The burden of being Mycenaean

Bibliographic Data

ID2130799
AuthorsFrancis A De Mita (corresponding author)
Year1999
Volume6
Issue1
Pages24-27
Publication date1999-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueArchaeological Dialogues (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1380-2038 • E-ISSN: 1478-2294
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1380203800001318
OpenAlexW2164881746
LanguageEN
References cited57

Van Wijngaarden offers an important and instructive attempt to re-situate the study of Bronze Age 'imports' away from the dominance of prestige commodity studies, using the particularly thorny example of Mycenaean ceramics. Traditional approaches, as van Wijngaarden points out, have tended to assign a uniformity of value and unchallenged prestige status to all Mycenaean imports. The reason for this reflexive recourse to prestige in the presence of Mycenaean pottery has more perhaps to do with the evolution of the discipline of archaeology in the East Mediterranean and a desire to find a precursor to the highly evolved city states of the Classical world than to any objective assessment of the objects themselves. Analytical frameworks which contextualize imports and exotica into the greater scheme of a robust and diverse material culture are critical steps in the development of the theoretical evolution of the study of the Late Bonze Age. However, van Wijngaarden's efforts also illustrate the methodological challenges encountered when isolating a single subcategory of artefact for examination. The blame lies not so much with van Wijngaarden's analysis as with the problem of what can be said to constitute value in a prehistoric context and how value, once defined, can be kept separate from other interrelated concepts

Archaeology · Bronze Age · Linguistics · Pottery · Prehistory · Prestige · Sociology · Ancient Near East History · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · History · Maritime and Coastal Archaeology · Mathematics · Philosophy

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