Talk:Minoan civilization: Difference between revisions

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I hope we can avoid this pretentious term, which carries very little actual information—aside from "we-know-Latin-unlike-you"— and that little misleading, in its inference, by analogy with Pax Romana and Pax Britannica, of an enforced peace— an assertion for which we have no warrant. I also thought we might point out that the "main exports" so boldly listed are quite simply those that survive best in archaeological sites. Those ceramics for one thing were unlikely to have been exported empty.--Wetman 06:34, 10 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

To me the term "Pax Minoica" transmits a world of exceedingly valuable information. I have never asssociated it with Pax Romana or Pax Britannia, but with the notion that of all the European/East Asian civilizations we know of, in existence from ca 3000 - 1450 BC, the Minoan was the only one that seemed to avoid warfare for over 1000 years straight. As a matter of fact, the Minoans may be the only complex civilization we know of to have managed this. I'd say that's pretty remarkable stuff. It most defintely deserves its own label -- if not "Pax Minoica," then something else. Athana 20:58, 10 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

but "pax minoica" is a direct reference to the pax romana. You can't seperate it from that. that meaning, that nuance, is present. And you know? about the peace thing? That's debated. I'd want a lot more actual evidence before claiming that they managed to avoid conflict, that they were unique in human history. Novium 09:42, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There's a very useful website on the archaeology of the Bronze Age Aegean at Dartmouth College, created by Jeremy Rutter. The site is comprehensive, with a wealth of bibliography. It deals with Minoans, Mycenaeans, and more, and could be very helpful in the improvement of Wikipedia. Akhilleus 21:48, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to organize the sprawling tidbits of information into a coherent ToC, cutting some repetitions. The "Pax Minoica" section is still an unwikified wasteland and should be compressed into something readable. The article is still not great overall, each section will need a lot of work. There appears to be some "Gimbutasian" fixation with goddesses and matriarchy equalling peace. These aspects should be discussed honestly in one dedicated section and not pervade an article that deals, after all, with archaeology. What we need are less speculation about the Minoan mindset and more exact description of archaeological finds and configurations. dab (ᛏ) 18:51, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly agree. Novium 09:44, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The first paragraph reads like it is about Crete only. You could add something about the volcanism on the Minoan outpost of Santorini island (I'm not sure that it's important enough to go here though). Daphne A 11:50, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Quite right. It did give the wrong impression. --Wetman 23:13, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was always under the impression that Santorini was a Cycladic outpost.--Joe 01:12, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think there's some dispute whether Thera is a Cycladic settlement with heavy Minoan influence, or a Minoan settlement. There are also possible Minoan "colonies" on Keos, Milos, and Paros.

I'm not sure there's a good reason to have a separate section on geography. This article is about a society, not a place--if readers want to know about the physical geography of Crete, that info should be available in the Crete article. We do need to list Minoan sites, but should that be the first main section of the page? Lists don't make for entertaining or informative reading. Perhaps the article can have separate sections focused on palaces, peak sanctuaries, towns, and other settlements, each of which can talk about the appropriate sites, and then have a master list at the end of the article. Akhilleus 19:37, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Where is there a dispute over the excavations of Akrotiri, whether the site is Cycladic or Minoan? --Wetman 20:37, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wetman, I don't know the literature on Thera very well, so I could be wrong about there being a dispute. There's definitely heavy Minoan influence on Thera, but maybe the consensus is it's a Cycladic settlement with Minoan influence? Akhilleus 00:47, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My school in Greece provided me with a small guide to the archaeology of Santorini written by Prof. Christos Doumas of the University of Athens and entitled Santorini: A Guide to the Island and its Archaeological Treasures. According to this work, the earliest pottery on Santorini dates from 2500 B.C. and belongs to Phase II of the Early Cycladic civilization. The Akrotiri site is part of the Middle Cycladic (12). There is some Minoan pottery from Crete to be found, generally smaller pieces, as large pythoi were for the most part produced domestically (26). There is even one example of pottery from Syria (ibid.) Many of the paintings on Santorini bear a Minoan influence, including "horns of consecration" and other motifs (38). Interestingly, the "Frieze with the Fleet" depicts warriors in boar's tusk helmets, sailing in men-of-war and carrying spears and shields. Generally, one would associated boar's tusk helmets with the Mycaeneans (38-39). "If, however, the warriors in the miniatures of Thera are Mycaeneans then certainly many of our views on the prehistory of the Aegean around the middle of the 2nd millenium B.C. will have to be revised," the professor says (39). "The fact that Mycaenean warriors could come, even in paintings, so close to Crete means that even in the 16th century B.C. Crete had begun to lose some of her power and sovereignty in the Eastern Mediterranean" (ibid.)

