The distribution in time and space of the Mycenaean goods exported from the Aegean and the foreign imports into the Aegean has been well documented in catalogues by Cline (1994) and others (Judas 2011; Lambrou-Phillipson 1990; Leonard 1994; Phillips 2008; van Wijngaarden 2002), and the corpus has been subjected to extensive comment and interpretation. As Cline (2009: 164—65) notes, the corpus is not growing very rapidly, and it has inevitable limitations. Yet there are undeniable patterns in the data that enable us to ask informed questions about the dynamics of cross-cultural networks of interaction. Some of these questions can be illuminated using archaeometric characterization studies, such as petrographic and chemical analyses of ceramic fabrics to address sourcing as well as technological styles and traditions. We can only speculate on the magnitude of the perishable, mainly organic, material that moved through these networks, as well as the metals that were destroyed, recycled, and otherwise removed from the Bronze Age archaeological record. But judging from the textual records recovered in the Aegean, Egypt, and the Near East, the circulation of perishable material must have been immense. We are left with a database that is meaningful and amenable to interpretation, but the small quantities of material and the frequent ambiguities as to the precise dates of objects and their find contexts create challenging problems for quantitative analysis and other measures of significance. Regardless of how the data are analyzed quantitatively, the inevitable conclusion will be that “ . . . long-distance exchange with the Aegean was infrequent, sporadic, and consisted primarily of the importation of small prestige items" (Parkinson 2010: 17—18). Just how to factor in materials that do not survive, and whether these would significantly change the picture, are thorny questions. Furthermore, recovering the exchange events and mechanisms by which the material was transported from its production source to the consumer (and any subsequent transfers in an object's “life history") may be impossible in an environment of webs of interaction where down-the-line trade, cabotage, and other complex modes of exchange overlap. The stability of categories of use and meaning of an object between the originating and consuming cultures is a further complication, though sometimes its contextual associations are revealing. Changes in practice (e. g., burial or cult practices) can indicate the transmission of intangible ideas where archaeological evidence for meaningful contact is otherwise lacking.
Exchange from region to region within the Aegean world can often be identified by the movement of artifacts with distinctive form, style, or manufacturing tradition. The more local the exchanges become, the less likely that there will be detectable differences in material culture, but if a center of production for a distinctive product is known, for example the volcanic rock-tempered storage and cooking wares of Kolonna on Aigina, movements at very close range can be discerned (see the detailed case study on the Saronic Gulf in Chapter 7).
World History
