From the earliest periods of Greek history, bone, antler, ivory, and other materials were consistently created into objects for use within social practices, and archaeological evidence suggests that these objects took on new forms and functions during the Early Iron Age and early Archaic period (ca. 1100–600 BCE). Between the 11th and 8th centuries BCE, worked animal objects were sporadically used as grave goods, while by the 7th century, hundreds of such objects were dedicated at major sanctuaries across the Greek world, including at Sparta, Ephesus, and Thasos. In this dissertation, I ask how worked animal objects were created and understood during a period of great social change in the Greek world. Using perspectives from the environmental humanities, aimed at de-centering the human, as well as problematizing the nature-culture divide, I posit that worked animal objects acquired values rooted in their organic histories.

Within my dissertation, I examine how the larger patterns of ivory production in the Iron Age Mediterranean, as well as the exploitation of elephant populations in the Near East, impacted the development of ivory carving in the Greek world. The creation of these objects coincided with a return to long-distance trade after a period of disruption brought on by the instability at the end of the Bronze Age. While the Mycenaeans used foreign trade connections to maintain a tradition of ivory carving, archaeological evidence suggests that the availability of the material was limited between the start of the Early Iron Age (ca. 1100 BCE) and the 9th century BCE. With the increase of other worked animal object dedications in the 7th century, ivory objects took on a variety of new forms in Greek sanctuaries. By the end of the century, craftspeople were using ivory to create larger, more complex works (e.g., the chryselephantine statues at Delphi).

This dissertation also considers how worked animal objects were employed within Greek social contexts. By comparing finds from funerary and dedicatory contexts, I demonstrate that specific types of worked animal objects (e.g., ivory carvings of recumbent animals, circular seals, miniature double axes) were reserved for use in sanctuaries and employed across the Greek world. However, certain sanctuaries also show evidence for unique forms of worked animal object dedications which were not found at other sites (e.g., worked long bone shafts at the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta, decorated bone shafts at the Kamiros well on Rhodes). I conclude that, within the venue of dedication, worked animal objects had a specific value rooted in the organic origins of the material.

Finally, using the site of ancient Methone as a case study, I examine the production practices used to create worked animal objects. Methone shows evidence for the production of worked animal materials (including ivory) dating to between the end of the 8th century/start of the 7th century and the 6th century, a period concurrent with the increase of dedications of such objects across the Greek world. I interpret these technical acts as a form of human-animal relationship, in which craftspeople are interacting with the organic qualities of the materials. Worked animal materials from Methone demonstrate that craftspeople used a diversity of wild and domesticated species to make a variety of objects.

Scholars from Aristotle to Marx and beyond have been fascinated by the question of what constitutes value. The Construction of Value in the Ancient World makes a significant contribution to this ongoing inquiry, bringing together in one comprehensive volume the perspectives of leading anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, linguists, philologists, and sociologists on how value was created, defined, and expressed in a number of ancient societies around the world. Based on the basic premise that value is a social construct defined by the cultural context in which it is situated, the volume explores four overarching but closely interrelated themes: place value, body value, object value, and number value. The questions raised and addressed are of central importance to archaeologists studying ancient civilizations: How can we understand the value that might have been accorded to materials, objects, people, places, and patterns of action by those who produced or used the things that compose the human material record? Taken as a whole, the contributions to this volume demonstrate how the concept of value lies at the intersection of individual and collective tastes, desires, sentiments, and attitudes that inform the ways people select, or give priority to, one thing over another.

Series: Cotsen Advanced Seminar 5

This research takes a full synopsis of pottery analysis in the late prehistoric communities of southern Illyria and northern Epirus (modern state of Albania) covering a span of 2000 years from the Early Bronze to the Developed Iron Age (2500-500 B.C.)

Initially I deal with the current state of the pottery research examining the flaws of the culture-historical approach heavily amalgamated with nationalistic and ethnocentric agendas. The principal scope of this study is to apply to this type of archaeological data a cohesive theoretical and methodological framework that shifts attention on subject matters that pottery has the potential to highlight. In so doing the research focusses on a twofold perspective that considers the synchronic and diachronic dynamics: first, it deals with the technological profile of the pottery and to what extent modes of production reflect the socio-economic organization of the pre-urban societies in southern Illyria and northern Epirus. The analysis of the production step measure, standardization and innovation concludes that pottery production during late prehistory maintains a steady technological profile developed within the domain of the household and likely controlled by women within sedentary, self-subsistent and not highly hierarchical social groups based on a subsistence strategy of farming and herding. Despite its sophistication pottery production is highly conditioned by socio-economic and demographic dynamics and does not transcend the domain of the household. Second, this dissertation presents a systematic analysis of the distribution of the qualitative attributes of the pottery that aims to explore the intensity of regional and intra-regional interactions and what nuances they provide for cultural transmissions. The conceptual and ideational examination of fabric, vessel formation, and decoration indicate that the model of the regional and intra-regional interactions is entirely ruled by geographic proximity and any innovative trait occurring in the pottery is likely the result of the movement of ideas, rather than any type of formal market exchange. I argue that this spontaneous and evidently unintentional dissemination is characterized by a combination of vertical and horizontal model of transmission controlled by artisans/mothers, mothers-in-law and the apprentices/daughters and daughters-in-law who transferred by marriage from the parents' to the husband's house and thus constantly transform and enrich the tradition of pottery making.

