1. This paper, read to the Philological Society in February 1984, represents a reworking of parts of a Plenary Lecture entitled ‘The appearance of Aegean states,’ which I delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in Cincinnati, Ohio, in December 1983; since it was to a large, non-specialised audience that I was invited to speak briefly on this large and complex theme, the present paper also retains an air of generality and does not attempt to discuss or document detailed matters. I wish to record my gratitude to Machteld Mellink (President of the AIA) and to the Program Committee for their invitation to speak; to Jeremy Rutter for organising the occasion and for much sound advice about the content of my lecture; to James Wright (Programme Secretary of the Philological Society) for allowing me to re-cycle material originally prepared for another lecture; and to Robin Torrence, Vance Watrous, Jack Davis, Tom Gallant, John Bennet and members of the Philological Society for helpful criticism. Stimulating papers read by Todd Whitelaw and Vance Watrous to the Cambridge Graduate Seminar in Classical Archaeology during the 1983-4 series have also significantly shaped the views expressed here. Acknowledgements are due to the British Academy and the AIA for their financial assistance. The following special abbreviation has been used: Emergence = Renfrew, C., The emergence of civilisation: the Cyclades and the Aegean in the third millennium B.C. (1972)Google Scholar.

2. Snodgrass, A. M., ‘Interaction by design: the Greek city-state,’ in Renfrew, C. and Cherry, J. F. (eds.), Peer polity interaction and the development of sociopolitical complexity (in press)Google Scholar.

3. E.g. Renfrew, C. and Wagstaff, M. (eds.), An island polity: the archaeology of exploitation in Melos (1982)Google Scholar; Cherry, J. F., Diachronic island archaeology in the Aegean: a case study on Melos (Ph.D. dissertation, Southampton University, 1980)Google Scholar; Bintliff, J. L., ‘Settlement patterns, land tenure and social structure: a diachronic model,’ in Renfrew, C. and Shennan, S. (eds.), Ranking, resource and exchange: aspects of the archaeology of early European society (1982)Google Scholar. The chief stimulus for comparative work in this vein has been the growth in importance of multi-period regional archaeological surface surveys.

4. Cited in Carr, E. H., What is history? (1961) 65Google Scholar from a letter by Marx in Marx, K. and Engels, F., Works (Russian ed.) XV 378Google Scholar.

5. Notable instances are (for the Bronze Age) Emergence and (for the Archaic period) Snodgrass, A.M., Archaeology and the rise of the Greek state (1977)Google Scholar and Runciman, W. G., ‘Origins of states: the case of Archaic Greece,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 24 (1982) 351–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an introduction to recent anthropologically-orientated writing on state formation see e.g. Claessen, H. J. M. and Skalnik, P. (eds.), The early state (1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Service, E.R., Origins of the state and civilisation (1975)Google Scholar; Cohen, R. and Service, E. R. (eds.), Origins of the state (1978)Google Scholar; Cherry, J. F., ‘Generalisation and the archaeology of the state,’ in Green, D. R., Haselgrove, C. C. and Spriggs, M. J. T. (eds.), Social organisation and settlement (BAR Supplementary Series 47, 1978)Google Scholar.

6. On mainland Greek state origins cf. Warren, P., ‘The emergence of Mycenaean palace civilisation,’ in Bintliff, J. L. (ed.), Mycenaean Geography (1977)Google Scholar; Dickinson, O. T. P. K., The origins of Mycenaean civilisation (1977)Google Scholar; Bockisch, G. and Geiss, H., ‘Beginn und Entwicklung der mykenischen Staaten,’ in Herrmann, J. and Sellnow, I., Beiträge zur Entstehung des Staates (1974)Google Scholar.

7. Emergence 49-52 and 65-68; Diamant, S. R., The later village farming stage in southern Greece (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennysylvania, 1974)Google Scholar.

8. The only systematic attempt in any detail remains Emergence.

9. Hood, S., The Minoans (1971) 50Google Scholar.

10. Marinatos, S. and Hirmer, M., Crete and Mycenae (1960) 14Google Scholar.

11. Warren, P. M., The Aegean civilisations (1975) 41Google Scholar.

12. E.g. Renfrew, C., Rowlands, M. J. and Segraves, B. A. (eds.), Theory and explanation in archaeology (1982)Google Scholar, especially Ch. 1 (C. Renfrew, ‘Explanation revisited’).

