Creta Antica (E-Journal - Università di Catania)
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THE ARTS OF BRONZE AGE CRETE AND THE EUROPEAN MODERN STYLE: REFLECTING AND SHAPING DIFFERENT IDENTITIES
Full text linkThe contemporaneity of the rediscovery of Aegean Bronze Age art and of the emergence of the Modern Style in Europe has often led scholars to suggest a double connection between them. It was assumed that, on the one hand, Minoan and Mycenaean artefacts exerted a certain influence on modern artistic forms and, on the other, the reconstructions and restorations of Aegean artefacts and architecture were influenced by contemporary artistic trends. In this paper, examples of both types of connection are reviewed: it is suggested that they provide only a partial explanation for the features shared by both artistic styles. Many structural parallels and similar visual/compositional principles are common to both Bronze Age and modern artistic languages, and these may often be explained only as ‘coincidences’, in the sense of similarities and convergences of certain stylistic features occurring independently. In their ‘anti-classical revolution’, Modern Style artists took up artistic trends from Byzantium, the Orient, and Africa. Likewise, they used Aegean Bronze Age arts against the ‘tyranny of the Renaissance and of Classical Greece’, which had dominated 19th-century Europe. Minoan art was often perceived as a ‘non-European art’, which harmonised with the artistic intentions of ‘primitivism’ and ‘exoticism’ during the fin de siècle
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Full text linkPREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTSCONTRIBUTORSCHRONOLOGY OF MINOAN PERIODS AND NOTE ON GREEK TRASLITERATIO
THE MINOANS - A WELSH INVENTION? A VIEW FROM EAST CRETE
Full text link‘Minoan’, the term used to designate the Bronze Age of Crete and its derivatives are no mere typological curiosities. It is, rather, a highly loaded ‘theoretical’ term that has shaped the study of all periods in Cretan archaeology and history. This chapter discusses its intellectual consequences and emphasises the East Cretan and ‘Eteocretan’ dimension of its development, especially the lingering connotations of the ‘Minoans’ as a lost race. Analogy with British history was used by early scholars to argue that the ‘Eteocretans’ were the historical remnant of the ‘Minoans’, a remnant which had been left in the mountain fastnesses of the east of the island after successive invasions of Achaeans and Dorians. The intellectual consequences of this idea are significant and paradoxical: the ‘Minoans’ have provided a means by which the Bronze Age could be colonised by the preoccupations of traditional Classical archaeology, and helped to sustain a culture-historical paradigm in Aegean prehistory
CRETE, GREECE AND THE ORIENTIN THE THOUGHT OF GORDON CHILDE (WITH AN APPENDIX ON TOYNBEE AND SPENGLER: THE AFTERLIFE OF THE MINOANS IN EUROPEAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY)
Full text linkReconstructing the patterns of thought of our intellectual ancestors requires two exercises: to bear in mind the state of knowledge at the time, and to consider the assumptions which underlay discussion of this information. Childe was both a theoretician with his own agenda (to some extent Marxist, but to a greater extent in the tradition of his teachers, John Myres and Arthur Evans) and also a great inductive prehistorian, whose reading encompassed the literatures of prehistoric Europe, the Aegean, and the Near East. His work is therefore an unusual combination of synthesis and creative historiography, which strove to make sense of interconnections and relationships between these areas. This chapter sets Childe’s attempt in the context of discussions at the time, noting the gaps in existing knowledge and the generally accepted assumptions on the part of himself and his contemporaries. The presentation of the Minoans is particularly significant, with an inherent ambiguity between their ‘oriental’ background and their role as the ‘first European civilisation’. These tensions are explored as part of a continuing coming to terms with the longer past revealed by archaeology, and still demanding explicit answers
Sommario
No full textCreta Antica 7Yannis Hamilakis and Nicoletta Momigliano, Archaeology and European Modernity: Stories from the Borders Philip Carabott, A Country in a ‘State of Destitution’ Labouring under an ‘Unfortunate Regime’: Crete at the Turn of the 20th century (1898-1906) James Whitley, The Minoans - a Welsh invention? A View from East Crete Christine Morris, From Ideologies of Motherhood to ‘Collecting Mother Goddesses’ Philip Duke, Knossos as Memorial, Ritual and Metaphor Ken Lapatin, Forging the Minoan past Andrew Sherrat, Crete, Greece and the Orient in the Thought of Gordon Childe (with an Appendix on Toynbee and Spengler: the Afterlife of the Minoans in European Intellectual History) Lena Sjögren, Minoan Wannabees: The Resurrection of Minoan Influences in Scandinavian Archaeology Yannis Hamilakis, The Colonial, the National, and the Local: Legacies of the ‘Minoan’ Past Esther Solomon, Knossos: Social Uses of a Monumental Landscape Roderick Beaton, Minoans in Modern Greek Literature David Roessel, Happy Little Extroverts and Bloodthirsty Tyrants: Minoans and Mycenaeansin Literature in English after Evans and Schliemann Cathy Gere, Cretan Psychoanalysis and Freudian Archaeology: H.D.’s Minoan Analysis with Freud in 1933Fritz Blakolmer, The Arts of Bronze Age Crete and the European Modern Style: Reflecting and Shaping Different Identities Vincenzo La Rosa and Pietro Militello, Minoan Crete in 20th-century Italian CultureAnna Simandiraki, The ‘Minoan’ Experience of Schoolchildren in Crete
