Parallels And Affinities Between Crete And India In The Bronze Age

Costis Davaras is not the first scholar to compare the Bronze Age cultures of Crete and India. Prompted by an invitation to attend the World Archaeological Congress in New Delhi in 1994, he takes an eclectic look at parallels and affinities' between the two cultures, especially with regard to art and religion. With no physical or factual evidence that Cretans, or Cretan objects, ever reached this far into Asia, Davaras' suggestions are purely hypothetical and at best speculative, but they may achieve some heightened understanding of aspects of either culture. The fact that these are two cultures at the geographical extremes of the same Oriental cultural continuum' may not convince everyone that they remain worthy of comparison.

This book examines similarities and differences between art in ancient Indian (Indus) civilizations and that of the Aegean civilizations. The comparison raises questions about possible cross-cultural influences, which became more significant following Alexander’s invasion and the subsequent adaptation of Indian art under the Indo-Greek kingdoms.

The first contacts between Greece, the Aegean and India are generally thought to have occurred at the beginning of the sixth century BC. There is now, however, growing evidence of much earlier but indirect connections, reaching back into prehistory. These were initially between India and its Indus Civilisation (Melu??a) and the Near East and then finally with the societies of the Early and Middle Bronze Age Aegean,with their slowly emerging palace-based economies and complex social structures. Starting in the middle of the third millennium BC but diminishing after approximately 1800 BC, these connections point to a form of indirect or what might be called ‘trickle-down’ contact between the Aegean and India. From the start, until 2500 BC, the objects and commodities that formed this contact were transported overland, through Northern Iran, but after that time, the Harappans took control and we see a structured trade using the sea out through the Persian Gulf. These contacts can also be placed into three categories: (a) the importation of objects manufactured in India or made from Indian commodities imported into the Near East,which eventually found their way to the Aegean and have parallels at Indian sites; (b) the importation of inorganic commodities such as tin, possibly some gold and lapis lazuli, exported from India or Central Asia under Harappan control; and (c) the importation of non-perishable organic commodities. This study views the Aegean as part of a greater trade network and here the author has attempted to both evaluate and re-evaluate what evidence and speculation there are for such contacts, particularly for the commodities such as tin and lapis lazuli as well as more recently discovered objects. It is emphasised that this does not testify to direct cultural and trade links and geographical knowledge between the Harappans and the prehistoric Aegean in the third and second millennia BC; it was just the natural extension of trade between the Near East and India. No goods or commodities arrived directly from India; they accumulated added value as they first built up a distinguished pedigree of ownership in the Near East and Syro-Palestine. In the Early to Late BronzeAges, India was an important resource for valuable and indispensable commodities destined for the elites and developing technologies of much of the Old World. Finally, the author has examined the period after the end of the Bronze Age to the time of Alexander the Great and particularly the period after the sixth century, when Greeks were now beginning to know a little about India. Within 200 years India was known to scholar and non-scholar alike, such as those who witnessed the Persian invasions of Greece or who later became Macedonian and Greek foot soldiers.

This volume centres on how the exchange routes transformed the frontier regions of the Silk Road. In doing so, it utilises a range of methods to reach an archaeological interpretation of the factors that linked people with the environment; movements, settlements, and beliefs.

Contributions by 37 scholars are brought together here to create a volume in honor of the long and fruitful career of Costis Davaras, former Ephor of Crete and Professor Emeritus of Minoan Archaeology at the University of Athens. Articles pertain to Bronze Age Crete and include mortuary studies, experimental archaeology, numerous artifactual studies, and discussions on the greater Minoan civilization.

Between about 3000 and 1400 BC one of the world's great civilizations flourished on the island of Crete. The distinctive characteristic of this civilization was that it was dominated by an elite of women.

This book makes a compelling case for a matriarchal Bronze Age Crete. It is acknowledged that the preeminent deity was a Female Divine, and that women played a major role in Cretan society, but there is a lively, ongoing debate regarding the centrality of women in Bronze Age Crete. a gap in the scholarly literature which this book seeks to fill.

First published in 1928, this volume contains six sequential lectures delivered by H.R. Hall in 1923 detailing the archaeological remains of Bronze Age Greece. Hall was keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities in the British Museum and author of ‘The Ancient History of the Near East’. Each of the author’s lectures was strictly chronological, with the main feature of each period being described in order. The profuse illustrations recreated here were fundamental to his view, with each Age defined through its art, pottery and stone carvings. These printed lectures follow their spoken counterparts closely and are brought to life with 320 illustrations inserted in places which reflect the original performances.

Early Minoan Crete is re-envisioned as a space of social innovation, in which change occurred through people and objects.

A collection of sixteen papers focusing on the economic activities of prehistoric, Classical, Hellenistic and Roman Crete. The wide-ranging papers discuss the economy of prehistoric Crete, social development, production and symbolism in the pre-Palatial and Palatial periods, economic activities and social development in the Classical and Hellenistic periods, coinage and minting and relationships with other polities of the Aegean and east Mediterranean.