13. Collingwood, R. G., The idea of history (1946)Google Scholar.

14. Well exemplified in the Aegean chapters of Volumes I and II of the Cambridge Ancient History (3rd ed.); cf. also Childe, V. G., Social Evolution (1951)Google Scholar.

15. Childe, V. G., ‘Retrospect,’ Antiquity 32 (1958) 70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16. Emergence, passim; cf. Warren, P. in Sherratt, A. (ed.), The Cambridge encyclopaedia of archaeology (1980) 137Google Scholar. For the reaction against the diffusionist model of cultural change, largely precipitated by the development and calibration of radiocarbon dates, see especially Renfrew, C., Before civilisation (1973)Google Scholar; also Adams, W. Y., ‘Invasion, diffusion, evolution?’, Antiquity 42 (1968) 194–213CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Adams, W. Y., van Gerven, D. P. and Levy, R. S., ‘The retreat from migrationism,’ Annual Review of Anthropology 7 (1978) 483–532CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17. Snodgrass, A. M., ‘The rise of Greek states and the case of the “failed” polis’ (Cambridge seminar paper, 1983)Google Scholar.

18. On the importance of ‘null cases’ in developing explanations of state origins see Cherry (n. 5) 421-22. Halstead, P., ‘Prehistoric Thessaly: the submergence of civilisation,’ in Bintliff, , Mycenaean geographyGoogle Scholar discusses reasons for the ‘failure’ of northern Greece to develop states in the Mycenaean period. Interestingly, it is not Aegean but west Mediterranean archaeologists who have so far shown most interest in explaining why the evolution of Bronze Age societies in Greece and in Italy or the western Mediterranean islands followed such divergent paths from quite similar Neolithic foundations: e.g. Lewthwaite, J. G., ‘Why did civilisation not emerge more often? A comparative approach to the development of Minoan Crete,’ in Krzyszkowska, O. and Nixon, L. (eds.), Minoan society (1983)Google Scholar; Barker, G., ‘Stability and change in prehistoric central Italy,’ in Barker, G. and Hodges, R. (eds.), Archaeology and Italian society: prehistoric, Roman and medieval studies (BAR International series 102, 1981)Google Scholar. Even those who prefer traditional historical explanations framed solely in terms of the specific data relevant to the case in question seem to acknowledge the need to involve a wider comparative framework as a means of assessing whether the particular events seem ‘surprising’ or not, e.g. Collingwood, R. G., An autobiography (1939) 140Google Scholar: ‘If you want to know why a certain kind of thing happened in a certain kind of case, you must begin by asking, “What did you expect?” You must consider what the normal development is in cases of that kind.’

19. E.g. Branigan, K., The foundations of palatial Crete (1970)Google Scholar; Cadogan, G., Palaces of Minoan Crete (1976)Google Scholar; Warren, P. M., The Aegean civilisations (1975)Google Scholar; Emergence.

20. McNeal, R. A., ‘The legacy of Arthur Evans,’ California Studies in Classical Antiquity 6 (1974) 205–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21. Cherry, J. F., “Evolution, revolution, and the origins of complex society in Minoan Crete,’ in Krzyszkowska, and Nixon, , Minoan societyGoogle Scholar.

22. J. F. Cherry (n. 21); Whitelaw, T. M., ‘The settlement at Fournou Korifi Myrtos and aspects of Early Minoan social organisation,’ in Krzyszkowska, and Nixon, , Minoan societyGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘The divergence of civilisation: a settlement perspective on social development in Early Bronze Age Crete’ (paper read to the Cambridge Graduate Seminar in Classical Archaeology, February 1984).

23. Childe, V. G., Man makes himself (1936) 37Google Scholar, wrote: ‘In the Near East the Bronze Age is characterised by populous cities wherein secondary industries and foreign trade are conducted on a considerable scale. A regular army of craftsmen, merchants, transport workers, and also officials, clerks, soldiers and priests is supported by the surplus foodstuffs produced by cultivators, herdsmen and hunters. The cities are incomparably larger and more populous than neolithic villages. A second revolution has occurred, and once more it has resulted in a multiplication of our species.’ This does not seem a very good likeness of the palace- (not city-) centred cultures of the Aegean Bronze Age, whose polities and central places were very much smaller in scale than the norm in the ancient Near East (cf. n. 54 infra). On the relationship of urbanism and political stratification, see e.g. Adams, R. McC., The evolution of urban society: early Mesopotamia and prehispanic Mexico (1966)Google Scholar; Ucko, P. J., Tringham, R. and Dimbleby, G. (eds.), Man, settlement and urbanism (1972)Google Scholar.

