Several sites, and Mycenae and Lefkandi in particular, allow us to follow pottery development during this period through changes in shapes, decorative technique, and styles.

The short initial phase of Late Helladic (LH) IIIC Early, in the twenty-five years following the destruction of the palaces, sees a temporary impoverishment in decoration (S. Vitale, Hesperia 75, 2006, 177–204). Several shapes disappear, among which were certain types of stirrup jar, vessels used for commerce. Among the new shapes (Figure 54.1), small closed vessels that are common in tombs – lekythoi, small jugs with narrow necks, and globular amphoriskoi – make their appearance alongside ‘deep bowls’ and new types of cup that are carinated with a high handle or hemispherical. Footed goblets with two handles, slender but with a thick foot, sometimes with a medial bulge, have a conical bowl and generally a single simple motif on each side (Demakopoulou 1988, n° 78–9).

This chapter focuses on the institutionalization and professionalization of preservation and representation of the material past in the present. Museums, government agencies, preservation organizations, and various social and community groups collect, conserve, interpret, and present material culture of their own and of others’ past. Questions surrounding values, meanings, authority, ownership, and stewardship are examined.

Material culture “represents” and “re-presents” people, places, other objects, taste, soundscapes, etc., in meaningful ways. Some forms of material culture exist specifically to represent or re-present; other forms involve representation more or less across time and over space and cultures. This chapter surveys how scholars from diverse backgrounds have treated “representation” and “re-presentation” in and of material culture, with a focus on literary representations.

In imitation of the knossos palace, mainland Mycenaean palaces had wall paintings (Immerwahr 1990; Brecoulaki 2015). It remains unclear whether frescoes also existed in private dwellings. Beyond the palaces, the structures that are decorated are either sanctuaries or buildings directly tied to the palatial system. In total, a dozen sites have produced fresco fragments: in the Argolid, Midea, Mycenae, and Tiryns; in Messenia, Pylos and Iklaina; in Laconia, Haghios Vasileios; in Boeotia, Gla, Orchomenos, and Thebes; and in Attica, Eleusis.

Mycenaean frescoes were known even before those from the palace of Knossos, from the excavations of Mycenae (Rodenwaldt 1921) and Tiryns (Rodenwaldt 1912). Their novelty then paled by comparison with the Minoan frescoes that are more complete and lively.

Aegean pottery’s most original styles date to this period. Wall paintings undoubtedly played a role in the transformation of pictorial techniques and the repertoire of motifs. Vase painting nonetheless stands apart: it is the only non-figurative art of this period. Octopuses, dolphins, and other marine animals, though present in the Protopalatial period, only feature rarely, or late on (Late Minoan (LM) IB), in the Cretan repertoire. Cycladic pottery, with its depictions of birds, quadrupeds, and sometimes people, is an exception.

Distinct styles are associated with the three main phases of the Neopalatial period. In Middle Minoan (MM) III white-on-dark decoration still predominates, and continues the Kamares tradition, even if the influence of frescoes can already be observed in the development of naturalistic themes. The beginning of LM I is marked by decoration that is now produced in dark on light.

While some aspects of the material world occur naturally, many are affected by various processes of production. Making, craft, industry, and work are all categories important for understanding the formation and alteration of much of the human-made and shaped world. The author focuses on animating objects in the Caribbean, Central, and South America, and undertakes comparisons with the Western tradition.

This chapter examines the current global environmental crisis and the complicity of universities and cultural resource managers in creating this ecocritical moment.

The period of the second palaces on Crete is one of intense architectural activity, both on Crete and on the main Aegean islands. We know more of Minoan and Cycladic architecture from this period than from the entire preceding period. The fact that most sites were destroyed once and for all c.1450 bc, without reoccupation, has facilitated their study. New building programmes testify to the level of economic prosperity; they also tally with the transformations we have already highlighted in social and administrative organisation.

True innovations in building techniques and plans are actually few in comparison to the preceding period: but the architects of the palaces and major villas invent a new monumental style and formalise the innovations of the Middle Bronze Age.

The transition from the Neolithic to the beginning of the Early Bronze Age (EBA) does not see any major change in lifeways. Pottery and other forms of material culture carry on largely as before. The only significant development is in metallurgy, though it had already appeared in the Late Neolithic; and even here progress is somewhat slow, the east Aegean excepted.

Though regional differences were hardly weak in the Neolithic, they do nevertheless intensify from the start of the Bronze Age. Three regions clearly assert their identity – the Peloponnese, the Cyclades, and Crete – through particular characteristics in their architecture, funerary customs, pottery, and figurines. Chronological schemes use the common tripartite divisions (Early Bronze (EB) I, II, and III) but adopt separate terminologies according to region (Early Helladic (EH), Early Cycladic (EC), Early Minoan). The term ‘Early Bronze Age’, without further specification, is used in more peripheral areas such as northern Greece and the northeast Aegean islands.

Small bronze, gold, or silver rings are not rare in tombs, even in the latest contexts – but they are generally simple bands. This is also the period when new types of fibula and pin appear.

A series of rings with oval bezel appears to belong in Late Helladic (LH) IIIC. They are adorned with curvilinear meanders and spirals in gold wire highlighted by granulation lines (Figure 53.1), and come from late Cretan tombs (Mouliana, Praisos), as well as the ‘Tiryns Treasure’ (Pini 2010, n° 70–4). Their decoration could be of Cypriot origin; a ring from Enkomi has the same technique, but on a round bezel. On bronze rings, similar motifs are simply made with dots (Pini 2010, n°. 47–51).

The transition from Early to Middle Bronze Age, around 2100 bc, is characterised by an apparent decline on the mainland and in the Cyclades. By contrast, Crete undergoes a rapid evolution at the beginning of the Middle Minoan (MM) period which results most spectacularly in the appearance of monumental buildings that are seats of political power. At Knossos, Phaistos, and Malia, where urban agglomerations replace the villages of the Early Bronze Age (EBA), buildings of original and complex design – the palaces – are built, probably during MM IA (2100–2000 bc), and in MM IB at the latest. The so-called First Palace period (Protopalatial) thus corresponds to the first phases of the Middle Bronze Age (from MM IB to IIB), from c.2000 to around 1700 bc. Absolute chronology is based on synchronisms with the Egyptian and Anatolian civilisations, dated through texts containing kinglists.

Cycladic marble figurines have generated so much interest that they have become the focus of a separate field of enquiry within Aegean art. This inflated interest is relatively recent: few marble figures were known before the end of the nineteenth century; the first museum acquisitions (British Museum, Dresden, and Karlsruhe) date from the 1840s, and we have to wait until the explorations of the English traveller James Theodore Bent in 1883–4 for a renewed interest (J. Bent, JHS 5, 1884, 42–59). They are first mentioned in studies of Greek sculpture from this period, and are thought of, in comparison to Classical art, as ‘primitive’. For Collignon, ‘these first attempts at sculpture take us back to a distant time when barbarism still held sway in the lands that will one day be Greece.