"Le dur ne dure pas, seul dure le doux". Rethinking Dominant Perceptions of the “Maritime” in Early Bronze Age Aegean Archaeology (original) (raw)
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Aegean Bronze Age Seascapes – A Case Study in Maritime Movement, Contact and Interaction
Mediterranean Crossroads, 2007
Recent approaches to landscapes, islandscapes, and seascapes have highlighted the multivocal, interactive, multi-sensorial, and, most of all, deeply social nature of human engagement with them. Unfortunately, due to a perceived or real lack of archaeological evidence, anthropological studies, oral histories and the more often than not land-based lifestyle of modern scholars, the maritime world of the Aegean has up to now experienced a certain neglect. It is thus the purpose of this work to draw out the potential of research into seascapes and to promote a new kind of survey that incorporates the maritime environment into its design. The final section reinvestigates common assumptions about mobility, direc- tionality, navigation and interaction in the Bronze Age Aegean and of- fers a perspective more in keeping with ethnographic, archaeological and experimental data. It will be argued that mobility, movement and in- teraction were essential factors of island life, that seafaring technology was well developed, and that, therefore, an isolationist tendency should be considered as socially constructed, rather than an inevitable conse- quence of island living.
In: N. Raad and C. Cabrera Tejedor, Ships, Boats, Ports, Trade, and War in the Mediterranean and Beyond Proceedings of the Maritime Archaeology Graduate Symposium 2018. BAR publishing, 2020
This study aims to address lacunae in research relating to prehistoric boatbuilding traditions and seafaring in Aegean, bridge gaps in our current knowledge and challenge misconceptions of interpretation through a reassessment of extant evidence by implementing new evidence. The broader implications of these new data also have bearing on interpretations of economy, trade and exchange, the nature of maritime communities and the structure and organisation of the Neolithic-Early Bronze Age Aegean communities. Until recently, due to the lack of evidence, many scholars wrongly attributed functions to the longboats that probably go beyond their actual capabilities. Moreover, attempts to “reconstruct” these vessels, were either meagre and based on limited data or they derive from inconclusive interpretations that do not reflect realities of prehistoric technology. Thereby, I argue that this particular type of boat was incorrectly assigned the role of a seagoing ‘commercial’ ship when it was, in fact, capable of limited sea routes and used in specific operations. In order to support my argument, the main purpose is to yield a database comprised of direct-indirect evidence, various ethnographic parallels and the essentials of traditional boatbuilding. This made possible their 3D digital reconstruction through the software MAXSURF, 3dsMAX, Rhinoceros 3D and its plugin Orca, that allowed to test the seafaring properties of the watercraft as far as the hydrostatics, stability, seakeeping and performance are concerned.
Maritime Interactions in SW Aegean during the Bronze Age
This paper is the result of two Masters dissertations completed in the University of Southampton in the field of Maritime Archaeology Ivrou, 2004). The main objective is to examine the maritime network connecting the areas of the southern Peloponnese and west Crete in the southwest Aegean, and to tackle questions regarding the nature of maritime activities and interactions between these areas during the course of the Bronze Age. Our principal intention is to approach this objective in a maritime dimension that is focusing on the restrictions, potentials as well as the mentality enhanced by the interaction of the related populations with the sea.
Papadatos, Y. and P. Tomkins 2013. Trading, the Longboat and Cultural Interaction in the late FN-early EB I Aegean. The view from Kephala Petras, East Crete, American Journal of Archaeology 117, 353-381. Currently, long-distance trading, gateway communities, and the use of the longboat are understood to have emerged in the Aegean sometime during Early Bronze (EB) IB/IIA. This longboat-trading model envisages an essentially static configuration of trading communities situated at nodal points in maritime networks of interaction, an arrangement that was brought to an end, by the beginning of EB III, with the introduction of the masted sailing ship. This article questions this EB IB/IIA emergence date and argues instead that trading, gateway communities, and the longboat have a deeper and more dynamic history stretching back at least as far as the end of the Neolithic (Final Neolithic [FN] IV). The results of recent excavations at the FN IV–Early Minoan (EM) IA coastal site of Kephala Petras in east Crete paint a picture of an early trading community that, thanks to its close Cycladic connections, enjoyed preferential access to valued raw materials, to the technologies for their transformation, and to finished objects. This monopoly over the resource of distance was in turn exploited locally and regionally in east Crete, as a social strategy, to construct advantageous relationships with other communities. FN IV–EM IA Kephala Petras thus appears to represent the earliest known of a series of Early Bronze Age gateway communities (e.g., Hagia Photia, Mochlos, Poros-Katsambas) operating along the north coast of Crete.
