Vrokastro in the collections of the University of. Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology &. Anthropology and the Archaeological Museum, ... (PA): University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology & .... at Athens Supplementary Vol. 28).
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Bronze Age and early Iron Age Crete Susan Sherratt* pottery in Herakleion could either not be located or was unavailable for study by Hayden. One can only assume that pots illustrated or mentioned by Hall in 1914, and not mentioned by Hayden (but mentioned by Jones [see below]), were either not kept or have disappeared without trace in the last 90 years.
BARBARA J. HAYDEN. Catalogue of pottery from the Bronze and Early Iron Age settlement of Vrokastro in the collections of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeolog y & Anthropology and the Archaeological Museum, Herakleion, Crete (Reports on the Vrokastro Area, Eastern Crete Vol. 1; University Museum Monograph 113). xiv+177 pages, 417 figures, 3 tables. 2003. Philadelphia (PA): University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology; 1-931707-26-X hardback $59.95 & £42.
The book opens with a clear and concise summary of the Vrokastro settlement and tombs and their topography (accompanied by maps and plans), and of what is known of the sequences of associated (Middle Minoan to early Orientalising) pottery. This is followed by the catalogue of 207 pots and sherds arranged chronologically (a few Middle Minoan but the vast majority belonging to the period between the twelfth and eighth centuries BC, including a few which are probably imported from elsewhere). Beautifully presented in reader-friendly form (the catalogue numbers are the same as the illustration numbers), it gives us every scrap of available information about each entry – which as far as findspots go is not much, but as concerns detailed descriptions and observations of the pieces themselves is plentiful. Each is illustrated both by a photograph and a drawing, with the original 1:1 drawings (which, I take it, are Hayden’s own) reproduced mainly at a highly legible scale of 1:2 (1:4 in the case of larger vessels). These do not insult the reader’s intelligence by purporting to show those sections of profiles which are not accessible to inspection or (in the case of fragments) by attempting unwarranted reconstructions. The pots are classified (on occasion reclassified) according to modern typological-chronological
DONALD W. JONES. External relations of Early Iron Age Crete, 1100-600 BC (Archaeological Institute of America Monographs n.s. No. 4). x+395 pages, 31 maps, 29 tables. Dubuque (IA): Kendall/Hunt; 0-7872-7183-7 hardback $118.95.
Vrokastro As part of the V r o k a s t r o Archaeological Survey Project, initiated in 1986, it was decided to produce a full publication of the material excavated at Vrokastro in eastern Crete by Edith Hall between 1910 and 1912. Hayden’s book represents part of the results of this decision. It is a full publication of the pottery from Hall’s excavations which still survives in the University of Pennsylvania Museum and that part of it which can still be located and is accessible in the Herakleion Archaeological Museum in Crete. Sadly, however, some of the *
Ashmolean Museum, Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2PH, UK
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This is a straightforward, thoroughly reliable and sensitively written publication, which polishes off a long-standing backlog and as far as is possible makes good the inadequacies which to modern eyes inevitably characterise an excavation report originally written almost a century ago. It includes some nice pots for the connoisseurs, and – considering the highly selective nature of the material retained – gives not a bad thumbnail conspectus of the decorated Middle Minoan, Late Minoan IIIC and early Iron Age pottery of this corner of Crete.
