Daniel J. Pullen

A lead seal from Tsoungiza, ancient Nemea, and Early Bronze Age Aegean sealing systems

A lead seal was discovered at the prehistoric site of Tsoungiza, ancient Nemea, in association with Early Helladic II remains. Lead seals are rarely preserved, and this is the first known for mainland Greece in the Early Bronze Age. The seals motif of an angle-filled cross is widespread throughout the eastern Mediterranean during the fourth and third millennia BC and is found on seals, sealings, and terracotta objects. Using the sealing evidence from Lerna seals and their use on sealings can be connected with the control of redistribution in chiefdoms, the principal form of social organization in the EH II period. The Tsoungiza seal is evidence for the emerging social complexity of the Early Bronze Age

Rillenkarren at Vayia: geomorphology and a new class of Early Bronze Age fortified settlement in Southern Greece

With ever more inhibited programmes of excavation, new methods of site survey are always welcome. Here a soil geomorphologist joins forces with archaeologists to read the history of limestone blocks exposed on the surface at sites in southern Greece. Rillenkarren for example are vertical grooves caused by rainfall on stones that remained for long periods in the same place. These and other observations showed that what looked like clearance cairns had in fact been piled up in the Early Bronze Age and led in turn to the definition of a new type of settlement.

The prehistoric remains of the acropolis at Halieis : a final report

Excavations in the 1960s and 1970s on the acropolis of Halieis in the southern Argolid revealed material of Final neolithic through Early Helladic I in deposits dating to the Archaic through Classical periods. Post-prehistoric building activities have disturbed any originally in situ prehistoric deposits. The Halieis ceramics are later than those from the nearby Franchthi cave, but compare well with ceramics collected from the surrounding region by the Southern Argolid Survey. A single radiocarbon date derived from shell yields a marine-corrected date range in the 4th millennium B.C.

‘There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch’: Reciprocity in Mycenaean Political Economies

Reciprocity has seen much less attention by Aegean archaeologists than other economic concepts such as redistribution, largely because of an assumption that reciprocity is characteristic of ‘egalitarian’ or less developed societies, as well as a related interest in political economies of more complex (palatial) societies, which are assumed to be characterized by redistribution. In Aegean archaeology, consideration of reciprocity is usually limited to gift exchange, either royal in the context of Late Bronze Age interactions with other societies in the eastern Mediterranean, or among elites in a Homeric model. Yet reciprocity has great potential to help us understand better the political economies and social organization of the Late Bronze Age Aegean. Reciprocity encompasses the social dynamics of any exchange between individuals and how these social relationships form the structure of social organization. Of particular interest here is how the standard categories of reciprocity—that is generalized (gift exchange), balanced (trade or immediate discharge of debt), and negative (one-sided benefit)—are manipulated through strategies such as competitive generosity and asymmetrical exchanges, leading to indebtedness of one exchange partner to the other; this can be institutionalized into hierarchical social structures. Feasting is one important category of exchange that can result in asymmetrical relationships and social inequality, and the Mycenaean evidence allows us to examine feasting in detail. Recent work in Linear B texts has suggested that palatial elites manipulated reciprocity through feasting as a strategy for maintaining social and political power. Likewise, elites utilized gifts of prestige items within their own polities to forge alliances and maintain social power

Artifact and Assemblage: The Finds from a Regional Survey of the Southern Argolid, Greece I: The Prehistoric and Early Iron Age Pottery and the Lithic Artifacts

Introduction Curtis Runnels, Daniel J. Pullen, and Susan Langdon 1. The pottery of the Neolithic, Early Helladic I, and Early Helladic II periods Daniel J. Pullen 2. The pottery of the Early Helladic III and Middle Helladic periods Gullog C. Nordquist 3. The pottery of the Late Helladic period P. A. Mountjoy 4. The pottery of the early Iron Age and Geometric periods Susan Langdon 5. The Lithic artifacts: flaked stone and other nonflaked Lithics P. Nick Kardulias, and Curtis Runnels Conclusions Curtis Runnels, Daniel J. Pullen, and Susan Langdon.