Customer Reviews

Minoans (Peoples of the Past)

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It's a book for serious students more than the general public. A typical sentence is "Construction of the tholos tomb C at Phourni was dated by the excavators to EM III, but a recent study has shown that the earliest burial layer in the tomb is of EM IIA date underlying an EM III-MM 1A level."
Fitton is determined to avoid unwarranted crackpot speculation, and she succeeds all too well. She sticks to the facts so effectively that she leaves out a lot of the interesting stuff. For example there's not a word about the Phaistos disk, in fact very little about epigraphy, and only one sentence about the possible language of Linear A.In describing the Akrotiri frescoes she goes into detail about the chemical nature of the pigments but avoids any wild guesses about the intriguing question of what the characters depicted are doing.
I enjoyed the last chapter best, where she finally lets her hair down and relates the archeology to some of the Greek myths and historical legends about King Minos and Ariadne.
It might be of interest if you're visiting Crete (or live in Crete) and are able to spend several days at the sites she describes in detail, and "The Blue Guide to Crete" isn't quite enough for you. It has little of the excitement of "The Decipherment of Linear B".

I found what I was hoping for with this book. What I did not want was rash speculations or modern mythologies of Minoans as a pacifist's Eden. Neither did I want a list of archaeological finds dryly reported for us to make sense of. Fortunately, Fitton had a nice way of summing up and synthesizing the important trends for us, then selecting a few examples that best show her point.

Her humble attitude is what I hope for from prehistorians, essentially: "We can't know for sure what the truth was, so let me review four or five competing theories, then I'll you which I think is best and why." (My words). Or as she puts it, "Minoan society is incompletely understood, but that should not mean that it becomes a source for wild reconstructions or outlandish interpretations. The truth as we understand it is more subtle and complex and perhaps stranger than fiction: in so far as we are able, we must let the facts speak for themselves. Then, if elusively and only partially, the people will emerge from the works that they have left behind."

I wanted to write this review as a contrast to the other review, which almost prevented me from buying this book. I'd like to (respectfully and politely) disagree with the reviewer. Birkett provides an example of what he or she considered to be a typical sentence. As I suspected, it's actually one of the more complicated sentences in the book, but one which makes sense in context. Minoan history is divided into three large eras, Early Minoan, parts 1, 2, & 3; Middle Minoan, parts 1, 2, & 3; and Late Minoan, parts 1, 2, & 3. Thus, we learn through reading the book that a code as seemingly daunting as "EM III-MM 1A" means the transitional period going from the Early Minoan age into the Middle Minoan age. A peek at the time line provided tells us this is happening from around 2200 BC to 2000 BC. For comparison's sake, here is an example of a sentence that I would consider typical: "The Cretan bulls so prominent in Minoan art and ritual must have been the largest animals that most Minoans ever saw." Also, I found that Linear A is mentioned on 18 pages in the book. I agree that the last chapter is most fun, but this is because Fitton's discussing myths and legends, not facts. (I'm not trying to suggest that Birkett's review is not fair or legitimate- It is. I just thought a different opinion would help inform buyers.)

But the publishers can kick themselves for stupidly not letting us buyers "Look Inside" the book, preventing everyone from seeing for themselves what's in the pages. Thus, let me break down the contents for them.

Chapter 1: Geography, Landscape, and Chronology.
(Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, and the Use of Wild Resources; Raw Materials for Building and Crafts; Historical Outline; Absolute Chronology)

Chapter 2: Crete Before the Palaces.
(The Earliest Inhabitants; Early Minoan I;Early Minoan II; Early Minoan III and Middle Minoan IA; Religion in the Period before the Palaces; Prepalatial Arts and Crafts; Foreign Relations in the Prepalatial Period; Conclusions and the Genesis of the Minoan Palaces.)

Chapter 3: Protopalatial Crete.
(The First Palaces and Their Towns; Protopalatial "States"; Writing in Protopalatial Crete; Protopalatial Arts and Crafts; Foreign Relations; Protopalatial Religion)

Chapter 4: Neopalatial Crete.
(The Second Palaces; What Happened In the Palaces?; Knossos Town; Burial Customs; Arts and Crafts of the Second Palace Period; Minoan Frescoes; Sculpture and Figurines; Metalwork; Stone Vases; Pottery; Seal-Stones and Signet-Rings; Writing and Administration in Neopalatial Crete; Minoans Abroad; Minoan Religion in the Neopalatial Period; The Destructions.)

Chapter 5: From the Final Palace to the End of Minoan Civilization.
(The Final Palace Period; The Linear B Evidence; Arts and Crafts in the Final Palace Period; Burials of the Final Palace Period; Religion in the Final Palace Period; Postpalatial Crete; Religion in Postpalatial Crete.)

Chapter 6: The Mythological Legacy and the Reception of Minoan Crete.
(Mythology; Cretan Zeus; King Minos; Reception of Minoan Crete.)

To round off, this is what Fitton writes on the front flap: "With the famous discovery of the Palace of Knossos on the Greek Island of Crete by Arthur Evans in the early 1900s, the Minoans became the peaceful, flower-loving "hippies" of the Aegean Bronze Age. But recently a darker side has been revealed, with speculation about human sacrifice."

Fitton's acceptance of the evidence for human sacrifice fascinated me. (In addition to a trussed captive on an altar with a knife at his chest were the skeletons of a priest and priestess crushed by collapse of a shrine's roof during the very earthquake this sacrifice was meant to prevent.) The book is indeed sometimes dry, but I feel I can trust the author's conservative conclusions, and prefer that to misplaced creativity. Illustrations are informative but far from coffee-table beautiful, and you have to wait for a cheaper price to appear, but as a college-level book for interested beginners, I recommend it.

This is a very good summary of Minoan Crete. Together with McEnroe's architectaul treatise the serious reader will learn a great deal about Minoan Crete. One gripe relates to her apparently mistaken belief that it was Zeus who sent the white bull; it is generally accepted that Poseidon sent it.