Dominic Pollard

Taking its lead from previous studies that have focussed on specific regions or settlement types during the Final BA and EIA of Crete, this paper presents a detailed investigation of island-wide settlement changes from the 15th to the 6th centuries BCE, that is, from the period of the final palaces to that of the earliest polis communities. As well as providing a broad overview of settlement changes observable during this timeframe, this study draws connections between these and the political, economic and social structures of communities across the island, rooting the developments described in the physical, environmental, and cultural contexts of LBA and EIA Crete. The developments outlined also provide useful comparanda for those working in other areas of the Mediterranean, where changes in the spatial distribution and interrelationships of settlements are likewise implicated in wider socio-economic and political histories across the Bronze Age-Iron Age transition.

This paper explores the potential of GIS-based analyses of legacy survey data to inform discussions of settlement patterning, demographic change and the social organisation of agricultural production in the ancient Mediterranean. Legacy survey data represent an important body of evidence for understanding the development of past settlement systems, while their digitisation presents opportunities for novel quantitative and spatial analyses. By combining data from three contiguous intensive surveys from the Mirabello area of eastern Crete, this study investigates trajectories of demographic change and subsistence practice in the Early Iron Age (EIA) and Archaic periods (ca. 1200-550 BC), utilising GIS-based modelling of minimal agricultural catchments, and considering the relationships between communities over multiple geographic scales. This analysis highlights a transition away from clusters of small, demographically interdependent hamlets and villages in the earlier part of the EIA, toward the consolidation of nucleated population centres by the Archaic. The investigation of these developments contributes to our understanding of the scale, territorial control and management of agricultural hinterlands in the formative stages of the Greek poleis. The methods employed have wider relevance for the study of agricultural systems in the ancient Mediterranean, and highlight the important ongoing contributions of legacy survey data to theorising ancient subsistence economies.

The Early Iron Age cemeteries of Knossos, Crete, represent the richest source of archaeological material at the site for the period between the end of the Bronze Age and the emergence of the Archaic polis, or city-state. However, despite well-published excavation reports on the two largest burial grounds and studies dealing with various artefacts and individual tombs therein, no substantial comparative, quantitative analysis has yet been published. Such an analysis is provided here, examining both the synchronic and diachronic variation among the tombs of these two cemeteries. Through a range of quantitative techniques, this study isolates two significant patterns of burial among the largest tombs at both cemeteries and considers the broader social contexts within which these were constructed and used. The relationship between the patrons of these tombs and the development of the city-state of Knossos is also discussed. This paper demonstrates the potential for quantitative analyses to contribute to nuanced, context-specific theories of social practice, and advocates their wider application to the archaeological record of the Cretan Early Iron Age. It also serves as a demonstration of maximal research reproducibility, with the full datasets and code underpinning the analysis made freely available to download and use at: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13019588 and https://github.com/DCPollard94/knossoscemeteries

This compendium (available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13019588 and https://github.com/DCPollard94/knossoscemeteries) consists of the raw data, full R code and bibliographic information used in the creation of the article ‘All Equal in the Presence of Death? A Quantitative Analysis of the Early Iron Age Cemeteries at Knossos, Crete’. This article provides a novel study of two large mortuary assemblages of the Cretan Early Iron Age, which have never been systematically compared through quantitative analysis. As part of the author’s commitment to data sharing and maximal reproducibility, this compendium makes available all associated data and materials utilised in the production of the article, including information on every ceramic vessel, grave good, and tomb published in Coldstream and Catling (1996) and Brock (1957) as well as from all other published tombs in the Knossos area dating to the Early Iron Age.

This article explores class, capital, and aspiration to social mobility in an ethnographic study of an English secondary school. In particular, the article considers the school's musical instrument programme as a site for inculcating forms of capital, under the auspices of developing skills for upward social mobility. Bringing together Bourdieu's conceptions of schooling with theories of materiality and situated learning, we contend that this school succeeds in cultivating new forms of embodied capital among students through the development of communities of musical practice. However, a tension remains between emancipatory aims of the programme and the sanctioning and championing of certain forms of dominant cultural practice. The learning environment of the instrument programme highlights the complex and conflicted impact that schooling can have on the development of cultural capital and on reproducing disadvantage and difference.