External relations External relations is altogether a different sort of book, despite the fact that it too is centred round a catalogue – in this case of foreign artefacts found in Crete and of Cretan artefacts found overseas in the period between the eleventh and seventh centuries BC. The author’s aim is to set out the evidence for the overseas connections of Crete during this period and, as far as possible, assess their extent and nature. The first chapter deals with scope and method and touches on (though does not resolve) some of the problems concerned in interpreting artefactual remains; the second provides a brief summary (based on the catalogue) of Cretan sites where foreign artefacts are found and overseas sites where Cretan artefacts are found; the third discusses ways in which external influences might have been transmitted in Dark Age Greece, under the headings of ‘Ships’, ‘Harbours’, ‘Piracy’,
To a large extent this is a missionary book. Jones believes in trade, and is under the impression that most Aegean archaeologists do not. As a result, he starts by setting up some curiously hard-edged dichotomies between trade and other mechanisms which have been or might be adduced to account for indications of external connections on Crete, including such things as population movements, personal travel and artistic influence. This is not to say that there are not some real perversities to counter, which he does with some undoubtedly sane views. He is healthily sceptical of the idea that the kinds of overseas objects found in Crete arrived there by means of long-distance élite-organised gift-exchange, and is quite unmoved by the ideological dogma which for far too long has insisted on banning those whom the Greeks called Phoenicians from 859
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‘Trade’ and ‘Travel’. The fourth chapter, also based on the catalogue, considers Crete’s external relations with the Greek mainland, Cyprus, the Phoenicians and the west in turn, and ends with a discussion of the importance of trade to the early Iron Age Cretan economy. The fifth chapter reviews the Cretan evidence once more and comes to the conclusion that Crete’s external contacts were diverse and continuous throughout the Dark Age, and that these owed their existence to a prosperous Cretan agricultural trade combined with the island’s role as a stopover on shipping routes. Finally, there are three statistical appendices which together take up around one-third of the book: one which discusses agricultural risk and the comparative advantages of Crete in the light of twentieth century data; one which attempts statistical models of the effects of different external and internal resource and labour allocations on ‘an economy like that of Dark Age Crete’(pp. x, 189-92); and the third, which contains the catalogues of foreign artefacts, arranged in a series of different tables by site, by date and by origin.
terminologies, the confusing array of which, when it comes to the early Iron Age, reflects the individualities of the ceramic sequence both in this part of eastern Crete relative to the rest of the island and in Crete as a whole relative to other regions of the Aegean. Where dating is uncertain, Hayden does not force a spurious impression of precision, but suggests a range which honestly reflects such uncertainty.
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probably accounted for by the fact that – though of the same types and dates as objects listed – these are items which no one has happened to single out in print as potential imports or otherwise evidence of overseas connections. This general absence of engagement with the qualitative rather than the quantitative may also account for an apparent reluctance to tackle directly the implications of the specific nature and types of traded objects found in the archaeological record – as opposed to their dates and origins which are carefully tabulated in statistical form. Yet a consideration of the kinds of goods and materials which we know for sure (rather than guess) were concerned must lie at the heart of any investigation of the scope, character and mechanisms of trade and other interchange based on archaeological data. To use the data purely as evidence that trade took place with certain regions at certain times, and to proceed from there to considerations of statistics and theoretical economic modelling (in which the specific character of the extant objects plays no explicit or integral part) seems to me to miss a large part of the point.
Aegean waters before the eighth century. These are messages which arise naturally and unforcedly from a wide range of archaeological data and their distributions. However, to believe in trade in some sense or another in the early Iron Age is one thing, but to leap immediately to discuss that trade in ultramodernist terms of nationally or regionally organised enterprise operating on a rational bilateral basis with implications for trade balances, resource allocations, gross domestic product and regional income levels and their distributions (as happens in Chapters 4 and 5) is quite another. Perhaps the most serious problem with this book, however – especially given the way it is likely to be used by unwitting postgraduate students looking for a quick fix – is that Jones has little or no independent control over (or apparent interest in) the quality or nature of the basic data which make up his catalogue, the core around which the entire work is centred. Drawn from literature searches, it lifts the characterisations and views about origins of others without question and without further editing. The result is that entries are often inconsistent in their terminology, sometimes deficient in description (for example, the material of which an object is made is quite often omitted) and occasionally misunderstood or outdated (it is a pity, for instance, that Coldstream & Catling (1996) was not made use of to amend and supplement the Knossos North Cemetery entries before the book went to press in 1999). It also contains (and treats on an equal footing) everything from items whose region of origin is reasonably certain (or at least uncontentious) to items which someone once, long ago, vaguely speculated might have come from a particular area on the centripetal grounds that something similar had earlier been found at a site in that area. This would be fine if it guaranteed comprehensiveness, but there remain a number of anomalous omissions,
Despite these reservations, however, it would be churlish to pretend that the book is not useful. If nothing else, it collects a very large body of reference material which postgraduate students and others may profitably explore in order to garner and sift their own data and come to their own conclusions. It may stimulate readers to think about the external connections of early Iron Age Crete from different perspectives, but in the course of this process they will need to keep every one of their critical faculties fully and permanently switched on. Reference COLDSTREAM, J.N. & H.W. CATLING (ed.) 1996. Knossos North Cemetery: Early Greek tombs (British School at Athens Supplementary Vol. 28). London: British School at Athens.
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