Abstract :
INTEREST in the Early Iron Age of Crete has expanded greatly in recent years: new excavations
have been conducted at Thronos Kephala (ancient Sybrita), Eleutherna, Knossos, and
Kavousi; and surveys at Vrokastro, the Western Mesara, and elsewhere have given this period
a new centrality. This new focus may, in part, be explained by a renewed concern in social
developments after the Bronze Age, particularly after the final destruction of Knossos and the
main central places (Khania, Ayia Triada, Kommos) of the island. These social developments
led eventually to the emergence of political communities with a strong communal ethos and
elaborate law codes (the so-called rise of the polis) from the eighth century BC onwards. In
Crete, as elsewhere in the Aegean, we are entirely dependent on the material, rather than the
textual, record if we want better to understand this transition. Developments on Crete may
have differed sharply from those on the mainland. Recent syntheses of settlement evidence
(Nowicki 2000; Sjogren 2003; Wallace 2006), early alphabetic literacy (Whitley 1997) and
cult practices (Prent 2005) all emphasize ʹCretan exceptionalismʹ (cf. Whitley 2009). One of
the standard explanations for this ʹexceptionalismʹ is that Crete experienced greater
continuity of culture following the collapse of the political and economic systems which
characterize the Aegean and Greek mainland at the end of the Bronze Age. Recent studies
(e.g. Wallace 2003) have, however, challenged the idea that continuity alone is a sufficient
explanation for Cretan difference.
