Taking the Palace out of Palatial Control

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Hierarchical models of political and economic organization still pervade the scholarship of complex societies in the Bronze Age Mediterranean. This is especially the case for those societies such as Late Bronze Age Greece identified as “palatial” in which the palace and its officials are accorded near complete control over the economy. There is much growing evidence for and reinterpretation of the roles of actors partially or fully outside the purview of the palatial centers. Using the test case of the establishment of the walled port town of Kalamianos on the Saronic Gulf of the Aegean, which has been considered a colonial enterprise, I evaluate the roles of the palatial center of Mycenae, agents acting under palatial control, and agents who functioned outside palatial control in the construction and organization of the new settlement. I conclude that while palatial officials may have contributed capital and labor to the initial founding and construction, the settlement and its rural infrastructure were intended to be self-sufficient and function independently of palatial control. Thus instead of a palatial “colony,” Kalamianos should be considered as a community of actors engaged in their own economic interests independent of the palace.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35926.0