Book contents
- Minoan Zoomorphic Culture
- Minoan Zoomorphic Culture
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology
- One Life among the Animalian in Bronze Age Crete and the Southern Aegean
- Two Craftiness and Productivity in Bodily Things
- Three Stone Poets
- Four Likeness and Integration among Extraordinary Creatures
- Five Singular, Seriated, Similar
- Six Moving toward Life
- Concluding Thoughts
- References
- Index
Two - Craftiness and Productivity in Bodily Things
The Changing Contexts of Cretan Zoomorphic Vessels
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 May 2024
- Minoan Zoomorphic Culture
- Minoan Zoomorphic Culture
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology
- One Life among the Animalian in Bronze Age Crete and the Southern Aegean
- Two Craftiness and Productivity in Bodily Things
- Three Stone Poets
- Four Likeness and Integration among Extraordinary Creatures
- Five Singular, Seriated, Similar
- Six Moving toward Life
- Concluding Thoughts
- References
- Index
Summary
This chapter examines how movable renderings of animals contributed to sociopolitical experience in Minoan Crete, with close attention to zoomorphic vessels. Beginning in the Prepalatial period, we examine a group of clay body-form vessels that could stand independently. While typically labelled “anthropomorphic,” the vessels’ identities are more complex: their forms do not neatly suggest a particular species, and their affordances as objects are integral to what they are and how they are experienced. Through analysis of their unique corporeal characters and depositional circumstances, I argue that these figures could have been experienced as distinct productive agents, who participated in cultivating community space between Prepalatial tombs and settlements. Next, looking forward, we consider how animalian vessels continued to contribute to Cretan social venues, while subtle changes to how they embodied animals could imply profound shifts in their presence and performance. From the late Protopalatial, we see rhyta rendered as bodiless animal heads, most bovine. Unlike the Prepalatial vessels, these appeared dramatically dependent on living people to become productive, placing emphasis on human action. I contextualize these rhyta with a problematization of palatial-era politico-environmental developments and changes in social performance and “cattle culture.”
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Minoan Zoomorphic CultureBetween Bodies and Things, pp. 38 - 101Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024