Cyprian Broodbank

Migrant farmers and the Neolithic colonization of Crete

When did a human presence reach Crete, largest of the Aegean islands, and invitingly joined to the mainland by intervening stepping-stones? Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, or only in the Neolithic, when the deep sequence of occupations under the site of the later palace at Knossos began. How many sailed to Crete? What did they bring with them?

Ulysses without sails: trade, distance, knowledge and power in the early Cyclades

Abstract Pre‐modern trade must be situated within the context of the wider social significance of the exotic. Unequal knowledge creates uneven values for non‐local goods, and superior knowledge forms an avenue to power. This study explores maritime trade in the Cycladic islands (c. 2700–2300 cal. BC) in this light. It expands on earlier identification of specialized trading communities, using graph analysis to show that their position (spatial and political) was based on control of local seaborne movement and greater experience of the wider maritime world. Possible ritual destruction of prestige marble artefacts at one such site on Keros is seen as a means of manipulating regimes of value. Finally, it is suggested that long‐distance voyages beyond the Cyclades were as much exercises in the gathering of esoteric knowledge to enhance social prestige within the islands as they were expeditions concerned with trade in material goods.

Perspectives on an Early Bronze Age Island centre: An analysis of pottery from Daskaleio-Kavos (Keros) in the Cyclades

Island central places occupy a prominent position in archaeological, anthropological and historical debate, but the number of early examples of such centres that have to date been investigated in detail remains small. One such central place in the Early Bronze Age (3rd millennium BC) Cycladic islands of the Aegean was the site of Daskaleio-Kavos on Keros, although the interpretation of this sites functions is controversial. Fieldwork at the site in 1987 generated a large sample of pottery that allows the sites local and inter-regional connections to be explored in detail for the first time. The results of ceramic analysis indicate that Daskaleio-Kavos operated as the active maritime centre of an intensive network of inter-island exchange.

Not Waving but Drowning

‘Kick a megalith’, as one leading phenomenologist of landscape is said to have remarked, ‘and it hurts’. No such pithy formula comes immediately to mind with regard to the reality checks offered by the sea to our understanding of island societies, though a large number of islanders undoubtedly did end up sleeping involuntarily with the fishes. The papers in this collection make two important contributions to the archaeology of islands. First, they join a small but growing band of voices (led by Anderson 2004) that seeks to qualify the dominant trend over the last decade in island studies towards prioritizing networks and interaction over isolation (Rainbird’s [2007:173] three fwords—fusion, fluidity, and flux), and an overwhelmingly culturally relative, perception-based definition of insularity. Second, they hint at a potential change of purpose in the pursuit of a comparative approach to island histories. Both of these developments are of some interest at a time when the study of islands should be striving to place itself, and reaffirm its relevance, among the emer-

Scientific analysis of metal objects and metallurgical remains from Kastri, Kythera

Scientific analysis of samples takes from metal objects and metallurgical products excavated during the 1960s at Kastri on Kythera provide new evidence concerning, variously, the Aegean metals trade and metallurgy on Kythera. The samples date to the Second Palace (Neopalatial), Classical and Late Roman periods. The Bronze Age material comprises fragments of copper ingots and silver cups, neither of which metal is locally available in Kythera, and the later material relates largely to local smelting and possibly smithing of iron, whose origin is uncertain. These activities are related to preliminary information concerning the distribution at each period of metallurgical activity across the island that has been generated by the intensive surface survey of the Kythera Island Project.