This chapter explores concepts of adornment, bodily modification, imagery, language, and the built environment, and how they form venues of material expression and representation of human bodies and identities. It includes a focus on subcultures and the material expression of othering, inequality, resistance, subversion, and transgression, in other words the politics of representation.

It is debatable whether we can really speak of Mycenaean glyptic during the Cretan Second Palace period. On the one hand, no trace of a workshop has been found in mainland Greece for this period; on the other hand, no seal impression has been preserved. There is nothing to indicate that seals could have had an administrative role on the mainland before the appearance of the Mycenaean palaces. For the Mycenaeans, seals and signet rings were above all ‘marks of distinction’, prestige objects placed in tombs alongside metal vessels, ceremonial weapons, and jewellery. As for the manufacture of the latter, it is therefore probable that workshops were set up at Mycenae and other major centres with the participation of Minoan artisans; glyptic is not an art form that can just appear, but rather requires years of apprenticeship. This was a domain in which the Mycenaeans had no previous experience.

There have been imports, imitations, and artistic transfers between the Aegean world and its neighbouring powers, whether Egypt or the Near East, in all periods (Smith 1965; Crowley 1989; Davies and Schofield 1995 ; Aruz 2008b; Aruz 2013). What is new between around 1400 and 1200 bc is the appearance of hybrid artworks, made of precious or semi-precious materials (gold, ivory, faience), that borrow their motifs from diverse sources to create an original style; they are subject to exchange among the elites of the Mediterranean world, accompany diplomatic relations (ambassadors, merchants, artists, dynastic marriages), and bear witness to an international culture.

On Crete this is a period of development and transformation in figurines, under the influence of Knossian workshops. Since the previous period, Mesara workshops were making some figurines partly on the wheel, with a cylindrical lower part. It is this type of construction that becomes widespread after 1450 bc, at the expense of the naturalistic-type figurines (Rethemiotakis 2001, 10–18). If some still keep a stepped lower body, a simplified representation of a flounced skirt (AE2, fig. 148; Popham 1984, pl. 191a), most now have a strictly cylindrical base; torso and face are highly stylised, except with some rare exceptions like a head from Psychro with eyes carefully outlined (Rethemiotakis 2001, fig. 21). These figurines are made from separate parts, inserted one into the other or joined (skirt, torso, face, limbs). The torso is still solid, at least on the biggest ones.

At the beginning of the neolithic, pottery was much less common than in later periods, and some scholars maintain that it could have been reserved for ceremonial or ritual use; in any case, pottery seems to have rarely been used for cooking, even if it could have served for storage or movement of foodstuffs. In the Middle Neolithic (MN) period new shapes, techniques, and decorative motifs appear, but it is only from Late Neolithic (LN) that pottery, including everyday wares, truly takes off, with various kinds of bowl (globular, convex), with rounded or sometimes flat bottoms, and often a ring base. Shapes and manufacturing techniques are the same across Greece. Generally made using the coil technique (coils of clay superimposed), pottery vessels are of excellent quality, considering the period, and all manufacturing techniques are skilfully employed, with the exception of the potter’s wheel (Vitelli 1993, 60; A. Kalogirou, in Laffineur and Betancourt 1997, 11–17).

As with glyptic, it is only on Crete that stone vases are made in the Middle Bronze Age – it seems that neither mainland Greece nor the Cyclades produced them. Stone vases are now made in a wider range of materials: not only serpentine, but also breccias and limestone chosen for their colours or texture. Gabbro, a local stone of white crystals with fine green veining, also starts to be worked, as with a small cylindrical vase from Phaistos (AE1, fig. 152). Shapes continue like those of the preceding period (alabastrons, bird’s nest bowls) and it is often difficult assigning a precise date: a bird’s nest bowl from tomb B at Platanos (AE1, fig. 153), with an incised star as decoration, belongs to the Early Minoan (EM) III tradition.

