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This book examines the development of ancient Greek civilization through a path-breaking application of social scientific theories. David B. Small charts the rise of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations and the unique characteristics of the later classical Greeks through the lens of ancient social structure and complexity theory, opening up new ideas and perspectives on these societies. He argues that Minoan and Mycenaean institutions evolved from elaborate feasting, and that the genesis of Greek colonization was born from structural chaos in the eighth century. Small isolates distinctions between Iron Age Crete and the rest of the Greek world, focusing on important differences in social structure. His book differs from others on Ancient Greece, highlighting the perpetuation of classical Greek social structure into the middle years of the Roman Empire, and concluding with a comparison of the social structure of classical Greece to that of the classical Maya civilization.
Positions the cultures of the ancient Greeks within an anthropological frame
Uses theoretical concepts to analyze the evolution of ancient Greek cultures
Compares social structure and evolution in Greece to developments elsewhere, especially the classic Maya civilization
1. My analytical frame
2. The Ancient Greek landscape
3. The Neolithic in Greece
4. Developments c.3200–2200 BCE
5. The beginning of change and the evolution of a Koine
6. Changes in the latter part of the second millennium BCE
7. The eleventh to eighth centuries: from collapse to created chaos
8. A brave new world: the new structure and characteristics of its emergence
9. Developments after the rise of Macedon
10. The Cretan difference
11. The sweep of things: the larger picture of the evolution of Ancient Greece
12. Greece is not alone: the small polity evolutionary characteristics of the ancient Greeks and other past cultures.
Description
This book examines the development of ancient Greek civilization through a path-breaking application of social scientific theories. David B. Small charts the rise of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations and the unique characteristics of the later classical Greeks through the lens of ancient social structure and complexity theory, opening up new ideas and perspectives on these societies. He argues that Minoan and Mycenaean institutions evolved from elaborate feasting, and that the genesis of Greek colonization was born from structural chaos in the eighth century. Small isolates distinctions between Iron Age Crete and the rest of the Greek world, focusing on important differences in social structure. His book differs from others on Ancient Greece, highlighting the perpetuation of classical Greek social structure into the middle years of the Roman Empire, and concluding with a comparison of the social structure of classical Greece to that of the classical Maya civilization.
Positions the cultures of the ancient Greeks within an anthropological frame
Uses theoretical concepts to analyze the evolution of ancient Greek cultures
Compares social structure and evolution in Greece to developments elsewhere, especially the classic Maya civilization
