index (1).

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[00:00:05] Let's start a little bit out of time with Homer who says in The Odyssey there
is a land in the midst of the wine dark sea a fair and rich land called Crete washed by
waves on every side.

[00:00:21] Densely populated and boasting ninety cities. Because today we're going to
be talking about Creed and we're going to be talking primarily about one side in this
north central coast near the modern city of Iraq Leon. And this is a place called
colossus. Crete was home to a great Bronze Age civilization. Remember last time
when we talked about archaeology and about durable remains. Well now one of the
most durable remains is metal and metals give their names to large periods of history.
We will move from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age for example.

[00:01:06] So where are we.

[00:01:08] We are on Crete which is sort of the Southern shell if you will of Greek
civilization and we are here at a place called dinosaurs. Before we start talking about
this site itself and about the history that surrounds it we're going to do a little bit of
something with a couple of interpretive models. Remember we also talked about the
need for finding ways to interpret the stories that we put together.

[00:01:42] This may look a little bit complicated at first but don't panic. It'll be fine. The
peer polity model as it's called was devised by an archaeologist named Colin Renfrew
and then developed and sophisticated by other archaeologists and scholars.
Fundamentally what it means is that you have in a relatively limited area a group of
communities that are structured along the same lines. They engage in competition and
rivalry emulation.

[00:02:22] They can also share many things in common.

[00:02:26] And this is what's called symbolic and treatment which is just a very it's a
scholarly way of saying that they share certain images and ideals perhaps divinities
perhaps standards or morals who knows that will figure out later on. And they also
engage in economic exchange. The reason it's called a peer apology which means that
they're on an even level is that there is no centralized government. Even though as
you'll see we'll come to call this Minoan civilization. There was nothing like a capital at
Kennesaw. Instead you had a number of independent communities structured along the
same lines that interacted in a variety of complex ways as we will see.

[00:03:21] So where are we.

[00:03:23] We're in a place that was dug by a British archaeologist named Sir Arthur
Evans. Born in 1851 he was the son of a wealthy businessman. He benefited from an
outstanding education and the best one of the best private schools Harrow in England.

[00:03:44] And at Oxford University he had a sort of varied career after that which
included serving for a time as keeper. That is director of the ash Moliere Museum at
Oxford. But then.

[00:03:59] And around nineteen hundred. He went to Crete. Bought.

[00:04:07] A large. Section of land and began to excavate there and this is what was
called Kennesaw is not was called Still it's called Kennesaw. It's a massive palace
complex. Here you can see it did an aerial view. There is a great central courtyard
surrounded by a variety of rooms and other buildings and there are storage areas out
on the outer edges as well we'll come back to those in a little while.

[00:04:42] In Greek mythology this was associated with King minus the Greek historian
facilities and we'll be spending a lot of time within a few weeks says that minus was the
first who was known to us to have established a Navy facilities was writing at a time
when navies were very important especially in his home city of Athens. We'll come back
to that too. But Evans taking his cue from mythology called this society Minoan after
King Manos. The legend was that my nose the ancient king had built a trackless maze
called a labyrinth in which he imprisoned the bestial the bull headed man bodied son of
his wife. Pacific a Minotaur as eventually as he's called is eventually killed by the
Athenian King Theseus. Some people thought that maybe this vast palace with its
jumble of rooms might have been somehow connected with the idea of a labyrinth.
Linguists have shown though. that labyrinth is actually based on the root of the word
laborious which means a double bladed ax. This appears both as artifact and as a
decorative motif in this palace. Here you can see something that is far from functional.
These are beautifully made gold ceremonial double bladed axes. And Evans set about
constructing or reconstructing a reconstituting as he put it this extraordinary place.

[00:06:32] I've mentioned already that the said that minus was the first who was known
to us to have established a navy. That's clearly a fiction. But what is equally clear is that
the cretins were great sailors. Here you have a wonderful fresco from the site called a
criteria not on Crete itself but from dating from about the same time showing a fancier
fully decorated ship while around it.

[00:07:02] Swim wonderful dolphins and dolphins to. Are part of the decorative motif in
the palace at Kennesaw. This famous dolphin fresco. But even here we have to start to
be cautious because scholars have shown this is one of the most famous pictures I
think that survives from antiquity. And it's up there on the wall. But it was probably
originally a floor decoration which Evans and his reconstitute was put up in this
vertical position to give it better visibility.

[00:07:38] Nonetheless Minoan civilization was clearly deeply involved with sea travel
and with overseas trade.

[00:07:48] And it's supported.

[00:07:51] A fairly lavish lifestyle. But again we have to be careful. These are all read
constitutions. Evans had his architects his builders his workmen rebuild these put these
columns back up paint them so beautifully there are wall paintings as well of decorative
shields. The construction of the palace ignores us was very sophisticated. with light
wells and excellent plumbing.

[00:08:26] And a general kind of openness and the sort of elegance and as I mentioned
before some motifs do appear here if you look carefully among the columns on this
parapet you can see yet another bull and the bull was very very important in this
society. It's important in the myth it seems to have been important at the time.

