Minoan civilization arises from a prolonged social and economic development on Crete, in which Knossos and Phaistos, two major Middle Bronze Age palaces, had already appeared earlier as exceptional settlements within their regions (North-Central and SouthCentral Crete, respectively). Despite the disruptions in the Aegean and Near East which threw late Early Minoan society into disorder, Crete is one region where recovery during the early centuries of the MBA is not only strong but leaps into a higher level of political complexity. This is seen in the construction or better elaboration of great architectural complexes, the “palatial” centers across the island. (For general reading see Shelmerdine 2008, Cline 2010, Mee 2011.)
Aegean integration into an Eastern Mediterranean world system?
The second millennium BC sees Aegean societies for the first time becoming vigorously active in the much older Eastern Mediterranean trading and political systems. Over time, in the MBA and LBA, aspects of at least the exchange network spread to parts of the Central Mediterranean too. These phenomena are tied to a debate on the significance of the societal
Transformations involved (Sherratt and Sherratt 1993). The central concepts are Core-Periphery and World Systems Theory, and both originate in historical and economic models for the relations in Early Modern times between Western colonial and imperial states, and the Second and Third World peoples. CorePeriphery focuses on the usually dominant role of a region or state with advanced technology or economic systems in relation to a region or state at a lower level of political or economic complexity: influences from the core encourage internal transformations in the periphery. World Systems theory (Wallerstein 1974) models complex societies as different networks of interaction, or world systems: a world empire is a political unity of diverse regions or peoples, yet in pre-Modern times usually constitutes a series of local economies which fail to unify into a single efficient flow of goods and services. A world economy on the other hand achieves the latter aim with a well-lubricated and open flow of products and personnel, but for Wallerstein this only expanded to fill and then exceed the space of world empires in the post-Medieval period, with the unique spread of global capitalism and colonialism. Many archaeologists disagree with Wallerstein and suggest that ancient and even prehistoric exchange systems may have formed world economies, including within the Mediterranean.
The Complete Archaeology of Greece: From Hunter-Gatherers to the 20th Century AD, First Edition. John Bintliff. © 2012 John Bintliff. Published 2012 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Around 2000 BC, social and economic relations within the Aegean are clearly transformed. Renfrew (1972) embedded this development into the longer-term rise of complex societies within the Aegean, emphasizing the increasing rate of change in the EBA. Nonetheless, he admitted that some key elements have been introduced from outside, for example the spread by colonizing Neolithic groups of mixed farming, then the FN-EBA adoption, through indirect diffusion, of olive and vine cultivation and metallurgy, all from the Near East, Anatolia or the North Balkans. In contrast the Sherratts emphasize a far more radical, deliberately engineered reorientation of Aegean societies, when the region shifts from a predominantly internal exchange system to an economy locked into strong trade systems already in action throughout the Eastern Mediterranean since the EBA. For them, this begins by EB2 in Greece, when the region is a “periphery,” already significantly affected by the “core” of state societies in the Levant-Anatolia. With the MBA rise of Minoan palatial states, Crete emerges as a new core, creating its own periphery, the Cycladic and Mainland cultures of MC and subsequently LH respectively.
Chronological context and periodization
Minoan civilization has two flourishing eras, the First and Second Palace periods. The transition from EM was not smooth. EM3 saw widespread destructions and site desertions, and although MM1 marks resettlement and expansion of existing sites, this phase has short-lived fortifications at several of them (Knossos, Malia, Vasilike, Gournia) and curious small defensive complexes at Chamaizi and Aghia Photia (Watrous 1994, Fitton 2002).
The Old Palaces begin around 2000 BC. After several centuries there is an island-wide catastrophe which destroys the palaces, probably a particularly violent earthquake to which Crete is prone (although a few scholars have raised an alternative explanation, internal warfare). However almost immediately most palaces are rebuilt along very similar lines, and the resultant Second Palace period is even more complex and sophisticated. Another island-wide destruction that occurs at the end of the LBA1 phase (LM1B), and which brings all the palaces except Knossos out of effective use, is placed here around 1550 BC as a choice amongst widely differing dates. This is not now considered to be the direct result of a somewhat earlier (LM1A) giant volcanic eruption on the nearby island of Thera in the Cyclades. In the following, rather misleadingly-named Postpalatial era, Knossos was certainly functioning as a great palace, maybe ruling over much of Crete, in place of the defunct regional palaces it survived. It was also very possibly under the control of a new power, the Mainland Mycenaeans, rather than the Cretan elites (or corporate communities, see below), who had been responsible for the rise and management of the network of large and small palaces dominating Minoan Crete in the preceding eras of the First and Second Palaces.
The final destruction and abandonment of that LM2—3 survivor, the “Palace of Minos” at Knossos, has several possible dates, from 1375 down to 1250 BC. If the Postpalatial period coincides in a causal way with the fast rise of the militaristic Mycenaean civilization, opting for the latest date for the fall of Knossos places that palace’s final violent destruction in the same time frame as the equally violent fall of the Mainland Mycenaean palaces themselves. Since this wave of destructions in the late thirteenth to early twelfth century BC is also visible in the adjacent Near
Minoan Palace Civilization
Early court-centered complexes ca. 2500—2100/2000 BC: Early Minoan 2 to Middle Minoan 1A First/Old Palace period ca. 2100/2000—1750 BC: Middle Minoan 1B—2
Second/New Palace period ca. 1750-1550 BC: Middle Minoan 3 to Late Minoan 1 Postpalatial period (Knossos excepted) ca. 15501250 BC: Late Minoan 2-3
East (with the fall of the great civilization of the Hittites in Anatolia for example), wider forces seem to have been at work. If, however, we opt for the earlier dates for the fall of Knossos, in LM3A in the early fourteenth century, then a collapse of Mycenaean control within Crete is a better explanation, perhaps due to a successful indigenous uprising.
World History
