4) strategies for “consuming” the archaeological goods, and (5)
practices of deposition, referring to passing theoretical “fashions” or legacies left by previous
scholarship.93 The “relations of production” involved in each link of the operational chain
eventually shape the role of archaeology in social reproduction. A case in point is provided
by the “adventures “ of the Minoan Snake Goddess: its symbolic significance in the Bronze
Age world plausibly deduced from the recovery of the famous faience effigies in the Temple
Repositories at Knossos, the image was soon re-created in gold-and-ivory forgeries to grace
prestigious museums and their upper-class patrons with the (alas fake!) aura of antiquity.94
After a century of veneration bestowed upon both Minoan originals and modern fabrications
by thousands of museum visitors, the Goddess was resurrected to life in the ceremonies of the
Athens Olympics; this time her epiphany conveying messages of national identity that were
produced locally but meant to be consumed globally.

Coda. The labyrinth: tovpo~ and symbol

Our concluding metaphor, the Knossian labyrinth, encapsulates semantically and

topologically, traditions of mythical thinking that have unfolded over millennia; not only the
ancient stories about King Minos and his lineage but also the myths that numerous generations,
from antiquity to modern times, have spun around those legends.95 Materialised in artefacts
such as the coins of Classical and Hellenistic Knossos bearing the maze emblem, or Evans’
reconstructed “Palace of Minos” in the 1930s,96 the mythology of the labyrinth has nourished
religion,97 historical memory, political assertion, and intellectual aspiration. The roots of these
symbolisms may perhaps be traced well back to prehistory, a tempting idea in the face of a
millennia-long thriving settlement at the chosen locale of Knossos.98 Certainly when the study
of Cretan prehistory began in the 19th century, the symbol had already been pre-cast into a
prominent shvma in the landscape of archaeological imagination. Unearthed under the spade of
the visionary pioneers (Kalokairinos, Hatzidakis, Evans), the “Minoan labyrinth” has since been
mapped through decades of painstaking fieldwork; it has lured researchers into the deeper
recesses of Neolithic life, puzzled them with its unexpected turns, both material and social;99
and has recently been revisited via new exploratory routes.100
From the epic exaltation of Archaeologica Homerica to the hopeful “objectivity” of
processual archaeology to the self-reflexive attitudes of post-modernity, the paths of Aegean
scholarship that we have traced in this paper have crossed each other, branched out in opposite
directions, detoured in circular ways, but they seldom have progressed in straight lines.
92 Supra n. 63; also B. ALBERTI, “Gender and the Figurative Art of Late Bronze Age Knossos,” in HAMILAKIS
(supra n. 18) 98-117; DAY and WILSON (supra n. 52); YOUNGER, this volume.
93 SHERRATT (supra n. 49); CHIPPINDALE (supra n. 87); M.-L. NOSCH, “La réception du déchiffrement du
linéaire B dans les deux Allemagnes,” in P. DARCQUE, M. FOTIADIS and O. POLYCHRONOPOULOU
(eds), Mythos: la préhistoire égéene du XIXe au XXIe siècle après J.-C. Actes de la Table Ronde d’Athènes (novembre
2002) (BCH Suppl. 46: 2006) 301-315.
94 LAPATIN (supra n. 24).
95 DARCQUE et al. (supra n. 93); M. NIKOLAIDOU, “Myths in Minoan Archaeology” (forthcoming).
96 L.A. HITCHCOCK and P. KOUDOUNARIS, “Virtual Discourse: Arthur Evans and the Reconstructions of
the Minoan Palace at Knossos,” in HAMILAKIS (supra n. 18) 40-58.
97 On the rich symbolisms of the labyrinth and lavbru~, Cook’s monumental treatise remains a classic: A.B.
COOK, Zeus: a Study in Ancient Religion (1952) vol. 2, part 1.
98 D. EVELY, H. HUGHES-BROCK and N. MOMIGLIANO (eds), Knossos: a Labyrinth of History. Papers in
Honour of Sinclair Hood (1994).
99 C. BROODBANK, “The Neolithic Labyrinth: Social Change at Knossos before the Bronze Age,” JMA 5:1
(1992) 39-75; T.M. WHITELAW, “Lost in the Labyrinth? Comments on Broodbank’s ‘Social Change at
Knossos before the Bronze Age’,” JMA 5:2 (1992) 229-243.
100 HAMILAKIS (supra n. 18).
 EPOS, HISTORY, METAHISTORY IN AEGEAN BRONZE AGE STUDIES 15

Today’s archaeology has covered a good part of the journey to the Ithaca of knowledge, and
we have (hopefully) grown rich with what we have gained on the way (as Cavafy would have
us). Therefore, we should be generous enough to balance our respect between klevh of the
illustrious and the works and days of people.101
unknown, forgotten by all, even by Homer…

And the poet lingers, looking at the stones, and asks himself does there really exist
among these ruined lines, edges, points, hollows, and curves…
does there exist the movement of the face, shape of the
tenderness
of those who’ve shrunk so strangely in our lives…

George Seferis, “The King of Asine” (trans. E. Keeley and P. Sherrard).

Marianna NIKOLAIDOU and Dimitra KOKKINIDOU

101 A. CHANIOTIS (ed.), vErga kai hmevre~ sthn Krhvth: apov thn proi>storiva sto mesopovlemo (2000); B.A. OLSEN;
K. SHELTON, this volume.