Labor Mobilization in Mycenaean Pylos

This paper focuses on potential instances of indirect labor mobilization at Pylos, in which workers are retained for palatial projects, but through the agency of named individuals. I will attempt to show that in some cases the palaces supplemented directly-acquired labor with labor obtained through administrative intermediaries, high-level functionaries who were responsible for furnishing workers for palatial projects

Individuals and Society in Mycenaean Pylos

This book revises our understanding of Mycenaean society through a detailed analysis of individuals attested in the administrative texts from the Palace of Nestor at Pylos in southwestern Greece, ca. 1200 BC. It argues that conventional models of Mycenaean society, which focus on administrative titles and terms, can be improved through the study of named individuals. A new, methodologically innovative prosopography demonstrates that many named individuals were not only important managers of palatial affairs but also high-ranking members of the community. This work significantly broadens the elite class and suggests that the palace was less of an agent in its own right than an institutional framework for interactions amongst individuals and social group

Reevaluating Staple and Wealth Finance at Mycenaean Pylos

Reciprocity and symbolic exchange are of considerable importance to understanding the Mycenaean political economy at Pylos. Thus, while wealth finance is a useful heuristic concept for making sense of Mycenaean political economy, it does not do an adequate job of describing or explaining that economy, which would be better characterized as a “prestige economy.” Unlike the well-known prestige goods model, the Mycenaean economy uses both staples in feasts and non-staples in symbolic exchanges to promote solidarity and ensure allegiance. At Mycenaean Pylos, the goal of most distributions seems aimed at the direct accumulation of symbolic profit

PRESTIGE AND INTEREST: Feasting and the King at Mycenaean Pylos

In this article the author examines the politics of Mycenaean feasting through an analysis of three Linear B texts from the “Palace of Nestor” at Pylos that concern regional landholdings and contributions to a feast. Consideration of scribal practices, the political situation in Late Bronze Age Messenia, and historical parallels suggests that these tablets relate to the king of Pylos (the wanax) in his official and personal capacities. The scribal alternation between the title of the wanax and his name can consequently be seen as an effort to manipulate the dichotomy between his official and personal roles in order to emphasize his generosity

Gemination at the Horizons: East and West in the Mythical Geography of Archaic Greek Epic

This paper examines descriptions of remote places in archaic Greek epic. I argue that Homeric cosmic geography consists of two complementary models, one in which the sun rises and sets at a single locus—the axis mundi—as in the Theogony, and another in which sunrise and sunset take place on the eastern and western horizons respectively. Conflation of these models in the Odyssey results in the gemination of peoples and places associated in myth with the sun. This not only explains some recurrent patterns in Homeric geography and their thematic importance to Odysseus’ travels, but also resolves some traditional interpretive difficulties with descriptions of the edges of the earth in archaic epic

Athens, Kylon, and the Dipolieia

Shared elements, especially topographical and judicial, in the ritual and myth of the Dipolieia and the narrative of the murder of the Cylonian conspirators imply that the two accounts came to be assimilated in Athenian consciousness

Siteless Survey and Intensive Data Collection in an Artifact-rich Environment: Case Studies from the Eastern Corinthia, Greece

Archaeological survey in the eastern Mediterranean has become increasingly intensive over the last 20 years, producing greater and more diverse data for smaller units of space. While complex, siteless data sets have allowed more sophisticated reconstructions of natural and cultural regional histories, the employment of more intensive methods has refocused the scope of Mediterranean surveys from region to ‘micro-region’. Such increasingly myopic approaches have been criticized for their failure to address research questions framed by a large-scale, regional perspective and the analytical categories of ‘settle- ment’ and ‘site’. This paper uses results from a survey in southern Greece to show how artifact-based approaches make valuable contributions to ‘big-picture’ historical and archaeological issues in a Mediter- ranean context

Linear A and Multidimensional Scaling

In this paper we use multidimensional scaling to analyse a corpus of texts and lexical items written in Linear A, an undeciphered script. We argue that more such work is necessary before Linear A can be deciphered (if this is indeed a possibility in the first place)

Linear B

This is an article for the online Oxford Classical Dictionar

Labor and Individuals in Late Bronze Age Pylos

D. Nakassis (2015) “Labor and Individuals in Late Bronze Age Pylos,” in Labor in the Ancient World, ed. P. Steinkeller and M. Hudson (Dresden: ISLET-Verlag) 583-615