Institute of Archaeology

Home → Publications → Browse Books → Monumenta Archaeologica → The Plain of Phaistos

Document Actions

The Plain of Phaistos

by Amanda Kimura — last modified November 16, 2012 04:53 PM

View Table of Contents in PDF

Plain of Phaistos: Cycles of Social Complexity in the Mesara Region of Crete

L. Vance Watrous, Despoina Hadzi-Vallianou, and Harriet Blitzer

The volume presents the results on an interdisciplinary regional field project (1984 - 1987) carried out on the island Of Crete. This volume traces the changing patterns of settlement and cycles of social complexity from the Late Neolithic period to the present day within the heartland of the state of Phaistos. The authors and contributors publish geological, archaeological, environmental, botanical, historical and ethnographic studies that establish the regional identity of the Western Mesara. Using a combination of empirical, processual and post-processual theoretical approaches, the volume investigates a central problem - how and why did the Bronze Age and Classical states arise at Phaistos?

"Based on fieldwork carried out from 1984-1987, this volume presents an exemplary survey of the Western Mesara region of Crete with detailed treatment of its physical and archaeological characteristics."

– Book News, Inc. (2005).

SUBJECTS: Greece, Mesara Plain, History of Phaistos, an extinct city.

ISBN: 1-931745-14-5

Publication Date: 2004

Series: Monumenta Archaeologica 23

Publisher: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology

Price: US $14.98

Buy this book! Order from the University of New Mexico Press.

Secondary Navigation

featPub

Featured Publication

The Construction of Value

Scholars from Aristotle to Marx and beyond have been fascinated by the question of what constitutes value. The Construction of Value in the Ancient World makes a significant contribution to this ongoing inquiry, bringing together in one comprehensive volume the perspectives of leading anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, linguists, philologists, and sociologists on how value was created, defined, and expressed in a number of ancient societies around the world. Based on the basic premise that value is a social construct defined by the cultural context in which it is situated, the volume explores four overarching but closely interrelated themes: place value, body value, object value, and number value. The questions raised and addressed are of central importance to archaeologists studying ancient civilizations: How can we understand the value that might have been accorded to materials, objects, people, places, and patterns of action by those who produced or used the things that compose the human material record? Taken as a whole, the contributions to this volume demonstrate how the concept of value lies at the intersection of individual and collective tastes, desires, sentiments, and attitudes that inform the ways people select, or give priority to, one thing over another.

Available now!

utilityNav