So, we have Minoan pots and pictures of Mycenean soldiers on Santorini. Both are very interesting, and show that the Cycladic culture of the island was influenced by cultures immediately to the north and south. Still, I wouldn't take either of these to mean the place was anyone's "outpost," any more than the presence of croissants and Coca-Cola on the island today make it a Gallic or American "outpost." --Jpbrenna 06:38, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That seems fine to me, but I wonder why archaeologists can say definitively that it's Cycladic. How much Mycenaean or Minoan material culture would we need to see there before we decided that it wasn't Cycladic? Why don't people say that it's a Minoan culture with heavy Cycladic influence? Anyway, Thera is clearly not a Minoan "outpost," but it should be mentioned in this article, along with Melos, Keos, and Paros, as a place where there was some Minoan influence. Maybe a section on "external relations"? "trade"? "Minoan thalassocracy"? Akhilleus 08:27, 18 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This article has some serious problems with non-neutral language, in addition to what amounts to edit wars. Its also contradictory, and instead of just listing the information, it goes into basically fights between overarching interpretations. Novium 18:13, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I do not believe that it should be used, especially with the caption "a minoan fisherman" as the issue of whether thera is minoan is highly debated. Actually, more than that. I don't think many people think it is merely a minoan outpost. Wasn't this discussed just up the page from here? And given that there are many actual(ignoring the reconstruction issue) minoan paintings, from knossos etc, why don't we use one of those? http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knossos Novium 19:23, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Αμήν, Αμήν, Αμήν.--Jpbrenna 03:35, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

All disputed theories are now presented with their sources and arranged in a good order. I suggest it´s time to finally remove the NPOV och Contradict tags? --JFK 09:14, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to go ahead and remove the tags, since I agree with you. Anyone who disagrees should replace the tag they feel appropriate and cite a SPECIFIC, NEW paragraph or sentence under this comment for why they replaced it. Verloren Hoop 11:46, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see much difference between the current versions and the versions that got the NPOV/contradict tags. I'm not going to replace them, since I don't think the tags inspire anyone to address the situation. But, let's just cite examples of NPOV problems. The "Politics" section is solely about the idea that Minoan society was ruled by women. This is a controversial position, and I doubt that a majority of experts on Minoan society would agree with it. A quote from the section:

Women are shown seated on thrones, and in commanding positions. Women are often saluted by people and/or animals. Whereas depictions exist of men showing deference to women, not one shows women deferring to men. Unlike their contemporaries, who possessed obvious “strong-man” male rulers, the Minoans show almost no trace of male rule at all.

These statements properly characterize Minoan art, except for the word "women". Are these female figures goddesses or human women? If they're goddesses (or representations of The Goddess, which seems to be the assumption later in the section), can we assume that human society mirrors divine society?

More importantly, there is other evidence for Minoan "politics" (a better phrase would be "social structure") besides artistic representations (here's one article), and it seems to me that of the scholars who approach these questions from a wider array of evidence than visual art, few say that Minoans were ruled by women.

The section on "warfare" is better about citing different points of view, but still adopts a POV tone: "However, the weight of the extant evidence clearly suggests that the Minoans did not engage in war...A final bit of telling evidence against Minoan warfare:..." Perhaps the problem in this section is more one of poor organization and unclear writing, but it's still a mess. And there is stuff missing that should be there: for instance, there's nothing about "Minoan thalassocracy," the idea that there are no signs of warfare on Crete because the Minoans dominated the seas and kept enemies away from the island.

