This volume brings together an international group of researchers to address how Mycenaean and Minoan states controlled the economy. The contributions, originally delivered at the 2007 Langford Conference at the Florida State University, examine the political economies of state (and pre-state) entities within the Aegean Bronze Age, including the issues of centralization and multiple scales of production, distribution, and consumption within a polity; importance of extraregional trade; craft specialization; the role of non-elite institutions, and the political economy before the emergence of the palaces.


The contributors address these issues from an explicitly comparative perspective, both within and across Minoan and Mycenaean contexts. The conclusions reached in this volume shed new light on the essential differences between and among "Minoan" and "Mycenaean" states through their political economies.

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• List of Contributors
• Abstract
• 1. Introduction: Political Economies of the Aegean Bronze Age
• 2. Beyond the Peer: Social Interaction and Political Evolution in the Bronze Age Aegean
• 3. Spirit of Place: Minoan Houses as Major Actors
• 4. Making Elites: Political Economy and Elite Culture(s) in Middle Minoan Crete
• 5. From the Kinship Economy to the Palatial Economy: The Argolid in the Second Millennium BC
• 6. Political Economies in Ritual: A Comparative Study of the Rise of the State in Pre- and Protopalatial Knossos and Phaistos
• 7. Reevaluating Staple and Wealth Finance at Mycenaean Pylos
• 8. Seafaring in the Bronze Age Aegean: Evidence and Speculation
• 9. Between and Beyond: Political Economy in Non-palatial Mycenaean Worlds
• 10. Citadel and Sett lement: A Developing Economy at Mycenae, the Case of Petsas House
• 11. Living from Pots? Ceramic Perspectives on the Economies of Prepalatial Crete
• 12. Wedging Clay: Combining Competing Models of Mycenaean Pott ery Industries
• 13. Political Economies in the Aegean Bronze Age: A Response