FROM PRESTIGE GOODS TO THE POSSESSION OF A COLLECTIVE PAST: A Dual-Processualist Approach to Social Organization in the Mirabello Region of Crete from the Final Neolithic to the End of the Protopalatial Period

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on social organization in the Mirabello region of Crete from the Final Neolithic to the end of the Protopalatial period. The primary goal of this study is to provide a more localized and nuanced understanding of the political and economic strategies that preceded the rise of palatial administration. Traditionally, explanations of social change in Pre- and Protopalatial Crete were expressed broadly as island-wide phenomena that occurred either gradually through internal evolutionary processes, or suddenly, in response to foreign contacts and ideas. Rather than attempting to understand the development of Minoan culture as a whole, or viewing change in terms of evolution or influence, this regional study focuses on a range of local factors, including the cycles of growth and collapse observable in the archaeological record. Here, a dual-processualist approach is employed in order to better explain these shifts. This approach contrasts two types of political behavior, network and corporate, which are not mutually exclusive, but operate concurrently and according to varying degrees within the same society. It is argued here that EM I-II network strategies were effective in generating wealth and status, but were ultimately limited by their focus on exclusionary and competitive behaviors. At the end of EM IIB, a series of destructions seems to have initiated a shift toward more corporate organization, which is evident in both settlement patterns and mortuary practices. The character of the evidence, when compared with the earlier period, suggests that this new form of organization was ideological, rather than wealth-centered, and was built upon the creation of larger corporate identities, which were legitimized through the control of communal rituals and degrees of access to a shared ancestral past.