24. Emergence 3-60, especially 13.

25. The anthropological and archaeological literature on states and state origins is both vast and uneven in quality. Contrasting styles of definition may be seen in e.g. Fried, M. H., The evolution of political society (1967)Google Scholar; Service, E. R., Origins of the state and civilisation (1975)Google Scholar; Carneiro, R. L., ‘A theory of the origin of the state,’ Science 169 (1970) 733–38CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Wright, H. T., ‘Toward an explanation of the origin of the state,’ in Hill, J. N. (ed.), Explanation of prehistoric change (1977)Google Scholar; idem, ‘Recent research on the origin of the state,’ Annual Review of Anthropology 6 (1977) 379-97; Flannery, K. V., ‘The cultural evolution of civilisations,’ Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 3 (1972) 399–426CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cohen, R., ‘State origins: a reappraisal,’ in Claessenand, H. J. M. Skalnik, P. (eds.), The early state (1978)Google Scholar; Southall, A., ‘Typology of states and political systems,’ in Gluckman, M. and Eggan, F. (eds.), Political systems and the distribution of power (1965)Google Scholar; Price, B. J., ‘Secondary state formation: an explanatory model,’ in Cohen, and Service, , Origins of the stateGoogle Scholar; Brunfiel, E. M., ‘Aztec state making: ecology, structure, and the origin of the state,’ American Anthropologist 85 (1983) 261–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kottak, C. P., ‘The process of state formation in Madagascar,’ American Ethnologist 4 (1977) 136–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gall, P. L. and Saxe, A. A., ‘The ecological evolution of culture: the state as predator in succession theory,’ in Earle, T. K. and Ericson, J. E. (eds.), Exchange systems in prehistory (1977)Google Scholar.

26. For states as managerial, decision-making organisations which are hierarchically arranged, see e.g. Wright, H. T. and Johnson, G. A., ‘Population, exchange, and early state formation in southwestern Iran,’ American Anthropologist 11 (1975) 267–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Johnson, G. A., Local exchange and early state development in southwestern Iran (1973) 1–4Google Scholar; idem, ‘Information sources and the development of decision-making organisations,’ in C. L. Redman et al. (eds.), Social archaeology: beyond subsistence and dating (1978); Flannery, K. V., ‘The cultural evolution of civilisations,’ Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 3 (1972) 399–426CrossRefGoogle Scholar. These and similar writings draw heavily on ideas developed in management and hierarchy theory, e.g. Simon, H. A., ‘The organisation of complex systems,’ in Pattee, H. H., Hierarchy theory: the challenge of complex systems (1973)Google Scholar, or Arrow, K. J., ‘Control in large organisations,’ Management Science 10 (1964) 397–408CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The implications for settlement patterns detectable archaeologically by field survey are considered in Crumley, C. L., ‘Towards a locational definition of state systems of settlement,’ American Anthropologist 78 (1976) 59–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Johnson, G. A., ‘Monitoring complex system integration and boundary phenomena with settlement size data,’ in van der Leeuw, S. E. (ed.), Archaeological approaches to the study of complexity (1981)Google Scholar, among many others.

27. E.g. Carneiro, R. L. and Tobias, S. F., ‘The application of scale analysis to the study of cultural evolution,’ Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences 26 (1963) 196–207CrossRefGoogle Scholar; van der Leeuw, Archaeological approaches to the study of complexity, passim.

28. One recent useful demonstration to the contrary is Griffeth, R. and Thomas, C. (eds.), The city-state in five cultures (1981)Google Scholar.

29. Emergence 280-88, 297-307, 480-82.

30. Renfrew, C., Before civilisation (1973) 209Google Scholar.

31. I am indebted to Professor Tjeerd van Andel for this suggestion, which arises specifically from his detailed geomorphological and locational studies of Neolithic and Bronze Age sites recovered by the Southern Argolid Exploration Project of Stanford University (in preparation).