The "religion" section is also problematic. The goddesses/Goddess problem (i.e., were the Minoans polytheists or monotheists? the latter would be quite remarkable) is still there, and it would be good to confront it directly. There really ought to be a separate Minoan religion article; it's scandalous that this article has so much on the meager evidence for human sacrifice, and so little on shrines, peak sanctuaries, the function of "palaces" as ceremonial centers, etc. --Akhilleus (talk) 15:01, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've applied the dreaded {{fact}} template in a few spots, although it would be justifiable to paste it all over the article.

There are a couple of different problems with citations and the bibliography:

1. Some direct quotes have a reference, but not a specific page number from the reference.
2. Incomplete citations--e.g., author's name, but not the name of the article/book, etc.
3. Inconsistent formatting. I suggest that we maintain separate lists of references and bibliography (that's what the article has now), and in the references (i.e., the <ref> tags that give us footnotes), just cite the author/year and page number, like this: Branigan 1999, p. 14. That way, we don't duplicate information that's found in the bibliography. Also, I suggest that we don't use things like op. cit. and ibid.--fewer and fewer people understand what these abbreviations mean, and it's not much trouble to type out (or cut and paste) the author/year information again. I also suggest we avoid using the abbreviation v. (for vide?)--the footnote already implies that the reader should look at a particular page of a particular source to verify the information.
4. I also suggest we adopt a consistent bibliographic format. I've made edits to the bibliography to create some consistency, but there's stuff I've missed. Unfortunately, Wikipedia's citation templates are incomplete and hard to use, so I think we're stuck with doing the bibliography by hand.

--Akhilleus (talk) 15:41, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with all your points except one: the use of Latinate abbreviations, which is convenient and has great snob appeal. And really, if someone is a big enough nerd to be checking references, he probably knows what op. cit. and loc. cit., viz., etc. mean. I know a little Greek, so you could even throw in a κτλ.--Jpbrenna 16:34, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Eh. I know Greek and Latin and I despise these abbreviations. I don't find them convenient at all, especially the ones that refer to material cited in a previous footnote that could be pages (or in Wikipedia, inches) back. I'm a big enough nerd to have strong opinions on citation formats, too!

Seriously, I think they cause confusion in readers who aren't academically savvy, and I think that's Wikipedia's target audience. I know that most readers aren't going to check the citations, but I'm thinking of that reader who decides that s/he wants to find out more about human sacrifice at Fournou Korifi, but is stopped from doing so because s/he can't figure out what op. cit. signifies... --Akhilleus (talk) 17:15, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I edited the footnotes and references, which were hopelessly confused. I inserted the Latin stuff mostly temporarily so I could tell which footnotes I had revised and which were left over from an earlier editor. Once they were all straight I was planning to either change them to something without Latin, or in some cases remove the footnotes altogether. The main complication in that article is that the immense variety of sources cited is somewhat illusory since many are contained within a single volume. For this purpose, the Bibliography contains (properly) separate entries for each article by a different person/group within the volume, but the footnotes refer (mostly) to the article by its name, and the reader who is inquisitive is left to figure that part out. I made an exception in the case of an article cited in a collection with the author and editor being the same. Also, very few authors have more than 1 work cited (so that references to their name only is sufficient), and some of the footnotes do not refer to Bibliography entries (although this of course should be fixed). My main purpose was to excise biliographic entries from the body of the text, which is already excessively long to make it easy to give a "first read" to the text, and then to go through again and check references if you're so inclined. There are other problems I didn't get time to fix such as misspelling of numerous French words in the Bibliography. Of course if the original misspells them (not entirely impossible) then maybe the current versions should remain. Modus Vivendi 20:33, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Those all seem like good ideas to me; I was the author of some of those in-text references, but I see your point about how they make the text harder to read.

The problem you mention about many articles from a single volume should be easy to deal with if we rewrite the "warfare" section, since most of the citations come from there: someone wanted to prove their point by summarizing the contributions of a whole conference on the subject. Since this is just an encyclopedia article, I don't think we need to go into that level of detail. We can give a fair picture of the scholarly debate without including every single one of those references. --Akhilleus (talk) 03:41, 26 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the section on the "Minoan column" belongs in this article. It would be appropriate in a Minoan architecture article (which really should be created at some point), but I don't think this column form had much influence on subsequent architecture. If I'm wrong about this, I'd appreciate a correction. However, if the column is actually this notable, there ought to be a better citation for this than a textbook. --Akhilleus (talk) 15:49, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Most Greek columns have a greater diameter at the top than the bottom, creating an illusion of greater height; the Minoan column is the opposite, having a greater diameter at the top." - should this say "Greek columns have a greater diameter at the bottom than the top"?