Throughout history, individuals, families, and entire communities have made the decision to leave home and settle in a foreign land. Classical Athens was home to a large and diverse migrant population of both Greek and non-Greek migrants, many of whom recorded their place of origin on their gravestones. These migrants have traditionally been studied through the lens of the status of metic, the legal designation given to the non-citizen foreign residents of Athens, even though these individuals do not use this term on their own grave monuments. Rather than studying migrants through the perspective of the Athenian citizen, this dissertation aims to center the experience of migrants themselves through their material culture of their burials.To this end, this dissertation analyzes three burials of migrants who died in Athens: a man from the island of Chios, a family from the island of Lesbos, and an entire community from the region of Messenia. Each of these case-studies preserves a gravestone naming the place of origin of the deceased as well as archaeological evidence of the entire funerary process. These burials are first compared with a database of over 1,100 graves in Classical Athens that I have created, as well as the contemporary burial practices which were used in the migrants’ homelands, to identify which foreign attitudes or approaches to burial were maintained, altered, or abandoned. These changes in funerary practice are then considered in their broader context to understand how the circumstances of the migration event affected the burials. Contemporary anthropological and sociological studies suggest that the size, makeup, and wealth of the migrating group, as well as the reason for migration, play an important role in how its members are buried, and that burial practices are more complicated than a simple differentiation between locals and outsiders. Building on these insights, each ancient case-study is then placed in its historical context, considering why the migrants may have moved, how they would have been perceived once they arrived in Athens, and how other aspects of their identity, such as their age or gender, could have impacted the form their burial took.

Theory and Practice in Mediterranean Archaeology: Old World and New World Perspectives brings together leading scholars from the Old World and the Americas to discuss some of the most pressing issues facing archaeology today. These topics include archaeology and text, the future of large-scale archaeological fieldwork at individual sites, interpretation and preservation of archaeological sites and landscapes, past trajectories and new approaches to regional survey, and debates surrounding landscape and settlement archaeology. Essays by Old World archaeologists provide an overview of these themes, as well as a history of research over the last hundred years. These scholars review the major successes and shortcomings of that work, identifying critical issues that determine and define the field. These essays serve as a springboard for discussion and response by archaeologists working in the Americas and in other parts of the world. The combination of an Old World focus with responses from New World archaeologists provides a uniquely broad assessment of contemporary archaeological theory, methods, and practice throughout the world.

Series: Cotsen Advanced Seminar 1

This research project examines the appearance and proliferation of some of the earliest cremation burials in Europe in the context of the prehistoric north Aegean. Using archaeological and osteological evidence from the region between the Pindos mountains and Evros river in northern Greece, this study examines the formation of death rituals, the role of landscape in the emergence of cemeteries, and expressions of social identities against the backdrop of diachronic change and synchronic variation. I draw on a rich and diverse record of mortuary practices to examine the co-existence of cremation and inhumation rites from the beginnings of farming in the Neolithic period to the adoption of the Greek alphabet by the eighth century BCE or earlier. Based on my review of the evidence, I also offer suggestions regarding: 1) why cremation is adopted so early in the Neolithic north Aegean, and essentially nowhere else in contemporary southeast Europe and the Near East; 2) why cremation perseveres and re-emerges as a popular burial rite in the Early Iron Age in this region; and 3) whether cremation endured in this region in association with kinship-based states attested in the region later in antiquity, or on the basis of social status, gender, age, or personal preference.

The burial record of the north Aegean over 5,000 years is marked by a high degree of synchronic and diachronic diversity in funerary ritual, grave types, grave objects, and location choice, which reflect pluralistic approaches to death. The rite of cremation especially was a complex phenomenon not limited to one tomb type or region through time, appearing both in cremation-exclusive cemeteries and in isolated tombs within inhumation-dominant burial grounds. I suggest that cremation was adopted early in the Neolithic for two reasons. The first reason, relating to individual infant cremations discovered in intramural contexts, is due to infants not reaching a critical rite of passage. The second reason for adoption, relating to the cremation-exclusive burial grounds, is to dissolve the individuality of the deceased and promote community collectivity.

The reinforcement of group identity and communality is, I argue, applicable as an explanatory framework for why cremation perseveres in certain EBA communities. At EBA cemeteries where cremation was a minority rite, however, infants and children tended to be cremated, a continuation of a practice established in a select few Neolithic communities and perhaps also related to an early, tragic death and a failure to reach a critical rite of passage. By the LBA, cremation burials reach their lowest numbers throughout the prehistoric period. The few individuals who are cremated are adults and may have held special status in their communities. The preponderance of cremation burials in stone-built tumuli in the Rhodope region of east Macedonia and Thrake indicates that people in the region may have begun to associate with group identities beyond the immediate community.