This article explores how GIS and spatial statistical methods can be effectively utilised to illuminate aspects of settlement patterning difficult to interpret on a purely visual basis, whilst not losing sight of the lived, dwelt landscape. In Greece, the centuries between the end of the Bronze Age and the Classical era were once considered a 'Dark Age'. On Crete, this sense was underlined by the perceived cultural achievements of the preceding Minoan era, from which the island's Early Iron Age (EIA) inhabitants were seen to have dramatically declined. Though such views are increasingly challenged, ongoing disparities in archaeological research mean that even today relatively few EIA sites have been thoroughly excavated. As such, certain influential narratives about the period are based on sites only identified through survey, and these have traditionally been interpreted in a largely intuitive manner. Here, settlement locations, routes between sites, and the modelling of viewsheds and agricultural catchments are all mustered to provide a systematic, but humanised account of the shifting occupation of one landscape in east Crete. The results challenge traditional accounts and illuminate the relationship between the 'points on a map' of GIS and the social, political, and religious structures of past societies.

Review of Oddo, E. and K. Chalikias (eds.) 2022. South by Southeast: The History and Archaeology of Southeast Crete from Myrtos to Kato Zakros. Oxford: Archaeopress. Published in the Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies 11(4).

This thesis presents a study of Late Bronze Age (LBA) and Early Iron Age (EIA) Crete – from the Late Minoan II to early Archaic periods – and specifically the settlement systems, agricultural regimes, and mortuary practices which characterised the transition from the palace-centred, ‘Minoan’ society, through a period of political and economic fragmentation, to the emergence of the small, numerous city-states of the Greek era. Research on these periods has traditionally been divided amongst quite distinct scholarly traditions. This thesis seeks to transcend these disciplinary boundaries by focussing on types of evidence well represented across the entire timeframe, and by employing methods so far underutilised in their study. Firstly, with a database of known habitation sites, along with digitised intensive surveys of several subregions, this thesis presents an analysis of the environmental correlates and spatial relationships of human settlement, and the networks of visibility, movement and interaction which, it is suggested, underpinned the long-term evolution of Crete’s LBA and EIA communities. Secondly, drawing on these same datasets, and ethno- and bio-archaeological studies of ancient agriculture, developments in the demography and subsistence practices of LBA and EIA Crete are examined. Thirdly, with a database of published and reported tombs from the periods under investigation, this thesis undertakes a spatial and quantitative analysis of mortuary practices and assemblages across the island. Finally, these analyses are integrated into an historical synthesis, based on diverse strands of evidence, including law codes, historical sources, and settlement and cult assemblages. This thesis argues that a focus on changes in the networks of movement and interaction which developed at multiple scales interconnecting communities of the LBA and EIA – at all times rooted in the affordances of the Cretan landscape – offers a fruitful, dynamic means of bridging the traditionally perceived disjuncture between the final palaces and the later city-states.

This thesis presents a study of Late Bronze Age (LBA) and Early Iron Age (EIA) Crete – from the Late Minoan II to early Archaic periods – and specifically the settlement systems, agricultural regimes, and mortuary practices which characterised the transition from the palace-centred, ‘Minoan’ society, through a period of political and economic fragmentation, to the emergence of the small, numerous city-states of the Greek era. Research on these periods has traditionally been divided amongst quite distinct scholarly traditions. This thesis seeks to transcend these disciplinary boundaries by focussing on types of evidence well represented across the entire timeframe, and by employing methods so far underutilised in their study. Firstly, with a database of known habitation sites, along with digitised intensive surveys of several subregions, this thesis presents an analysis of the environmental correlates and spatial relationships of human settlement, and the networks of visibility, movement and interaction which, it is suggested, underpinned the long-term evolution of Crete’s LBA and EIA communities. Secondly, drawing on these same datasets, and ethno- and bio-archaeological studies of ancient agriculture, developments in the demography and subsistence practices of LBA and EIA Crete are examined. Thirdly, with a database of published and reported tombs from the periods under investigation, this thesis undertakes a spatial and quantitative analysis of mortuary practices and assemblages across the island. Finally, these analyses are integrated into an historical synthesis, based on diverse strands of evidence, including law codes, historical sources, and settlement and cult assemblages. This thesis argues that a focus on changes in the networks of movement and interaction which developed at multiple scales interconnecting communities of the LBA and EIA – at all times rooted in the affordances of the Cretan landscape – offers a fruitful, dynamic means of bridging the traditionally perceived disjuncture between the final palaces and the later city-states.