Yes, it should. Just look at any given Doric column! --Khepidjemwa'atnefru 20:07, 26 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Simple typo, I think. I added another source for the column to make Akhilleus happy. I agree that there probably should be an architecture article, but until it's made, I think the column thing should stay. Verloren Hoop 11:44, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It seems like a good idea to keep the column section until we have a separate Minoan architecture article. Thanks for finding an additional source. Ideally, we should cite a specialist work on Minoan architecture, or perhaps a history of Greek architecture. --Akhilleus (talk) 18:35, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

*nods* I'm looking for one, but I have yet to find one. Verloren Hoop 12:12, 28 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What evidence do we have that these paintings are actually "Minoan" - as opposed to Minoan-influenced Cycladic? Are they really the best representations of purely "Minoan" art? The lead picture in the article is entitled "Portrait of a Minoan fisherman from Akrotiri" - would our fisherman really have considered himself a Keftios or whatever the Minoans called themselves? I don't neccesarily object to using these images, but the captions should be changed and we should use something from Crete for the main photo.--Jpbrenna 16:43, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I heartily agree. There are plenty of good images available in the wikipedia system, and if all those won't cover it, heck, I probably still have a few from when I visited knossos. Novium 01:28, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Spanish version has this picture, which is actually from Crete: [1]--Jpbrenna 03:46, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

PLease please please can we address this issue? It makes me wince every time the page loads :-P. Novium 05:06, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think everyone agrees that the images should be changed, so go crazy! I'd actually like to have one or more images from Akrotiri, but I'd like it/them to be paired with a section about Minoan influence outside of Crete. --Akhilleus (talk) 05:23, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

now, I know there was some contention over whether the eruption was the cause of the demise of minoan crete, due to a question over when exactly it occured, but this is the first time I can remember ever seeing someone argue that the different date meant the civilization ended earlier, instead of it not being the cause. Novium 06:22, 30 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is what happens when you rely on a newspaper article--even relatively decent papers like the Independent can't report scientific or archaeological stories properly. Manning et al. in the Science article come to the relatively boring conclusion that the "high chronology" is correct (i.e. Thera erupted in 17th century), but say nothing about redating the "fall" of the Minoan civilization. The Independent, on the other hand, probably needed something sexier to run with, and got the high chronology/Thera didn't cause decline idea confused with the low chronology/Thera destroyed Crete hypothesis--so voila, the high chronology is right, and it destroyed Crete!

I made a quick change, but at some point we should cite the Science article. I'm reluctant to keep the Independent link since it misreports Manning et al.'s arguments, are there any other free articles to cite, since Science is subscription-only? --Akhilleus (talk) 06:52, 30 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This MSNBC article is a pretty good treatment of the new articles in Science. --Akhilleus (talk) 00:20, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The date of the eruption is extremely controversial, and the current discussion is technically incorrect. The proper place to discuss the date of the eruption is in the article Thera eruption. The present article makes mention of that discussion (section "Chronology and history"). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.103.145.176 (talk • contribs) .

"technically incorrect"? How so? The text you removed certainly acknowledged that there was controversy.

I can't say I'm too thrilled with the description at the Thera eruption article, since it spends more time pontificating on the necessity for scholars to evaluate Manning et al.'s findings than actually describing the findings.

The Minoan civilization article should characterize the debate over the dating of the eruption in some fashion, at least to the point of saying that most scholars opt for the 17th century or the 16th century as the time of the eruption. Otherwise, you're probably right that detailed discussion should take place at Thera eruption. --Akhilleus (talk) 18:05, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with your last paragraph especially. I've made a small change to the article here--see what you think. Also, someone seems to have added more to the discussion at Thera eruption (though it could likely be improved further).—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.103.145.14 (talk • contribs) .