32. Emergence figs. 4.2, 15.2, 15.6.

33. Many of the contributors to Bintliff, Mycenaean Geography discuss the strengths and weaknesses of Renfrew's suggestions about polyculture in Emergence. At the time of preparing this work, Renfrew could draw only on a very limited range of data, since recovery techniques appropriate for the collection of palaeobotanical and archaeozoological remains were then in their infancy. Data collected since then have tended to emphasize the regional variability and growth in sophistication of Neolithic subsistence practices, in the light of which the addition of the olive and the vine appear as simply a further step in a well-established direction. Moreover, although clear evidence does exist for the cultivation of the olive in Early Bronze Age contexts (e.g. Warren, P. M., Myrtos (1972))Google Scholar, most of Renfrew's evidence was circumstantial (e.g. the appearance at that time of oil lamps). Both the pollen record and the scarcity of plant macrofossils from excavation are compatible with the alternative suggestion that olive-growing did not become important until much later in the Bronze Age, or perhaps not even until the Archaic period (as seems also to be the case in the west Mediterranean islands, with the Punic and Greek colonisation movements). For further criticism of the Renfrew model, see e.g. Gilman, A., ‘The development of social stratification in Bronze Age Europe,’ Current Anthropology 22 (1981) 1–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gamble, C., ‘Social control and the economy,’ in Sheridan, A. and Bailey, G. (eds.), Economic archaeology (1981)Google Scholar; P. Halstead, ‘From determinism to uncertainty: social storage and the rise of the Minoan palace,’ in ibid.

34. Halstead, P., ‘Counting sheep in Neolithic and Bronze Age Greece,’ in Hodder, I., Isaac, G. and Hammond, N. (eds.), Pattern of the past: studies in honour of D. L Clarke (1981)Google Scholar.

35. Halstead, P. and O'Shea, J., ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed: social storage and the origins of social ranking,’ in Renfrew, and Shennan, , Ranking, resource and exchange (1982)Google Scholar. It could be argued that Aegean Bronze Age subsistence practices (such as polyculture) were not simply an extension of a previously successful adaptation, since the clear distributional correlation of Aegean civilisation with the Mediterranean bioclimatic zone within Greece is decidedly in contrast with the north Aegean focus of the Neolithic pattern. The strength of the Halstead-O'Shea model is in showing how fundamentally similar patterns of subsistence could lead in time to markedly different end results in areas of environmental homogeneity (e.g. the Thessalian plains) or heterogeneity (e.g. Crete). Its weakness is in failing to account for the non-appearance of complex, regional systems of ‘social storage’ in other parts of the Mediterranean with similar environmental problems and similar farming practices. It may also be noted that, although settlement nucleation, centralised storage and the growth of inter-communal exchange almost certainly developed as much as one thousand years earlier in northern Greece than in the south, the Neolithic of the south Aegean remains confined to a very small number of sites, while the Early Bronze Age of Thessaly, Macedonia and Thrace has barely begun to be explored.

36. Sherratt, A. G., ‘Plough and pastoralism: aspects of the secondary products revolution,’ in Hodder, , Isaac, and Hammond, , Pattern of the pastGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘The secondary exploitation of animals in the Old World,’ World Archaeology 15 (1983) 90-104.

37. Changes in settlement location in relation to the environment of prehistoric Greece have been explored in some detail by Bintliff, J. L., Natural environment and human settlement in prehistoric Greece (1977)Google Scholar.

38. Cherry, J. F., ‘Pattern and process in the earliest colonisation of the Mediterranean islands,’ Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 47 (1981) 41–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Islands out of the stream: isolation and interaction in early East Mediterranean insular prehistory,’ in A. B. Knapp and T. Stech (eds.), Prehistoric patterns of exchange in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean (1984). On prehistoric population growth in the islands see Emergence 225-64 and fig. 14.10; Cherry, Diachronic island archaeology in the Aegean Ch. 8; Wagstaff, M. and Cherry, J. F., ‘Settlement and population’, in Renfrew, and Wagstaff, , An island polityGoogle Scholar.

39. Interaction zones in the Neolithic: Washburn, D. K., ‘A symmetry analysis of Greek Neolithic pottery,’ in Washburn, D. K. (ed.), Structure and cognition in art (1983)Google Scholar and unpublished work by, for instance, Cullen, T. and Rondiris, V.. The ‘international spirit’: Emergence 451–55Google Scholar.

