Aegaeum (Annales d'archéologie égéenne de l'Université de Liège et UT-PASP) – serie

Cette monographie est une contribution à la connaissance des faits sociaux, économiques et culturels du Péloponnèse au Bronze Ancien, à travers une étude qui prend en compte l'ensemble des données archéologiques.Les cinq chapitres de la première partie constituent un catalogue topographique complet des sites archéologiques et des vestiges qui font l'objet de l'étude de la seconde partie, intitulée "L'habitat et le mode de vie".Cette seconde partie s'organise autour de six thèmes : le premier concerne l'habitat et aborde les questions d'implantation, d'organisation et d'aménagement des habitats; le second concerne les habitations, leur construction, leurs plans et les fonctions attribuées aux bâtiments; le troisième traite des moyens de subsistance, de l'exploitation des ressources naturelles, de l'agriculture et de l'élevage; le travail de la pierre, de la terre, du métal, des matières premières végétales et animales constituent la matière du quatrième thème; le cinquième thème - l'organisation économique - est abordé à travers une synthèse des données sur les sceaux et les scellés; enfin les pratiques funéraires font l'objet du sixième thème.

For the Aegean Bronze Age gold finger rings immediately call to mind the many gold signet rings and impressions thereof on clay sealings from both Crete and the Greek mainland; such items continue to be found in new excavations. The numerous seal impressions demonstrate that the rings were primarily used for administrative purposes. These are excluded from the present study, which focuses instead on the non-sphragistic decorated finger rings that occur less frequently. It also encompasses rings from Cyprus that are somehow related to examples from the Aegean.

L’architecture crétoise néopalatiale (XVIIe-XVe s. av. J.-C.) est étudiée selon une approche énergétique qui permet de déterminer le temps nécessaire à la construction d’un édifice. Le nombre total d’heures de travail dévolues à l’accomplissement des différentes tâches sur le chantier, depuis l’acquisition des matériaux jusqu’à leur mise en place, est estimé. L’approche permet d’appréhender les comportements des bâtisseurs tels qu’ils se révèlent dans le choix et l’utilisation de matériaux distincts ou dans les travaux d’aménagement du terrain préalables à l’érection du bâtiment. Les résultats de l’application de l’approche énergétique à une sélection d’édifices illustrent la participation des habitants à la construction de leur propre maison, à la différence de la main-d’œuvre abondante et en partie spécialisée impliquée dans la construction de bâtiments aux traits architecturaux élaborés. La diversité des résultats obtenus suggère l’accès ouvert à la main-d’œuvre spécialisée, à laquelle l’élite néopalatiale disposait d’un accès certes privilégié, mais non pas exclusif.

Beginning his academic career in Classical Studies, John G. Younger rapidly extended his expertise into prehistoric (Bronze Age) Aegean archaeology, art and architecture, with a particular focus on ancient stone-working... and from this interest came his seminal studies on the iconography of Bronze Age Aegean stone seals, a field on which he has made an indelible mark. He also branched out into Jewish Studies, becoming an expert on early synagogues. His lifelong activism for LGBTQI+ and minority rights, and his early embrace of feminism and the crucial role that women have played in the past (not just in archaeology, but in the ancient world itself) have also informed his teaching and studies regarding ancient and modern notions about gender and sexuality, and these studies have greatly enriched our views of the ancient world, while going a long way toward counteracting the persistently male-centric interpretations of the ancient world characteristic of the past few centuries. He has been a pioneer in the establishment of LGBTQI+ academic programs in the U.S., and in the integration of modern technologies (especially computers) into Classics and archaeology. He has established himself as an international authority on Linear A, the undeciphered writing system of the Minoans; his website containing the corpus of that script is second to none in terms of its value to scholars working on Linear A. His recent and continuing investigations into the identification of prehistoric Aegean myths promises to add yet another facet to what is already a brilliant diamond of a career.

Table of Contents- Acknowledgements- Tables and appendices- List of illustrations- Bibliography- Introduction- Ch. 1. Background to Wine as an Agricultural Commodity- Ch. 2. The Development of the Wine Ideogram- Ch. 3. Mycenaean Vocabulary in Reference to Viticulture and Wine- Ch. 4. Derivatives of dateomai and the Distribution of Wine- Ch. 5. Wine in the Pylos Mixed Commodity Tablets- Ch. 6. Wine in the Knossos Fs Tablets- Ch. 7. The Impressed Nodules from the Wine Magazine at Pylos- Ch. 8. Wine in the Knossos and Mycenae Tablets- Ch. 9 The Place of Wine in the Mycenaean Palace Economy- Indexes- Plates

This research examines 44 images of Minoan tree cult as depicted in sphragistic jewellery, portable objects and wall paintings from Late Bronze Age Crete, mainland Greece and the Cyclades. The study also compares the Aegean images with evidence for sacred trees in the Middle and Late Bronze Age Levant, Egypt and Cyprus. The purpose of this investigation is the production of new interpretations of Minoan images of tree cult. Each of the chapters of the book looks at both archaeological and iconographic evidence for tree cult. The Aegean material is, in addition, examined more deeply through the lenses of modified Lacanian psychoanalytic modelling, “new” animism, ethnographic analogy, and a Neo-Marxist hermeneutics of suspicion. It is determined that Minoan images of tree cult depict elite figures performing their intimate association with the numinous landscape through the communicative method of envisioned and enacted epiphanic ritual. The tree in such images is a physiomorphic representation of a goddess type known in the wider eastern Mediterranean associated with effective rulership and with the additional qualities of fertility, nurturance, protection, regeneration, order and stability. The representation of this deity by elite human females in ritual performance functioned to enhance their selfrepresentation as divinities and thus legitimise and concretise the position of elites within the hegemonic structure of Neopalatial Crete. These ideological visual messages were circulated to a wider audience through the reproduction and dispersal characteristic of the sphragistic process, resulting in Minoan elites literally stamping their authority on to the Cretan landscape and hence society.