18 - Sensuous Memory, Materiality and History: Rethinking the ‘Rise of the Palaces’ on Bronze Age Crete

Summary

The main thesis of this chapter is that sensuous, bodily memory and mnemonic history were fundamental in the constitution and materialisation of Bronze Age, or Minoan, Crete. First, it examines the funerary arena of the Prepalatial period, and Palatial contexts at sites such as Knossos, Phaistos, Malia and Petras. During third and early second millennium BC Crete, a dead person is carried to a tholos tomb from a nearby village, along with objects, some belonging to or perhaps relating to the dead, many, perhaps most, for the funerary ceremonies. The chapter argues that the interplay between remembering and forgetting, and the need to materialise ancestral, mnemonic links and associations, were responsible for many of the material and social practices witnessed by archaeologists. Sensory and sensuous archaeologies are not representations of the past but rather evocations of its materiality and its affective impact. Finally, the chapter discusses how the mortuary arena now is being transformed.