The Linear B tablets from the palace of Pylos make mention of pieces of wooden furniture: tables, thrones, and stools. But very few wooden objects have been found in Greece (O. Krzyszkowska, in Herrmann 1996, 85–103), and because there is such little evidence we have surely underestimated the importance of wood carving in Mycenaean art.

The best-preserved piece of evidence, from the Shaft Graves of Mycenae, is a sycamore box (Poursat 1977a, n° 215), whose sides are fixed with tenons and mortises. It is adorned with ivory plinths that represent stepped cornices, on which are placed relief dogs carved in wood (AE2, fig. 50). We should dismiss the hypothesis that this is an Egyptian import (Persson 1931, 179–81; contra Karo 1930–3, 319); this type of architectural cornice does not depict house roofs in the Egyptian style, but a form that does exist on Minoan relief frescoes.

This chapter provides a critical review of the vast literature on cultural heritage that scholars have produced over the past roughly two decades. Global and cross-cultural in scope, it will consider similarities and differences in the discourses across disciplines and national, ethnic, regional traditions. Material inheritances and heirlooms are among the “material memories” for exegesis in this exploration of the ways that diverse social groups “remember” who they are.

Was there ever such a thing as Minoan monumental statuary? There is no direct evidence. The terracotta figures from Kea (see below, p. 218), as much as 1.6 m tall, have no real Cretan precursors: the largest Protopalatial figurines, from Petsophas and Sklaverochori, are fragmentary and hardly surpass 70 cm, while the mould for a life-size bronze hand from Phaistos is difficult to interpret (see above, p. 112). Evans believed that the bronze hairlocks from the palace of Knossos formed part of the headdress of a colossal wooden statue; it has since been shown that in fact they most likely belong to rather small wooden figurines (R. Hägg, AA 1983, 543–9). The discovery at Archanes (Anemospilia) of large terracotta feet has nevertheless revived the debate: are these simply votive feet, as known from other examples on Crete and Kea, or should we see them as supports intended to slot into a wooden statue (xoanon) that has since decayed?.

The period that runs from the fall of the palaces until the end of the Bronze Age around 1050 bc is still, overall, a troubled one that is marked, on the mainland as in the islands of the Aegean, by multiple destructions. These have allowed for the differentiation of several phases, thanks to changes in pottery. The longest period, Late Helladic (LH) IIIC, is most often subdivided into three phases (Early, Middle, Late). The first, very short phase corresponds to the immediate aftermath of the destruction. The second, LH IIIC Middle, characterised by new ceramic styles (P. Mountjoy, in Deger-Jalkotzy and Zavadil 2007, 221–42), looks like a short-lived ‘renaissance’; at Mycenae and Tiryns, it has even been divided into two subphases (LH IIIC Middle developed and LH IIIC Middle advanced). The third sees a rapid decline in the previous styles.

This textbook provides a history of the artistic output accompanying the development of Aegean civilisations, beginning with the Neolithic (c.7000 bc) and running to the end of the Bronze Age (c.1050/1000 bc). The art objects that are produced vary considerably by both period and region (mainland Greece, the northeast Aegean islands, Cyclades and Dodecanese, Crete); here, for the sake of convenience, they are placed under the general heading ‘Aegean art’.

Schools, hospitals, prisons, and other institutions shape physical experiences and act as organizational entities for many material endeavors. This chapter examines how institutions shape how we interact with material worlds.

In mainland greece there is nothing comparable to the Early Helladic (EH) Corridor Houses during this period. All that has been discovered are villages or modest agglomerations (O. Polychronopoulou, in Darcque and Treuil 1990, 473–84). Houses lack regular plans, and the apsidal house type is the most common in the Peloponnese and central Greece, though also encountered in Thessaly. Mudbrick is used as a matter of course. The architectural tradition is different in the Cyclades, where houses of rectangular plan are often built entirely of stone, which is easy to come by in the islands. On the main sites (Haghia Irini, Phylakopi) the houses are more tightly grouped and regularly planned than on the mainland.