Cremation increases in popularity during the EIA, alongside a massive increase in the number of cemeteries and an expansion of their overall extent, reflecting diverse approaches to death. Cemeteries with cremations include a) cemeteries with a majority of cremations and b) cemeteries with a minority of cremations (1 – 6% of graves). Beginning with the former group, many cemeteries that are exclusively comprised of cremations are located east of the Strymon river. With a tradition going back to the LBA, stone-built tumuli that are associated with cremations in east Macedonia and Thrake could be indicative of a broader community and sense of group identity (or identities). In Chalkidiki, cremation was the exclusive or dominant rite at nearly all cemeteries. Palaiogynaikokastro in central Macedonia was exceptional in its hundreds of cremations in a region dominated by inhumations, while also incorporating elite grave goods found in inhumation graves. Through burning the dead, the residents of Palaiogynaikokastro differentiated themselves from their neighbors in the Axios valley, while participating in settlement hierarchies and territorial antagonisms that may have characterized the fertile valley during this time. These cases suggest the mobilization of different communities adopting similar burial rituals, integrating and defining themselves within a broader social – perhaps also political – group.

As for EIA cemeteries where cremation is the minority rite, the circumstances and contexts vary from site to site. At certain sites, only infants and children were cremated, while at other cemeteries, cremations occurred either at earlier or later periods than the inhumations. Although difficult to prove, it may also be possible that some cremations may have been a personal choice on the part of the deceased and their family, or a marker of an individual who had migrated to a region away from their place of birth and wanted to replicate the death rituals of their homeland. Overall, however, gender does not appear to play a large role in determining who was cremated and who was inhumed. The north Aegean is thus marked by a highly diverse mortuary record in a micro-regional, highly fragmented point of confluence that gradually grew from small communities of farmers to tribal, kinship-based states.

My dissertation examines the period after the collapse of the Mycenaean palatial system until the beginning of the Early Iron Age (1200–1050 BC). Traditionally identified as a ‘Dark Age,’ this period has been characterized as one of decline, stagnation, and relative egalitarianism in contrast with the palatial period. Recent research has begun to contradict these assumptions, demonstrating that international contacts continued in the post-palatial period and many communities continued to thrive. Drawing on the growing field of post-collapse literature and integrating elements of resilience and urban theory, my dissertation poses the following interrelated questions: Why do certain communities survive collapse? What made a resilient community? And what influenced the settlement pattern identified in the post-palatial period? I argue that the perception of abundance (whether in terms of resources, opportunities, information, or technologies) played an integral role in shaping the landscape of Greece.

I take the site of ancient Eleon, a community in Boeotia, Greece, that survived the post-palatial collapse, but ultimately failed prior to the Early Iron Age, as a case study. I consider four different aspects of households: household size, storage capacity, household industry, and ceramic consumption. At Eleon, storage space was provided mainly by fired ceramic containers such as pithoi, vats, and bathtubs and unfired clay bins known as kotselles. Storage seems to have been on the scale of yearly subsistence. Evidence for textile production included two types of loom weight; a spool loom weight that is probably of foreign origin, and a heavy loom weight possibly used in the specialized production of very thick textiles like rugs. Ceramic evidence also suggests foreign influence and perhaps even a foreign potting community at Eleon. This includes the appearance of foreign shapes such as the carinated cup and handmade burnished ware. There are also close stylistic ties with the site of Xeropolis (Lefkandi). The architecture at Eleon, however, shows close ties with palatial Thebes, including the use of fired ceramic rooftiles, colonnaded hearth rooms, and a ramp. Overall, the analysis of Eleon presents the picture of a small self-sufficient settlement with weak ties to its neighboring communities. Many of the developments at Eleon derived from its contacts with the coast, making the community vulnerable to any shift in regional networks.

But how does Eleon differ from sites such as Kynos, Xeropolis and Tiryns that ultimately survived into the Early Iron Age? My research demonstrates that, in contrast to Eleon, these communities produced evidence for robust storage practices and abundant textile manufacture. Their location on the coast facilitated external contacts, both within local networks, as well as allowed them to develop links with foreign networks of interaction. Such contacts allowed them primary access to new ideas and technologies, resulting in a more diverse and thereby more resilient community. This is reflected in the archaeological record, as these sites show early evidence for iron-working, the adoption of spool loom weights for weaving, and a variety of imported objects. While Eleon initially participated in this network of interaction, as demonstrated by close ceramic ties to Xeropolis in the early post-palatial period, changes to this network in LH IIIC Middle (c. 1150 BC) gradually resulted in the isolation of this inland settlement. It is likely that the contraction of the former palatial center at Thebes resulted in a diminished role for Eleon as a node between Thebes and the coast, and the inhabitants of Eleon left their homes seeking out more abundant opportunities, jobs, and resources elsewhere.

This project examines how select works of Greek sculpture became iconic in modern museums and considers the effect of these statues on the viewer through the lens of archaeoaesthetics. I argue that the process of assigning value to art and deriving pleasure from it are initially institutional constructs. Once works of art become iconic, they have a more profound impact on the viewer and form the basis for Western-biased socio-cultural narratives that are presented as the norm.