Athyrmata: Critical Essays on the Archaeology of the Eastern Mediterranean in Honour of E. Susan Sherratt

by Yannis Galanakis (Editor), Toby Wilkinson (Editor), John Bennet (Editor)

Over her career Susan Sherratt has questioned our basic assumptions in many areas of the later prehistory of the Mediterranean and Europe, deploying a canny eye for detail, but never losing sight of the big picture. Her collected works include contributions on the relationship between Homeric epic and archaeology; the economy of ceramics, metals and other materials; the status of the ‘Sea Peoples’ and other ethnic terminologies; routes and different forms of interaction; and the history of museums/collecting (especially relating to Sir Arthur Evans). The editors of this volume have brought together a cast of thirty-two scholars from nine different countries who have contributed these twenty-six papers to mark Sue’s 65th birthday – a collection that seeks to reflect both her broad range of interests and her ever-questioning approach to uncovering the realities of life in Europe and the Mediterranean in later prehistory.

Table of Contents

Introduction (Yannis Galanakis, Toby Wilkinson and John Bennet)

A selected list of publications by Sue Sherratt (as of autumn 2014)

How and when did Tel Akko get its unusual banana shape? (Michal Artzy and Jamie Quartermaine)

The integration of gold resources in the Byzantine an open question (Evanthia Baboula)

The ‘Sea Peoples’ as an emergent phenomenon (Alexander A. Bauer)

Pottery mobility, landscape survey and maritime a view from Kythera (Cyprian Broodbank and Evangelia Kiriatzi)

‘In vino veritas’: raising a toast at Mycenaean funerals (William Cavanagh and Christopher Mee)

Geraki in Laconia in Late Helladic times (Joost Crouwel)

How warlike were the Mycenaeans, in reality? (Oliver Dickinson)

Desecrating ‘hieroglyphic’ writing systems and secondary script inventions (Silvia Ferrara)

Chronologies should carry a ‘use by’ the archaeological life history of the ‘Beth Shan Stirrup Jar’ (Elizabeth French)

Arthur Evans and the quest for the “origins of Mycenaean culture” (Yannis Galanakis)

Man/Woman, Warrior/ The Lefkandi Toumba female burial reconsidered (Kate Harrell)

The Waz-lily and the Priest’s can relief-beads tell us something? (Helen Hughes-Brock)

‘Working with the shadows’: in search of the myriad forms of social complexity (Maria Iacovou)

James Saumarez a forgotten collector of Cretan seals (Olga Krzyszkowska)

The Post-Mycenaean ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ (Katie Lantzas)

The spider’s innovation and society in the Early Helladic ‘Period of the Corridor Houses’ (Joseph Maran and Maria Kostoula)

‘Metal makes the wheel go round’: the development and diffusion of studded-tread wheels in the Ancient Near East and the Old World (Simone Mühl)

“For it is written”: an experimental approach to the materiality and temporality of clay documents inscribed in Linear B (Tom Pape, Paul Halstead, John Bennet and Yannis Stangidis)

A ‘wall bracket’ from Kandia in the notes on the local character and function of an ‘east Mediterranean’ artefact of the Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age (Lorenz Rahmstorf)

Reading post-palatial Mycenaean some lessons from Lefkandi (Jeremy B. Rutter)

Functions and meanings of Aegean-type pottery at Tel Beth-Shean (Philipp W. Stockhammer)

Ceramic developments in coastal Western Anatolia at the dawn of the Early Iron Age (Rik Vaessen)

Beaker Folk in a metrological footnote (Michael Vickers)

Rosso antico marble and the façade entablature of the Treasury of Atreus (Peter Warren)

Feasts of clay? Ceramics and feasting at Early Minoan Fournou Korifi (Todd Whitelaw)

Dressing the house, dressing the textile-inspired decoration in the late 3rd and 2nd millennia BC east Mediterranean (Toby C. Wilkinson)

278 pages, Paperback

Published November 17, 2014