Mycenaean Greece, Mediterranean Commerce, and the Formation of Identity

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Cambridge University Press, Mar 8, 2010 - Business & Economics - 246 pages
The impact of long-distance exchange on the developing cultures of Bronze Age Greece has been a subject of debate since Schliemann's discovery of the Shaft Graves at Mycenae. In Mycenaean Greece, Mediterranean Commerce, and the Formation of Identity, Bryan E. Burns offers a new understanding of the effects of Mediterranean trade on Mycenaean Greece by considering the possibilities represented by the traded objects themselves in their Mycenaean contexts. A range of imported artifacts were distinguished by their precious material, uncommon style, and foreign writing, signaling their status as tangible evidence of connections beyond the Aegean. The consumption of these exotic symbols spread beyond the highest levels of society and functioned as symbols of external power sources. Burns argues that the consumption of exotic items thus enabled the formation of alternate identities and the resistance of palatial power.
 

Contents

Consumer Cultures
3
Exchange in the Bronze Age Mediterranean
9
Assessing Individual Imports
20
Acts of Consumption and the Materialization
29
An Overview of Imported Objects in Mycenaean
36
Internal and External Perspectives
66
Imports in the Early Mycenaean Period
73
Crafting Power Through Import
105
Local Networks Employing Foreign Goods
119
Import Consumption in Palatial Centers
130
Funerary Consumption and Competition
163
Individual and Communal Identities
171
Late Helladic IIIA Tombs as Places of Celebration
179
Continued and Concentrated Tomb Use in Late
186
References
197
Index
241

Instability and Independence within Centralized
111

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About the author (2010)

Bryan E. Burns is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at Wellesley College. He is the author of numerous articles on Bronze Age Greece and has been awarded fellowships and fieldwork grants from the Institute for Aegean Prehistory, the Loeb Classical Library Foundation and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

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