The Aegean Bronze Age edited by Cynthia Shelmerdine *****

Not for the casual reader. The Cambridge University Press offers this "Cambridge Companion," about 500 pages of independently written articles by authors with extensive academic credentials. As might be expected in an academic publication, there are plenty of maps, drawings, photographs, notes, bibliographies, and index entries. I imagine this book is assigned for a graduate archeology class.

Given that caveat, The Aegean Bronze Age edited by Cynthia Shelmerdine provides excellent background and detail on the Aegean Bronze Age. If that title is not clear or interesting, this book is not for you. This is not the introduction to anything. This is the graduate course. If you want the that, you've found it and at a bargain price (for a college text).

Some of my notes:

Over the years, the Minoan palaces have been characterized as centers of production and redistributions, but the latest research suggests that they were more centers of consumption. Note that this dichotomy is independent of the palace/political/king versus temple/goddess/priestesses dichotomy. Neither dichotomy has an established answer.

The initial settlement of Knossos goes back to the fifth century BCE. Note that the Knossos currently on exhibit is from the new palace era or the second century BCE.

Crete had few mineral resources. Of the precious metals, silver likely came from the area around Athens, and gold came from Egypt. Semiprecious stones were imported Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and all points in between. These included colored marble, colored lapis, amethyst, hematite, carnelian, and rock crystal.

"Traces of lightly incised guidelines on blocks suggest the oversight of a trained architect or work from actual architectural plans."

Mount Ida gets its name from the original Minoan.

The unit of liquid seemed to be 28-30 liters, with 32 units held by a large pithoi for storage. The unit of weight (the Minoan talent) was about 29 kilograms. The fascinating thing about this is that the standard liquid measure, when filled with water, weighed the same as the standard weight measure. Today this is true of liters and kilograms but was not established until the end of the 18th century, over 3,000 years after the Minoans.