MINOANS IN MODERN GREEK LITERATURE
Full text linkThis chapter focuses on literary appropriations of the Minoan past, chosen from the work of major Greek authors active between the early 20th and the early 21st century. Kazantzakis in his Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1938) depicts Minoan society as terminally depraved and (following Evans) as utterly un-Hellenic; later, in Report to Greco (1955-7), the same author tooks a mellower view, acknowledging the Minoans among his own spiritual ancestors. A similar process of gradual assimilation of the Minoans into a Hellenic continuum continues through texts of the mid-century by Ritsos, Elytis, and Diktaios, and is taken further by the postmodernist writers Dimitris Kalokyris and RheaGalanaki in work published during the last twenty years. It is concluded that these literary constructions of the Minoan past contribute to consolidation and redefinition of a national Greek identity, rather than a specifically Cretan regional one
FROM IDEOLOGIES OF MOTHERHOOD TO ‘COLLECTING MOTHER GODDESSES’ KNOSSOS AS MEMORIAL, RITUAL AND METAPHOR
No full textArchaeological sites are powerful media by which the public gains an understanding of the past. Indirectly, this understanding helps to form the public’s understanding of the present, too. Knossos is the emblematic site for ‘Minoan civilisation’, a medium through which touristsπand other casual visitors to the site are introduced to a particular past. This chapter argues that Knossos is a monument of memorialisation that is visited by tourists as part of a socially constituted ritual. This ritual is embedded in metaphor. It is argued that Knossos is a metaphor that evokes largely unconscious, and thereby powerful, messages about the present, specifically the centrality of class as the primary organisational societal principle in the West
CRETAN PSYCHOANALYSIS AND FREUDIAN ARCHAEOLOGY: H.D’S MINOAN ANALYSIS WITH FREUD IN 1933
Full text linkIn 1931 the first reference to Minoan archaeology appeared in Freud’s psychoanalytic writings. Eight years later, in his last published work, Moses and Monotheism, ancient Crete was invoked in support of one of his most contentious, unfashionable and crazy-seeming ideas – his theory of inherited memory. This chapter examines the theoretical role played by the Minoan past in Freud’s published writings, and explores the analysis of a patient – the poet and novelist Hilda Doolittle – in which Cretan archaeology was actually used as a diagnostic tool. I argue that Freud’s intricate engagement with the work of Arthur Evans in the 1930s goes some way to explaining why he continued to subscribe to the long-discredited theory of racial memory
ARCHAEOLOGY AND EUROPEAN MODERNITY: STORIES FROM THE BORDERS
Full text linkArchaeology has recently started engaging in a critical manner with its disciplinary heritage and its position within the discourses and practices of Western modernity
FORGING THE MINOAN PAST
Full text link‘Cretenses semper mendaces’ was an ancient tag-line, and forgers on Crete produced fake ‘antiquities’ from an early date. Excavation and publication of prehistoric remains at Knossos vastly increased the value of Cretan artefacts. The romantic associations of the island’s early civilisations with mythological figures, and the excitement created by the new discoveries engendered an eager market for objects that could be linked to what was lauded as the first high culture of Europe. Although not nearly so well known as the series of ivory figurines that began to surface a decade later, ‘Minoan’ terracottas, bronzes, carved horn, and engraved rings and gemstones produced in the first years of the 20th century were likewise fashioned to satisfy the desires of private collectors and foreign museum curators. Forgers relied on a variety of factors as they attempted to ensure the marketability of their products and increase their value. They employed precious or semi-precious materials, devised appealing iconographies, suggested plausible find spots, and invented colourful stories of recovery. This chapter contextualises some of these forgeries and explores their active effects: not just how they were designed to satisfy the desires of intended buyers, but also how they engendered new ideas about the distant past and yet simultaneously reinforced prevalent conceptions of it