Having considered a range of issues in trying to establish in outline the demographic scale of Neopalatial urbanization, it is worth commenting briefly on two more general issues.
First, in reviewing some of the elements which need to be considered in a discussion of Minoan urbanism, it will be immediately apparent that we cannot necessarily expect the same patterns of spatial behaviour in other cultures, whether at the level of the individual household, or community organization. This applies as much to other cultures within the prehistoric Aegean, as beyond, and on present evidence, urban centres appear to have been constituted in different ways in different regions of the southern Aegean (Figure 2.10). We lose an appreciation of this by treating Aegean urbanism as a unitary phenomenon, and indeed if we think of its development as a unitary process.
Second, the argument developed by Colin Renfrew (1972: 240-44) that the Aegean urban sites, and indeed, the states of which they were the centres, were some sort of scaled-down version of their East Mediterranean
Figure 2.9 Evidence for the extent of better-documented Neopalatial sites. A. Knossos; B. Phaistos; C. Zakros; D. Khania;
E. Kommos; F. Malia; G. Palaikastro; H. Gournia; I. Mochlos; J. Ayia Triadha; K. Myrtos Pyrgos; L. Kastellos Tzermiado; M. Pseira; N. Petras; O. Tylissos; P. Kastelli Pediadha; Q. Archanes; R. Amnisos; S. Poros.
Figure 2.10 Comparative estimates of site size. Late Bronze Age Aegean sites.
Figure 2.11 Eastern Mediterranean centres of the second millennium BC.
Contemporaries, has often been repeated. He was only able to make this case by dismissing out of hand (1972: 238, 242-4) the empirical data on which previous estimates of the sizes of sites such as Knossos and Malia were based (Hood 1958; Demargne and Gallet de Santerre 1953: pi. 1; van Effenterre and van Effenterre 1963: 49-53). Subsequent fieldwork has shown these estimates to have been reasonably accurate (Hood and Smyth 1981; Whitelaw 2000; in press; Muller 1990; 1991; 1992). It may be that Renfrew's position was forced on him by his attempt to chart the emergence of states in the Aegean through Cycladic data, such that a small site such as Phylakopi needed to be definable as 'urban' (Renfrew 1972: 238-40; C. Broodbank pers. comm.; see Renfrew and Wagstaff 1981 for the idea of Melos as a microcosm for monitoring Aegean-wide processes).
In fact, any direct comparison with contemporary Eastern Mediterranean centres (Figure 2.11), emphasizes that the Aegean urban communities were not rustic cousins on the periphery of the civilized world, but the urban centres of states, comparable in scale and almost certainly complexity, to many of their Eastern contemporaries.®
Finally, it is worth returning to the methodological perspective which this paper has tried to develop. I have argued that there is considerably more relevant data, both for Neopalatial house size and for community organization, than has previously been considered in attempts to estimate Neopalatial site populations. In addition, I have outlined an explicit methodology for estimating populations, developed from a comparatively-based recognition of some of the factors affecting residential patterns; these are variable phenomena which need to be understood contextually. Such an approach allows us to develop an understanding of residential densities which is specific to the culture under study, rather than relying upon cross-cultural formulae or specific analogies which are of questionable relevance to Minoan Crete.*’ Finally, in examining different Neopalatial sites, it is useful to recognize the differences in residential density which can be documented for different sites, rather than subsuming them into an overall average density figure. Exploring fhese local differences in residential practices may help us to recognize the different characters of individual communities in Neopalatial Crete, which are likely to have had different roles within larger-scale regional settlement systems. In such a manner, we can move beyond the study of individual sites in isolation, and through integration with the emerging data from regional survey, we can put the study of Minoan urbanism into its regional, as well as developmental context.
World History