40. The relevant evidence (and its problems) are discussed in e.g. Phillips, P., Early farmers of west Mediterranean Europe (1975)Google Scholar; Guilaine, J., Les premiers bergers et paysans de l'Occident Mediterranéen (1976)Google Scholar; Cherry, J. F., ‘The initial colonisation of the west Mediterranean islands in the light of island biogeography and palaeogeography,’ in Waldren, W. H., Chapman, R. and Lewthwaite, J. (eds.), The early settlement of the west Mediterranean islands and their peripheral areas (1984)Google Scholar; Lewthwaite, J., ‘Ambiguous first impressions: a survey of recent work on the early neolithic of the west Mediterranean,’ Journal of Mediterranean Anthropology and Archaeology 1 (1981) 292–307Google Scholar; idem, ‘Cardial disorder: ethnographic and archaeological comparisons for problems in the early prehistory of the west Mediterranean,’ in R. Montjardin (ed.), La néolithique ancien Mediterranéen (1981).

41. Coles, J. M. and Harding, A. F., The bronze age in Europe (1979)Google Scholar; Shennan, S. J., Bell beakers and their context in central Europe: a new approach (Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge University, 1977)Google Scholar; idem, ‘Ideology, change and the European early bronze age,’ in I. Hodder (ed.), Symbolic and structural archaeology (1982); Sherratt, A. G., ‘Resources, technology and trade,’ in Sieveking, G., Longworth, I. H. and Wilson, K. E. (eds.), Problems in economic and social archaeology (1976)Google Scholar.

42. Lewthwaite, J. G., ‘Why did civilisation not emerge more often? A comparative approach to the development of Minoan Crete,’ in Krzyszkowska, and Nixon, , Minoan societyGoogle Scholar. I am particularly puzzled to know why the relatively late political development of Cyprus (despite its proximity to developed states in Anatolia, the Levant and Egypt) has not been considered a problem requiring explanation.

43. Emergence 480-82.

44. For instance, it is not possible to know whether polyculture was adopted in order to meet the requirements of a population already growing significantly in the later Neolithic period and in new environments, or, conversely, whether subsistence changes raised the effective ceiling on population imposed by a limited food supply; no doubt both were involved in a feedback relationship. Another basic difficulty is that of demonstrating, rather than merely assuming, that central buildings with storage facilities and accounting devices served as an equivalent of a modern ‘co-operative’ for the equitable redistribution to primary producers of complementary sets of foodstuffs, rather than, say, as the repository of a tax in kind exacted by a village chief for his own purposes.

45. Emergence 482.

46. The adaptive model of the redistributive basis of chiefdoms and states (set out very clearly, for instance, in Service, Origins of the state and civilisation and underlying much writing on state origins in the 1960s and early 1970s) has been attacked by e.g. Earle, T. K., ‘A reappraisal of redistribution: complex Hawaii chiefdoms,’ in Earle, T. K. and Ericson, J. E. (eds.), Exchange systems in prehistory (1977)Google Scholar; Peebles, C. S. and Kus, S., ‘Some archaeological correlates of ranked societies,’ American Antiquity 42 (1977) 421–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47. cf. Forbes, H., ‘We have a little of everything: regional variation in modern Greece and Cyprus,’ Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 268 (1976) 236–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nash, M., Primitive and peasant economic systems (1966)Google Scholar. Modern analogies: Emergence 304-7 and Renfrew, C., ‘Trade as action at a distance: questions of integration and communication,’ in Sabloff, J. A. and Lamberg-Karlovsky, C. C. (eds.), Ancient civilisation and trade (1975) 5–12 and fig. 1Google Scholar.

48. The great debate on ‘surplus’ was catalysed by Pearson, H. W., ‘The economy has no surplus: critique of a theory of development,’ in Polanyi, K., Arensberg, C. M. and Pearson, H. W. (eds.), Trade and markets in the early empires (1957)Google Scholar; subsequent arguments are discussed, with references, in LeClair, E. E. and Schneider, H. K. (eds.), Economic anthropology: readings in theory and analysis (1968) 469–70Google Scholar. The question has been explored within the context of the Aegean Bronze Age in a series of papers by Gamble, C.: ‘Surplus and self-sufficiency in the Cycladic subsistence economy,’ in Davis, J. L. and Cherry, J. F. (eds.), Papers in Cycladic prehistory (1979)Google Scholar; ‘Social control and the economy,’ in Sheridan, A. and Bailey, G. (eds.), Economic archaeology (1981)Google Scholar; ‘Leadership and “surplus” production,’ in Renfrew, and Shennan, , Ranking, resource and exchangeGoogle Scholar; ‘Animal husbandry, population and urbanisation,’ in Renfrew, and Wagstaff, , An island polityGoogle Scholar.

