A Moving Taskscape in the Late Bronze Age Argolid, Greece

Summary

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

In past pre-industrial societies featuring large-scale building projects, extensive manual labour was invested during the entire chaîne opératoire of construction. This report focuses instead on the cost of multiple labour activities during the 13th century BCE in the Aegean Late Bronze Age. It aims to move “beyond the calculation of average and peak overall man-power requirements to consider the workforce as individuals, thereby allowing a closer estimation of the size and nature of the man-power” (DeLaine 1997). Prehistoric people in the Argolid were interconnected through multiple daily tasks while remaining resilient before the accumulated crises around 1200-1190 BCE. I investigate labour costs required for monumental and domestic house building, infrastructure provision, tomb digging, pottery production, and several agricultural activities. Their joint implications to society are compared and discussed in light of a cross-crafting taskscape which mobilized large groups of people on a daily basis, locally and in the region. This research highlights that rural landscapes and their populace formed the backbone of Late Mycenaean agricultural and crafting societies. Understanding energy expenditure from a bottom-up perspective suggests large levels of responsibility in the hands of farmers and workers rather than allowing elites to rule the scene, as is often suggested.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36476.0