This thesis presents a study of Late Bronze Age (LBA) and Early Iron Age (EIA) Crete – from the Late Minoan II to early Archaic periods – and specifically the settlement systems, agricultural regimes, and mortuary practices which characterised the transition from the palace-centred, ‘Minoan’ society, through a period of political and economic fragmentation, to the emergence of the small, numerous city-states of the Greek era. Research on these periods has traditionally been divided amongst quite distinct scholarly traditions. This thesis seeks to transcend these disciplinary boundaries by focussing on types of evidence well represented across the entire timeframe, and by employing methods so far underutilised in their study. Firstly, with a database of known habitation sites, along with digitised intensive surveys of several subregions, this thesis presents an analysis of the environmental correlates and spatial relationships of human settlement, and the networks of visibility, movement and interaction which, it is suggested, underpinned the long-term evolution of Crete’s LBA and EIA communities. Secondly, drawing on these same datasets, and ethno- and bio-archaeological studies of ancient agriculture, developments in the demography and subsistence practices of LBA and EIA Crete are examined. Thirdly, with a database of published and reported tombs from the periods under investigation, this thesis undertakes a spatial and quantitative analysis of mortuary practices and assemblages across the island. Finally, these analyses are integrated into an historical synthesis, based on diverse strands of evidence, including law codes, historical sources, and settlement and cult assemblages. This thesis argues that a focus on changes in the networks of movement and interaction which developed at multiple scales interconnecting communities of the LBA and EIA – at all times rooted in the affordances of the Cretan landscape – offers a fruitful, dynamic means of bridging the traditionally perceived disjuncture between the final palaces and the later city-states.

When you think of Greece and the Aegean Sea, you might picture shining blue water, sleepy coastal villages, and sprawling olive groves. But such images mask a more hostile reality, where tectonic forces, changeable seas, and unpredictable weather present many challenges to daily life in the region. This was even more true in the deep past, when technologies of construction, transportation and agriculture were even more at the mercy of the natural world, and it may be again in the future, as the climate becomes more volatile. In this session, we will explore how the climate and environment of ancient Greece help us better understand the vibrant history of the region in the time of the Iron Age city-states, drawing on a range of physical, archaeological, and historical evidence. But we will also consider how our modern experiences of the natural world offer a way into thinking about the opportunities, constraints, and achievements of past societies in their geographical context.

Expanding the Ancient World is a series of professional development workshops and online resources for teachers. Keyed to the NYC Department of Education Social Studies Scope and Sequence, this program is designed to offer K-12 educators opportunities to develop their knowledge of the ancient world and to provide classroom-ready strategies for teaching the past with reliable sources. Featuring inquiry-based workshops, flexible lesson plans, and up-to-date research, Expanding the Ancient World aims to equip teachers with information and skills that they can share with their students. CTLE credits will be offered to New York State teachers.

The fifth mini conference of the Early Iron Age Aegean Early Career
Research Group, on the theme of Words and Numbers. As archaeologists, ancient historians and classicists, we are traditionally well-versed in the qualitative or interpretive study of material culture and the content of textual sources. For this conference, we present four contributions that, while recognising the value of these traditional tools of analysis, look to apply novel theoretical and methodological approaches to ancient material and textual evidence.

We are pleased to announce that the fifth mini conference of the Early Iron Age Aegean Early Career Research Group will be taking place, via Zoom, on Thursday December 7th 2023. If you are interested in presenting your research, please provide your contact details and proposed title in this Google Form: https://forms.gle/xCpHinYhppJcrbcH9 . Please do so by the end of the day on Friday November 3rd, so that we can put together and circulate the programme in good time.

The role of agricultural terracing in the subsistence systems of prehistoric and early historic Crete remains poorly understood, despite its significant transformation of Aegean landscapes. While ancient terraces have been identified in limited areas on Crete, little research has addressed where they were constructed, the potential organisational requirements for construction and management, and variations in their deployment in time and space, questions on which ancient historical sources are silent. These questions are significant, given the agrarian foundations of the Bronze Age and later Iron Age societies on Crete, and the significant constraints imposed by topography, hydrology, erodibility and suitable soils on cultivable land. While understanding ancient terracing systems on Crete will require extensive excavation and detailed survey, we employ GIS for exploring fundamental parameters and developing expectations regarding the use of terraces in antiquity. We review archaeological and anthropological studies of terracing in agrarian societies, recent work in Mediterranean geomorphology, agricultural development and heritage preservation, and the evidence for ancient and recent terracing in the Aegean. Building on work examining the relationships between demography, agricultural catchments, settlement location and territorial dynamics on Crete, we explore the potential role of terracing in supporting populations and ameliorating competition over land through modelling different food production and consumption scenarios, and the costs and benefits of terrace infrastructure. We apply these models to the topographic contexts and dynamic development of Cretan Bronze Age and Iron Age settlements, to assess the suitability of their hinterlands to support their reconstructed populations with varying investment in terraces.