49. A view elaborated in some detail by Renfrew, C., ‘Polity and power: interaction, intensification and exploitation,’ in Renfrew, and Wagstaff, , An island polityGoogle Scholar and adopted by several other contributors to the same volume; a similar approach, but from a Marxist standpoint, is advocated by Gilman, A., ‘The development of social stratification in bronze age Europe,’ Current Anthropology 22 (1981) 1–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50. On metallurgy and mineral products as sources of wealth and prestige in the Early Bronze Age, Emergence 308-38, 483-85. Relatively even wealth distribution is implied by the lack of ‘treasures’ (except perhaps that of Troy II, if genuine), by the scarcity of burials richer than the norm by a really significant margin, and by the apparent evidence from Early Minoan tholos tombs that each male burial may have had his own dagger and sealstone (two of the most obvious items of wealth at this period): Emergence 388.

51. Killen, J. T., ‘The wool industry of Crete in the late bronze age,’ BSA 59 (1964) 1–15Google Scholar; idem, A Mycenaean industry (forthcoming); Olivier, J.-P., ‘La serie Dn de Cnossos,’ SMEA (= Incunabula Graeca 18) 2 (1967) 71–93Google Scholar. For the evidence of the perfumed oil trade, see Emergence 290-91; J. Chadwick, The Mycenaean world; Stubbings, F. H., Mycenaean pottery from the Levant (1951)Google Scholar. The argument here is very neatly presented by Halstead and O'Shea (n. 35).

52. For the sake of brevity and because all the sites mentioned are well known, I have not given detailed references to excavation reports for any of the sites discussed in the text: full bibliographic information can be obtained e.g. in Hope-Simpson, R. and Dickinson, O. T. P. K., A gazetteer of Aegean civilisation in the bronze age (I: the mainland and islands) (1979)Google Scholar or (for Crete) Leekley, D. and Noyes, R., Archaeological excavations in the Greek islands (1976)Google Scholar.

53. On the inter-regional koine: Emergence fig. 20.5. Many of these objects may indeed have been locally made (although this in no way lessens their importance as evidence for inter-regional contacts). However, J. Rutter has kindly pointed out that they tend to be artefact types which are most at home in the Cyclades (e.g. sauceboats, depa, bronze tweezers, marble folded arm figurines, frying pans, chlorite schist vases) rather than those peculiar to other areas (e.g. Minoan dagger types); to this must be added the existence of strongly ‘Cycladic’ communities in north Crete (Archanes, Agia Photia) and the eastern mainland (Agios Kosmas, Tsepi-Marathon), in contrast with the absence of comparable Helladic or Minoan (other than Kastri on Kythera) influence/ settlement abroad in the Early Bronze Age.

54. Page, D. L., History and the Homeric Iliad (1959) 54Google Scholar; Piggott, S., Ancient Europe (1965) 121–2Google Scholar. For data on sizes of Aegean prehistoric settlements, compared with Near Eastern examples, see Emergence 236-44.

55. Warren, Myrtos; Branigan, K., The foundations of palatial Crete (1972)Google Scholar; idem, ‘Minoan settlements in East Crete,’ in P. J. Ucko, P. Tringham and G. Dimbleby (eds.), Man, settlement and urbanism (1972); Warren, P. in Sherratt, , The Cambridge encyclopaedia of archaeology 138Google Scholar.

56. Whitelaw, T. M., Community structure and social organisation at Fournou Korifi, Myrtos (M.A. dissertation, Southampton University, 1979)Google Scholar.

57. Zois, A., Vasilike I: Nea archaiologike erevna eis to Kephali plesion tou choriou Vasilike (1976)Google Scholar.

58. Agiopharango survey: Blackman, D. and Branigan, K., ‘An archaeological survey of the lower catchment of the Agiopharango valley,’ BSA 72 (1977) 13–84Google Scholar. Mesara tholoi: Branigan, K., The tombs of Mesara (1970)Google Scholar; Xanthoudides, S., The vaulted tombs of Mesara (1924)Google Scholar. The social unit represented in the tholoi: Whitelaw, T., ‘The settlement at Fournou Koriphi Myrtos and aspects of Early Minoan social organisation,’ in Krzyszkowska, and Nixon, , Minoan society 333–36Google Scholar.

