Nestor's Wine Cups: Investigating Ceramic Manufacture and Exchange in a Late Bronze Age "Mycenaean" State - BAR.

The primary intent of this research project is to improve anthropological understanding of the structure of the Mycenaean state of Pylos through archaeological reconstruction of the Late Bronze Age regional ceramic production and exchange system, using methods of petrographic and chemical analysis. In addition to its primary goal, it also encompasses several secondary goals. First, regional settlement data collected by survey projects in Greece strongly encourage comparison of Mycenaean to other archaic states. Parallels are thus drawn whenever possible and general questions of state origins and organization are addressed. Second, study of the Pylian ceramic industry is interesting and informative in itself, and results can be compared to ceramic manufacture and exchange in other parts of the world, at different times and levels of social complexity. Finally, this research integrates "classical" approaches to Old World archaeology with "anthropological" approaches to the study of complex societies.