Minoan Architecture and Urbanism

• 1: Quentin Letesson and Carl Knappett: Introduction: Minoan Built Environment: Past Studies, Recent Perspectives, and Future Challenges


• Part I


• 2: Quentin Letesson and Carl Knappett: Architecture: Building Dynamics at the Micro-Scale


• 3: Tim Cunningham: Best Laid Plans: An Archaeology of Architectural Anomalies in Bronze Age Crete


• 4: Maud Devolder: Architectural Energetics and Late Bronze Age Cretan Architecture: Measuring the Scale of Minoan Building Projects


• 5: Jan Driessen: Understanding Minoan in-House Relationships on Late Bronze Age Crete


• Part II


• 6: Quentin Letesson and Carl Knappett: Urbanism: Built Space and Communities at the Meso-scale


• 7: Todd Whitelaw: The Development and Character of Urban Communities in Prehistoric Crete in their Regional Context: A Preliminary Study


• 8: Clairy Palyvou: Minoan Group Design: The 'View from the Bridge'


• 9: D. Matthew Buell and John McEnroe: Community Building/Building Community at Gournia


• 10: Joseph W. Shaw: The Middle Minoan Slipway for Ships at the Kommos Harbour, and Harbour Development in Prehistoric Crete


• Part III


• 11: Quentin Letesson and Carl Knappett: Processes AndPatterns at the Macro-Scale: Crete and Beyond


• 12: Eleftheria Paliou and Andrew Bevan: Computational Approaches to Minoan Settlement Interaction and Growth


• 13: Louise A. Hitchcock and Aren M. Maeir: Lost in Translation: Settlement Organization in Postpalatial Crete, a View from the East


• 14: Rodney D. Fitzsimons and Evi Gorogianni: Dining on the Fringe? A Possible Minoan-Style Banquet Hall at Ayia Irini, Kea and the Minoanisation of the Aegean Islands


• 15: Quentin Letesson, Carl Knappett, and Michael E. Smith: A Comparative Perspective on Minoan Urbanism

Quentin Letesson is Marie Sklodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Art, University of Toronto and the Département d'histoire de l'art et d'archéologie, Université catholique de Louvain. His work focuses on configurational analyses of the Minoan built environment, on the urbanisation of Crete, and on the emergence of technical innovations in the production of Minoan material culture. He teaches archaeological theory and ethnoarchaeology at the Université catholique de Louvain. He is involved in several excavations on Crete, most notably at Palaikastro and Sissi.


Carl Knappett teaches in the Department of Art at the University of Toronto, where he holds the Walter Graham/ Homer Thompson Chair in Aegean Prehistory. He is an archaeologist interested in how things generate meaning through their creation and use. While the things of the Aegean Bronze Age are his main focus, particularly the pottery of Minoan Crete, he attempts to integrate insights from the study of things in ethnographic, ethnoarchaeological and sociological contexts with a view to developing a broad-based approach to materiality in society. His publications include Thinking Through Material Culture (Penn Press), An Archaeology of Interaction, and Network Analysis in Archaeology (both with Oxford University Press). He conducts fieldwork at various Bronze Age sites across the Aegean, and directs the new excavations at the Minoan town of Palaikastro in east Crete.

This edited volume is an interesting and inspiring read for everyone interested in architectural studies. Especially the introductory chapters to each part written by the editors (chapters 2, 6 and 11) are stimulating, while the first and final chapter (chapters 1, 15) provide ample reference to earlier studies of various architectural (Minoan) features. Corien Wiersma, Journal of Greek Archeology