59. Seager, R. B., Explorations in the island of Mochlos (1912)Google Scholar; Soles, J. S., ‘Mochlos: a new look at old excavations,’ Expedition 20 (1978) 4–15Google Scholar. For a survey of burial rites in Early Bronze Age Europe, see Coles, J. M. and Harding, A. F., The bronze age in Europe (1979)Google Scholar.

60. References to supposed Early Minoan ‘large buildings’ are collected in Cherry, J. F., ‘Evolution, revolution and the origins of complex society in Minoan Crete,’ in Krzyszkowska, and Nixon, , Minoan society n. 28Google Scholar. Sizes of palatial sites in Early Minoan: T. Whitelaw (see n. 58 supra) fig. 72.

61. Settlement nucleation on Melos: Cherry, J. F., ‘Four problems in Cycladic prehistory,’ in Davis, and Cherry, , ‘Four problems in Cycladic prehistory,’ in Davis and Cherry, Papers in Cycladic prehistoryGoogle Scholar. Lasithi survey: Watrous, L. V., Lasithi: a history of settlement on a highland plain in Crete (Hesperia supplement XVIII) (1982)Google Scholar.

62. Work at Mallia by the French is published in the series Fouilles de Mallia published by l'Ecole francaise d'Athenes; for a recent synthesis, see van Effenterre, H., Lepalais de Mallia et la cite minoenne (1980)Google Scholar. Also, O. Pelon, ‘Reflexions sur la fonction politique dans un palais cretois,’ and Poursat, J. C., ‘Ateliers et sanctuaires à Mallia: nouvelles données sur l'organisation sociale a l'epoque des premiers palais,’ both in Krzyszkowska, and Nixon, , Minoan societyGoogle Scholar.

63. Insula theory of palace development: Evans, A., The palace of Minos at Knossos 7 (1921)Google Scholar. Western Asiatic parallels for Minoan palaces: Graham, J. W., The palaces of Crete (1962)Google Scholar; idem, ‘The relation of the Minoan palaces to the Near Eastern palaces of the second millennium,’ in E. Bennett (ed.), Mycenaean studies (1964); idem, ‘Eyptian features at Phaistos,’ AJA 74 (1970) 231-44.

64. This lacuna is in process of being filled. Apart from the surveys of the Lasithi plain and the Agiopharango valley already noted, there have recently been regional-scale surveys in the hinterlands of Chania and Kommos, and a major survey of parts of the western Mesara plain is due to begin in 1984.

65. There is no reason to suppose that the system of organisation was very similar in states or state-like polities throughout the Aegean. This applies especially to places like Phylakopi on Melos which in the late bronze age had a central ‘megaron’ building, Linear A tablets, imported prestige objects, frescoed walls etc., but which probably co-ordinated the production of an island population numbering only a few thousand at most within a territory of 150 square kilometres. The mainland palaces too display considerable differences not only with their Minoan counterparts, but also among themselves.

66. The question is discussed at length in Haas, J., The evolution of the prehistoric state (1982)Google Scholar.

67. A good illustration is provided by Starr, C., ‘Minoan flower lovers,’ in Hagg, R. and Marinatos, N. (eds.), The Minoan thalassocracy: myth and reality (1984)Google Scholar; cf. Graham, J. W., Minoan Crete (1972)Google Scholar.

68. The classic work is Nilsson, M. P., The Minoan-Mycenaean religion and its survival in Greek religion (1950)Google Scholar; for more recent work and interests, see Hagg, R. and Marinatos, N. (eds.), Sanctuaries and cults in the Aegean bronze age (1981)Google Scholar.

69. e.g. Branigan, K., ‘The genesis of the household goddess,’ SMEA 8 (1969) 28–40Google Scholar; idem, The foundations of palatial Crete (1970); Warren, P., ‘The beginnings of Minoan religion,’ in Antichita Cretesi: studi in onore di D. Levi: I (1973) 137–47Google Scholar.

70. Many new peak sanctuaries have been discovered or excavated in the last twenty years, rendering out-of-date much of the earlier discussions of them. This material is currently being studied by MrPeatfield, A. who has published a short preliminary note: ‘The topography of Minoan peak sanctuaries,’ BSA 78 (1983) 273–79Google Scholar. The ideas suggested in the text are also discussed in Cherry, J. F., ‘Generalisation and the archaeology of the state,’ in Green, D., Haselgrove, C. and Spriggs, M. (eds.), Social organisation and settlement (1978) 428–31Google Scholar.

