The Archaeology of Minoan Crete

An introduction to the archaeology of Crete in the Bronze Age (ca. 3000-1200 BCE), exploring the definition of Minoan culture; and the process of emerging social, economic, and political complexity and the development of palatial societies in the 2nd millennium BCE. The course emphasizes recent archaeological discoveries and current approaches to visual and material culture, while providing an introduction to the discipline of prehistory more generally as an area of study that involves the reconstruction of the past without literary or historical records.