[00:08:50] And the minnow once supported a high degree of craftsmanship and
technology. This is in the museum at a rally on. It's a fantastic Bull's Head drinking cop
called out Freetown. But much of it is an early 20th century reconstruction. We're
dealing here with a story a powerful story a story that in fact has taken over and we can
find bits of evidence that seem to cohere. Again one of the most famous pieces of art
from NASA is the so-called bull Leeper fresco which shows it seems something like a
sequential action. This may have taken place in that great central courtyard of the
palace where one athlete grabbed the horns of the bull. The bolt tossed his head to get
them off.

[00:09:45] They landed on the back and then if everything went the way it was
supposed to they gracefully vault it off behind it. The sport of kings perhaps but if you
look carefully at this fresco You can also see how much of it is the result of later
restoration the original bits are the ones that look kind of more beat up the other parts
were all put in by the artists that Evans commissioned.

[00:10:15] The whole picture of life in class is at least as Evan's depicted Minoan
civilization was one of a peaceful harmonious perhaps even slightly self-indulgent
society.

[00:10:31] Here you have another famous painting The Prince of the lilies sometimes
called the priest King. Almost all of it was painted later. Also if you look at it very closely
It's anatomically a little bit art the head and the torso don't go quite in the same
direction. It's still a wonderful picture but one has to be careful. Likewise the famous
three ladies as they're called. With their bust revealing dresses their elaborate hairstyles
their wonderful little smiles. Are almost all later reconstitution confection. When the
great English writer Evelyn wall went to Kansas in the 1930s he said of the ladies like
this that they would be completely at home on the cover of Vogue magazine. Indeed
they would. We can figure out a little bit more perhaps a little bit more solidly if I may put
it that way about some of the structures of this pure polity. We'll look now at the second
term here which is a redistributive economy. This again is perhaps an overcomplicated
way of describing something fairly simple. The palace had colossus had huge storage
magazines like this one which contained these great jars called pith. Some of them as
big as a human being. I mean these are big jars which would have been used to store
the produce that was brought in by the people who lived outside the palace who grew
the olives and the grain and the grapes. That Mediterranean trial that we talked about
and legumes and whatever else. They brought it into the palace where it was stored and
then redistributed by the people. The elite who lived there the advantage. to the growers
was that presumably the members of the elite provided some kind of protection for them
and for the people in the palace. It gave them foodstuffs of course but also gave them
something that they could trade they could engage in a kind of economy a barter
economy with other communities especially those nearest by. There are some works of
art.

[00:13:02] From the Minoan period that actually do give us like that black figure. We
saw a little while ago in another lecture. Give us some sense. of what work might have
been like. This is the famous Harvester days it's made out of black steel tight it's a sort
of black stone and carved in high relief it shows a profit a procession of workers who are
carrying over their shoulders the long sticks that they would use to knock the olives from
the trees knock them into sheets and then gather them for harvest. How did they keep
track of all of this. This is also very important. The people that can also say were
literate. They had two kinds of scripts an earlier called linear eh. Not much of which
survives and which still hasn't been deciphered. And then a later called Linear B. which
was deciphered in the 1950s by some English scholars. This is a clay tablet a Linear B
tablet that was found in Colossus. And when these tablets were deciphered what was
discovered was and this was very exciting and very important was that there a kind of
proto Greek. They're a celebrity. Each one of these little signs stands for a syllable and
you find things like why not which means wine comes into historical Greek as us or what
knocks.

[00:14:32] Which means Lord comes into historical Greek as unlocks which means
Lauder King. These were storehouse records. They have no narrative drive but they are
invaluable in terms of allowing us to chart a kind of historical evolution and to get at
least some sense of what the social structure was like in this community. What we know
is that the palace culture now called an Minoan thrived from roughly seventeen hundred
to about fourteen hundred. It was this period those 300 years was the time of the
artworks the technology the trade. The high point so to speak of Minoan society. Then
at around fifteen hundred or fourteen fifty it collapses. There is widespread evidence of
destruction at all of those sites around the island at almost the same time. Theories
abound as to why this occurred. was a natural catastrophe. This is a very seismically
active earthquake prone zone. Was it some kind of revolution. The people who are
living outside the palaces finally decided they'd had enough of the redistributive
economy and decided to redistribute it to themselves or as seems most likely was it
invasion or some combination perhaps of all of these.

[00:16:08] But we'd still have to answer the question now what is Menino in before.
Arthur Evans. There was no such thing as Minoan civilization one great modern
historian of the ancient world has said that Minoan civilization is the only great
civilization created in the 20th century. Evans had a powerful vision of a peaceful.
Maritime monarchy with friendly relations on its own island. So peaceful in fact Evans
claimed that it didn't need fortification But archaeologists have found long since
evidence of fortification of defensive walls. It's also Evans who planted around the site
that can all source these trees thereby setting it off as a kind of shrine from its natural
surroundings from the farms and the vineyards and the olive groves that must have
supported it. I don't want to dismiss this entirely as a lie. That would be silly would be
stupid. We don't need to do that but what we do need to do is to think about how
evidence can be constructed or reconstituted to create something that has had
enormous staying power. Any standard textbook of ancient Greek history will now
include the Minoan period as part of the Bronze Age history. What I've tried to do in
these few minutes is to give you some sense of the complicated genesis of this
remarkable society and of our understanding of it. Next time we're going to move to the
people who might have wrecked it and that is the mainland communities now called
Meissen in see then.