Before Sir Arthur Evans, the principal object of Greek prehistoric archaeology was the reconstruction of history in relation to myth. European travellers to Greece viewed its picturesque ruins as the gateway to mythical times, while Heinrich Schliemann, at the end of the nineteenth century, allegedly uncovered at Troy and Mycenae the legendary cities of the Homeric epics. It was Evans who, in his controversial excavations at Knossos, steered Aegean archaeology away from Homer towards the broader Mediterranean world. Yet in so doing he is thought to have done his own inventing, recreating the Cretan Labyrinth via the Bronze Age myth of the Minotaur. Nanno Marinatos challenges the entrenched idea that Evans was nothing more than a flamboyant researcher who turned speculation into history. She argues that Evans was an excellent archaeologist, one who used scientific observation and classification. Evans's combination of anthropology, comparative religion and analysis of cultic artefacts enabled him to develop a bold new method which Sir James Frazer called 'mental anthropology'. It was this approach that led him to propose remarkable ideas about Minoan religion, theories that are now being vindicated as startling new evidence comes to light. Examining the frescoes from Akrotiri, on Santorini, that are gradually being restored, the author suggests that Evans's hypothesis of one unified goddess of nature is the best explanation of what they signify. Evans was in 1901 ahead of his time in viewing comparable Minoan scenes as a blend of ritual action and mythic imagination. Nanno Marinatos is a leading authority on Minoan religion. In this latest book she combines history, archaeology and myth to bold and original effect, offering a wholly new appraisal of Evans and the significance of his work. Sir Arthur Evans and Minoan Crete will be essential reading for all students of Minoan civilization, as well as an irresistible companion for travellers to Crete.

In the spring of 1900, British archaeologist Arthur Evans began to excavate the palace of Knossos on Crete, bringing ancient Greek legends to life just as a new century dawned amid far-reaching questions about human history, art, and culture. With Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism, Cathy Gere relates the fascinating story of Evans’s excavation and its long-term effects on Western culture. After the World War I left the Enlightenment dream in tatters, the lost paradise that Evans offered in the concrete labyrinth—pacifist and matriarchal, pagan and cosmic—seemed to offer a new way forward for writers, artists, and thinkers such as Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, Giorgio de Chirico, Robert Graves, and Hilda Doolittle. Assembling a brilliant, talented, and eccentric cast at a moment of tremendous intellectual vitality and wrenching change, Cathy Gere paints an unforgettable portrait of the age of concrete and the birth of modernism.

How do archaeologists and artists reimagine what life was like during the Greek Bronze Age? How do contemporary conditions influence the way we understand the ancient past? This innovative book considers two imaginative restorations of the ancient world that test the boundaries of interpretation and invention by bringing together the discovery of Minoan culture by the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans (1851–1941) and the work of the Turner Prize–winning video artist Elizabeth Price (b. 1966). Featured essays examine Evans’s interpretation and restoration of the Knossos palace and present fresh photography of Minoan artifacts and archival photographs of the dig alongside beautiful, previously unpublished watercolors and drawings by the archaeological illustrators and restorers who worked on the site: Émile Gilliéron père(1850–1924), Émile Gilliéron fils (1885–1939), Piet de Jong (1887–1967), and others. An interview with Price explores how her attraction to the Sir Arthur Evans Archive became the basis for her commissioned video installation at the University of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum and offers insight into her creative practice. Exhibition dates: October 5, 2017–January 7, 2018

