Dramatic rural sites such as hilltops and caves often show evidence of cult rituals being performed there. As already mentioned, too, bulls are prominent in Minoan art, and their horns are an architectural feature of palace walls and a general decorative element in jewellery, frescoes, and pottery decoration. Palaces contain open courtyards for mass gatherings and rooms often have wells and channels for the pouring of libations, as previously noted. Natural forces and nature in general, manifested in such artworks as a voluptuous female mother-earth goddess figure and male figure holding several animals, seem to have been revered. These include depictions of religious ceremonies and rituals such as the pouring of libations, making food offerings, processions, feasts, and sporting events like bull-leaping. The religion of the Minoans remains sketchy, but details are revealed through art, architecture, and artefacts. Reaching up to four stories high and spreading over several thousand square metres, the complexity of these palaces, the sport of bull-leaping, the worship of bulls as indicated by the presence throughout of sacred bulls' horns and depictions of double axes (or labrys) in stone and fresco may all have combined to give birth to the legend of Theseus and the labyrinth-dwelling Minotaur so popular in later classical Greek mythology. There is a general agreement among historians that the palaces were independent from each other up to 1700 BCE, and thereafter they came under the sway of Knossos, as evidenced by a greater uniformity in architecture and the use of Linear A writing across various palace sites.ĭepictions of double axes (or labrys) & the complex palaces may have combined to give birth to the legend of Theseus & the labyrinth-dwelling Minotaur. Roads connected these isolated settlements to each other and the main centre. Small towns, villages, and farms were spread around the territory seemingly controlled by a single palace. It is clear, however, that the palaces exerted some kind of localised control, in particular, in the gathering and storage of surplus materials - wine, oil, grain, precious metals and ceramics. The relationship between the palaces and the power structure within them or over the island as a whole is not clear due to a lack of archaeological and literary evidence. Minoan palaces exerted some kind of localised control, in particular, in the gathering & storage of surplus materials.Īt each of these sites, large, complex palace structures seem to have acted as local administrative, trade, religious, and possibly political centres.
#WARLIKE MYCENAEAN ART SERIES#
An alternative to this series of divisions, created by Platon, instead focuses on the events occurring in and around the major Minoan “palaces”. Radio-carbon dating and tree-ring calibration techniques have helped to further refine the dates so that the Early Bronze Age now begins c. The above divisions were subsequently refined by adding numbered subphases to each group (e.g. Late Bronze Age or Late Minoan (LM): 1600-1100 BCE.Middle Bronze Age or Middle Minoan (MM): 2100-1600 BCE.Early Bronze Age or Early Minoan (EM): 3000-2100 BCE.Evans, seeing what he believed to be the growth and decline of a unified culture on Crete, divided the island's Bronze Age into three distinct phases largely based on different pottery styles: It was Evans who coined the term Minoan in reference to this legendary Bronze Age king. Excavating at Knossos from 1900 to 1905 CE, Evans discovered extensive ruins which confirmed the ancient accounts, both literary and mythological, of a sophisticated Cretan culture and possible site of the legendary labyrinth and palace of King Minos. The archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans was first alerted to the possible presence of an ancient civilization on Crete by surviving carved seal stones worn as charms by native Cretans in the early 20th century CE.
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