71. Webster, D., ‘On theocracies,’ American Anthropologist 78 (1976) 812–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Rappaport, R., ‘The sacred in human evolution,’ Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 2 (1971) 23–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Ritual, sanctity and cybernetics,’ American Anthropologist 73 (1971) 59-76.

72. Walberg, G., Kamares (1976)Google Scholar; idem. Middle Minoan provincial pottery (1983). Many of the classes of object discussed in the text are studied, with illustrations, in Hood, S., The arts in prehistoric Greece (1978)Google Scholar.

73. Johnstone, P., The seacraft of prehistory (1980) 67–69Google Scholar.

74. A. Sherratt, ‘The Aegean Bronze Age and the East Mediterranean: political structures and external trade’ (Unpublished paper).

75. e.g. Coldstream, J. N., Geometric Greece (1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

76. As in e.g. Childe, V. G., The dawn of European civilisation (6th rev. ed. 1957)Google Scholar.

77. Branigan, K., ‘Crete, the Levant and Egypt in the early second millennium B.C.,’ Pepragmena tou tritou diethnous Kretologikou synedriou (1973) 22–27Google Scholar. There has been a steady erosion of scholarly opinion about the strengths of Near Eastern contacts in pre-palatial times. As Whitelaw has written, ‘Egyptian colonists were modified to ambassadors bringing influences, to good ideas learned in a foreign port, to a handful of stone vases, and now to one or possibly two pieces of ivory in uncertain prepalatial contexts’ (‘The divergence of civilisation: a settlement perspective on social development in Early Bronze Age Crete,’ seminar paper to the Cambridge Graduate Seminar in Classical Archaeology, 1984).

78. A very good illustration is provided by late Hallstatt and La Tene contacts in central Europe with more developed Mediterranean culture of late Archaic and Classical times: see Wells, P., Culture contact and culture change: early Iron Age central Europe and the Mediterranean world (1990)Google Scholar.

79. Gale, N. H. and Stos-Gale, Z., ‘Lead and silver in the ancient Aegean,’ Scientific American June 1981, 176–192Google Scholar; Stos-Gale, Z. and Gale, N. H., ‘Sources of galena, lead and silver in predynastic Egypt,’ Actes du XXème Symposium International d'Archéometrie (Revue d'Archéometrie 5, 1981) 285–95Google Scholar.

80. Much of this material and its chronological context has been discussed most recently (with references to earlier treatments) by Cadogan, G., ‘Early Minoan and Middle Minoan chronology,’, AJA 87 (1983) 507–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It should be noted that Cadogan regards the Tôd treasure as Anatolian (515-6).

81. cf. Frankenstein, S. and Rowlands, M., ‘The internal structure and regional context of early Iron Age society in southwestern Germany,’ Bulletin of the Institute of Archaeology of London 15 (1978) 73–112Google Scholar; Wells (n. 78); Webb, M. C., ‘Exchange networks: prehistory,’ Annual Review of Anthropology 3 (1974) 357–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82. Renfrew, C., ‘Socio-economic change in ranked societies,’ in Renfrew, and Shennan, , Ranking, resource and exchangeGoogle Scholar.

83. Many have written in the past in terms of a Mycenaean ‘empire’; but although it can be agreed that the Mycenaean age witnessed a remarkably widespread and homogenous cultural koine, there are no archaeological data that suggest a true imperial system organised from Mycenae itself.

84. Early state module: Renfrew, C., ‘Trade as action at a distance: questions of integration and communication,’ in Sabloff, J. A. and Lamberg-Karlovsky, C. C. (eds.), Ancient civilisation and trade (1975)Google Scholar; idem, ‘Retrospect and prospect,’ in Bintliff, Mycenaean geography. One advantage of this concept is that it allows inclusion of political entities such as Agia Irini on Keos or Phylakopi on Melos Which are rather too small in scale to be regarded as states proper.

85. See especially Renfrew, and Cherry, , Peer polity interactionGoogle Scholar; Renfrew, C., ‘Polity and power: interaction, intensification and exploitation,’ in Renfrew, and Wagstaff, , An island polity 286–89Google Scholar.

86. For a closely related approach, cf. Price, B. J., ‘Shifts in production and organisation: a cluster interaction model,’ Current Anthropology 18 (1977) 209–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

87. Preziosi, D., Minoan architectural design (1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

88. Cherry, J. F., ‘Polities and palaces: an interaction approach to Aegean state emergence,’ in Renfrew, and Cherry, , Peer polity interactionGoogle Scholar.