A Cultural History of the Cretan Labyrinth

Monument and Memory from Prehistory to the Present

Bibliographic Data

ID4815747
AuthorsAntonis Kotsonas (0009-0005-2946-8584, University of Cincinnati, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume122
Issue3
Pages367-396
Publication date2018-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Journal of Archaeology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-9114 • E-ISSN: 1939-828X
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.3764/aja.122.3.0367
OpenAlexW2808963756
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited42

The Cretan Labyrinth has fascinated scholars and the wider public since antiquity. Traditionally, it has been regarded as a monument that did once exist, and it has been widely identified with the Minoan palace of Knossos. I argue that this approach has underestimated the variety and complexity of references to the Cretan Labyrinth and its capacity for metamorphosis from abstract memory to tangible monument and for relocation from one Cretan site to another. Drawing from literature on memory and monuments, and especially from the work of Maurice Halbwachs, I explore the poetics and politics, the materialities and temporalities that shaped different regimes of truth regarding the location and the form of the Cretan Labyrinth across several millennia. This diachronic analysis reveals the shifting and competing, indeed labyrinthine, narratives about this monument and produces a cultural history of it extending from prehistory to the present.Additional figures appear under this article’s abstract on AJA Online

Archaeology · Art · Cultural memory · Literature · Narrative · Poetics · Poetry · Politics · Prehistory · Relocation · Sociology · Temporalities · TRACE (psycholinguistics) · Anthropology · Classical Antiquity Studies · History · Marine Sponges and Natural Products · Maritime and Coastal Archaeology · Philosophy

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