I've added/changed some of the pictures, just to give it a try, if these aren't popular, we can either change them back or try to find new ones. Novium 21:11, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, except I really liked the blue fish! Can we keep them?

the dolphins? I have no objection to them. I just thought as a first photo that the new one was more visually striking. It's a long article, find somewhere connected and stick it in :-p Novium 07:47, 5 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't like the current intro photo. I think there are many better images that could be used. An off-angle photo of a framed piece hanging on a wall isn't a very good photo to display prominately. Not to mention it hard to discern what the image is actually depictating. While a very interesting fresco, I don't this is the place for it.--Bkwillwm 05:26, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Have deleted crete and greek history category as you can access these through minoan civilization category. Enlil Ninlil 01:11, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

if I understood you, I disagree. While Minoan Crete could be considered part of Bronze Age Greek history, the reverse is not true. Novium 03:23, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am not debating history here, just reducing multiple categorization, if you can make it beter than go ahead. But The category:Crete links to category:minoan civilization which links to here. And the Category:Greek history links to Category:Ancient greece which links to Category:Minoan civilization to here. So confusing ha.

Enlil Ninlil 03:34, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to modify this section: "Some would argue that these are all aspects of a single goddess. According to Marinatos, "That a powerful goddess of nature was the chief deity of the Minoans was recognized already by Evans and has never been seriously questioned."" I would cut out the quote, because practically everything evans said *has* been seriously questioned, and it doesn't really add much. It's not stating a fact, or an interpretation, so to speak. That is, the first statement is trying to send the message that it was a monotheistic thing, and the quote is to back that up, althogh the quote doesn't show anything other than Marinatos praising evans. It gives no actual support to the one goddess thing or the mother goddess thing.

As to the first statement, I'd like to suggest something like, "It is occasionally suggested that..." but then go into how all of this is mainly supposition, because the evidence for the goddesses is mostly based off the fact they have different headgear, etc, which doesn't tell you much, so it's really impossible to say either way. What do you think? Novium 20:32, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'd cut the Marinatos quote as you suggest. However, it is quite true that some scholars think that the Minoans were monotheistic Goddess-worshippers, and if we can find a better quote (from Marinatos or someone else) that says so, I think we should include it. I think Jan Driessen also believes that the Minoans were monotheists, if I remember right. I wouldn't get deeply into condemning the Goddess supposition as conjecture--simply saying that there's a lot we don't know should be sufficient. It really is impossible to say what the Minoans believed without some texts, which we're probably never going to get, so we should really concentrate on what we can know: the nature of the iconography, whatever material remains we've got, what type of structures/spaces were involved in ritual, etc. --Akhilleus (talk) 06:52, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. But that's sort of my point..one of the articles I quoted, the one that mentioned the piece of a skull found in the "kitchen" of a sactuary-complex is basically arguing (among other things) for a monotheistic mother goddess...although subtly, because the evidence for anything concrete is nonexistant. How exactly do you interpret vague pictures that lack captions? As to my personal views...well...I see it this way: We search for meaning in the otherwise vague and unintelligible leftover pieces of Bronze Age Crete, driven on by the knowledge (or hope) that there must have once been a pattern. Yet too many of the pieces are missing, so we create images using patterns we understand as a template. And so we find the patterns that we expect . The Minoans cannot speak to us the same way more literary cultures can, so we put ourselves into the mix and from this we get Minoan Crete; the modern superimposed over the ancient, like those exhibits that claim to show the viewer what they would look like as a caveman or an ancient Egyptian. I don't think it is any coincidence that during Arthur Evan's day, Crete was seen a semi-throwback to Bachofen-esque matriarchal prehistory with nationalist and imperialist overtones. I don't think it's a coincidence that during the second world war there was an emphasis on it's peaceful, utopian nature, and then, later, it began to have feminist-nationalist overtones, bachofen with a twist. But I am getting off topic. Anyway, I don't think we should get into the "montheistic mother goddess" theory unless we're willing to go into detail about the various theories and their evidence.

Novium 07:33, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/1999/1999-10-03.html

It comes from the Bryn Mawr Classical Review. It's a review by Mary Lefkowitz of the book Ancient Goddesses: the Myths and the Evidence (collaboration of 12 writers, with Lucy Goodison and Christine Morris listed in the bibliographical notice). At the very least it could provide further reading; by the tone of the review, the book seems to address Gimbutas' works.