In: F. Schön, L. Dierksmeier, A. Condit, V. Palmowski and A. Kouremenos (eds.), European Islands Between Isolated and Interconnected Life Worlds. Interdisciplinary Long-Term Perspectives. RessourcenKulturen 16, Tübingen, 2021
The Aegean archipelago constitutes one of the most intriguing ‘laboratories’ of island archaeology in the Mediterranean, due to the unique geomorphological configuration among the various island groups, as well as their varied cultural and historical developments. In recent years, there has been renewed interest in the study of intra- and interisland connections and island/continent interactions through the application of spatial and maritime network analysis, as well as artefact analysis and the reconstruction of technological (châine opératoire approach) and distributional patterns. To a certain degree, such an interdisciplinary focus was developed for the eastern Aegean and western Anatolian borderland, an area where maritime interaction and communication via the sea has occupied archaeological scholarship over the past two decades. Although only separated by narrow sea straits, the islands and the Anatolian mainland are often considered archaeologically through the lens of boundedness and separateness. These concepts interpret archaeological frontiers of insular versus mainland areas by postcolonialist models of core-periphery relationships, in which the islands are frequently considered to be passive. In this paper, developments and diachronic changes during the Early Bronze Age (EBA) in the ceramic repertoire of the east Aegean islands are discussed, emphasising mainly on evidence from Lemnos, Lesbos, Chios, and Samos, in relation to traditions from the central Aegean (Cyclades) and the adjacent Anatolian coastlands. Focusing on the seascape/coastscape perspective and the concept of the peraia, this research also explores what constitutes the distinct cultural identity of these island communities and how this is formed and transformed through time during the 3rd mill. BCE.
Shima: The International Journal of Research Into Island Cultures, 2020
In the last decade, abundant evidence for seafaring and interaction among Southern Aegean communities has been produced through the recovery of imported materials (mainly metals, lithics, and ceramics) in archaeological excavations dated to the Final Neolithic period (c 4th millennium BC). This article attempts to synthesise the available data on exchange networks, and to discuss the images of maritime interaction, namely the longboats depicted on FN rock carvings. It is suggested that during the 4th millennium BC maritime communication played an important role in the transfer of people, ideas and technologies. A contrast between closely interacting regions, comprised by both mainland and island areas (such as for example Attica and the Northern Cyclades), and long-range, lower intensity connections (for example between Attica and Crete) can be identified. Similar to the Early Bronze Age period, the capacity of a Final Neolithic community to provide enough men for a longboat crew would be crucial in long-distance maritime connections. The longboat could have been used in establishing social alliances among Final Neolithic communities and/or piracy and warfare.
Maritime Narratives of Prehistoric Cyprus: Seafaring as Everyday Practice
Journal of Maritime Archaeology, 2020
This paper considers the role of seafaring as an important aspect of everyday life in the communities of prehistoric Cyprus. The maritime capabilities developed by early seafarers enabled them to explore new lands and seas, tap new marine resources and make use of accessible coastal sites. Over the long term, the core activities of seafaring revolved around the exploitation of marine and coastal resources, the mobility of people and the transport and exchange of goods. On Cyprus, although we lack direct material evidence (e.g. shipwrecks, ship representations) before about 2000 BC, there is no question that beginning at least by the eleventh millennium Cal BC (Late Epipalaeolithic), early seafarers sailed between the nearby mainland and Cyprus, in all likelihood several times per year. In the long stretch of time—some 4000 years—between the Late Aceramic Neolithic and the onset of the Late Chalcolithic (ca. 6800–2700 Cal BC), most archaeologists passively accept the notion that the ...