Ancient Minoan Evidence
Minoan Society: Archaeological and written evidence
The Minoans are one of the most interesting societies that one could ever study. Their archaeological remains are colourful and curious, their lives seemed to have been as sunny as their surrounding climate and as beautiful as their island—but was this really so?
When we try to investigate Minoan society we encounter a number of problems regarding evidence. Because the climate is frequently wet, most of the perishable evidence has disappeared with the weather. This makes it hard to construct a picture of Minoan society. We have some knowledge about Minoan people, of course, but this is very fragmentary: only small aspects of the Minoan social life are ever revealed at one time, mainly because …show more content…
Because of this, we try to understand some of Minoan society from Linear B tablets (which were written in early Greek) found at Knossos, Khania, and other places. One of the problems with the writing available both on Linear A (that is, the Minoan tablets) and Linear B (Greek tablets), is that most of the words are written on slabs of damp clay which were the tally cards for items that had been collected. These slabs or tablets were never meant to be kept; their contents are exactly the same as our own invoices. Thus, the contents of the tablets are only lists that deal with goods, rather than with the Minoan people and the way in which their society was structured. However, the tablets do give us clues that need to be taken into …show more content…
John Pendlebury, whose knowledge of Minoan archaeology was enormous, said that: “It is impossible to say what kind of social order existed” in Minoan Crete. However, we do have the palaces and villas, townhouses and remains of separate farms and simple huts, so we know that some members of the society must have been better off than others, because they live in better houses. We can also guess that some people were more important than others because of the fresco and relief pictures we have of Minoan people. These show some people as being bigger in size than other people (e.g. the Grandstand Fresco and Dancing in the Theatral Area). In most early paintings the important people were shown as being larger than the people who surrounded
The Minoans are one of the most interesting societies that one could ever study. Their archaeological remains are colourful and curious, their lives seemed to have been as sunny as their surrounding climate and as beautiful as their island—but was this really so?
When we try to investigate Minoan society we encounter a number of problems regarding evidence. Because the climate is frequently wet, most of the perishable evidence has disappeared with the weather. This makes it hard to construct a picture of Minoan society. We have some knowledge about Minoan people, of course, but this is very fragmentary: only small aspects of the Minoan social life are ever revealed at one time, mainly because …show more content…
Because of this, we try to understand some of Minoan society from Linear B tablets (which were written in early Greek) found at Knossos, Khania, and other places. One of the problems with the writing available both on Linear A (that is, the Minoan tablets) and Linear B (Greek tablets), is that most of the words are written on slabs of damp clay which were the tally cards for items that had been collected. These slabs or tablets were never meant to be kept; their contents are exactly the same as our own invoices. Thus, the contents of the tablets are only lists that deal with goods, rather than with the Minoan people and the way in which their society was structured. However, the tablets do give us clues that need to be taken into …show more content…
John Pendlebury, whose knowledge of Minoan archaeology was enormous, said that: “It is impossible to say what kind of social order existed” in Minoan Crete. However, we do have the palaces and villas, townhouses and remains of separate farms and simple huts, so we know that some members of the society must have been better off than others, because they live in better houses. We can also guess that some people were more important than others because of the fresco and relief pictures we have of Minoan people. These show some people as being bigger in size than other people (e.g. the Grandstand Fresco and Dancing in the Theatral Area). In most early paintings the important people were shown as being larger than the people who surrounded