A comprehensive, scholarly, engaging look at the meanings behind key architectural designs of ancient Minoan culture. Ever since Sir Arthur Evans first excavated at the site of the Palace at Knossos in the early twentieth century, scholars and visitors have been drawn to the architecture of Bronze Age Crete. Much of the attraction comes from the geographical and historical uniqueness of the island. Equidistant from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, Minoan Crete is on the shifting conceptual border between East and West, and chronologically suspended between history and prehistory. In this culturally dynamic context, architecture provided more than physical shelter; it embodied meaning. Architecture was a medium through which Minoans constructed their notions of social, ethnic, and historical identity: the buildings tell us about how the Minoans saw themselves, and how they wanted to be seen by others. Architecture of Minoan Crete is the first comprehensive study of the entire range of Minoan architecture—including houses, palaces, tombs, and cities—from 7000 BC to 1100 BC. John C. McEnroe synthesizes the vast literature on Minoan Crete, with particular emphasis on the important discoveries of the past twenty years, to provide an up-to-date account of Minoan architecture. His accessible writing style, skillful architectural drawings of houses and palaces, site maps, and color photographs make this book inviting for general readers and visitors to Crete, as well as scholars.

In this lively survey, Guy D. Middleton critically examines our ideas about collapse - how we explain it and how we have constructed potentially misleading myths around collapses - showing how and why collapse of societies was a much more complex phenomenon than is often admitted.

More than 100 years ago Sir Arthur Evans' spade made the first cut into the earth above the now well-known Palace at Knossos. His research saw the birth of a new discipline: Minoan Archaeology. The present volume aim to outline current trends and prospects of this scientific field.

Interdisciplinary study on the role of earthquakes in the eastern Mediterranean Does the “Minoan myth” still stand up to scientific scrutiny? Since the work of Sir Arthur Evans at Knossos (Crete, Greece), the romanticized vision of the Cretan Bronze Age as an era of peaceful prosperity only interrupted by the catastrophic effects of natural disasters has captured the popular and scientific imagination. Its impact on the development of archaeology, archaeoseismology, and earthquake geology in the eastern Mediterranean is considerable. Yet, in spite of more than a century of archaeological explorations on the island of Crete, researchers still do not have a clear understanding of the effects of earthquakes on Minoan society. This volume, gathering the contributions of Minoan archaeologists, geologists, seismologists, palaeoseismologists, geophysicists, architects, and engineers, provides an up-to-date interdisciplinary appraisal of the role of earthquakes in Minoan society and in Minoan archaeology – what we know, what are the remaining issues, and where we need to go. Contributors: Tim Cunningham (Université catholique de Louvain), Jan Driessen (Université catholique de Louvain), Charalampos Fassoulas (Natural History Museum of Crete, University of Crete), Christoph Grützner (RWTH Aachen University, University of Cambridge), Susan E. Hough (U.S. Geological Survey), Simon Jusseret (The University of Texas at Austin, Université catholique de Louvain), Colin F. Macdonald (The British School at Athens), Jack Mason (RWTH Aachen University), James P. McCalpin (GEO-HAZ Consulting Inc.), Floyd W. McCoy (University of Hawaii – Windward), Clairy Palyvou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), Gerassimos A. Papadopoulos (National Observatory of Athens), Klaus Reicherter (RWTH Aachen University), Manuel Sintubin (KU Leuven), Jeffrey S. Soles (University of North Carolina – Greensboro), Rhonda Suka (Research Corporation of the University of Hawaii), Eleftheria Tsakanika (National Technical University of Athens), Thomas Wiatr (RWTH Aachen University, German Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy).

On March 23, 1900, Arthur John Evans and his staff began to excavate on Crete, looking for the fabled site of Knossos, where an extraordinary civilization, a precursor to classical Greece, was rumored to have existed. Almost from the first shovel stroke, artifacts began to emerge. Evans realized that here was "an extraordinary phenomenon, nothing Greek, nothing Roman. A wholly unexplored world." The Palace of Minos at Knossos recounts the exciting story of uncovering a remarkable society lost to the world for 3,500 years, from its initial discovery through its excavation to the structure we see today. Sidebars on archaeological techniques, illustrations of the sites, tables, and diagrams throughout provide a wealth of information on the Palace. The use of artifacts and other "documents" recovered from the Palace bring out the voices of the people of the past, offering clues to who they were and how they lived. The Palace of Minos at Knossos concludes with an interview with archaeologist Chris Scarre who talks about the misperceptions about Knossos and what we really know about its culture.