Ritual activity is a key to understanding Crete during the Late Bronze Age, because it permeated many aspects of social life and was instrumental in the sanctioning of palatial authority during the Neopalatial period. It will be argued that the remains of cult and other types of ritual activity are still studied through a static framework. This, in its turn, encourages chimeric attempts to decipher the social meaning of cult and other types of ritual on Crete, and unquestionably promotes a restricted and top-down reconstruction of Neopalatial social organisation. By contrast, there is evidence to suggest a rather lively social interaction between palatial and non-palatial segments of Minoan society, also fostered by ritual events. It is proposed that Neopalatial ritual may fit John Barrett’s definition of a dynamic “field of discourse”. This concept emphasises the ability of ritual to operate as a live matrix, which afforded people to make sense of their social effectively. The question then becomes the sense of humanness that was ritual promoted and its importance not only for the social floruit of Crete during the Neopalatial period but also for the grave changes it underwent after the volcanic eruption on Thera

The seminar size will be limited to only 20 people in order to have a fruitful and educational discussion. In case you have any questions, please contact the Assist. Director: irishinstitutegr@gmail.com

The seminar is co-hosted with the School of Archaeology, University College Dublin