Dr Matthew Haysom, “Men, Women and Others in Minoan Iconography”
Dr Matthew Haysom, “Men, Women and Others in Minoan Iconography”
BSA Friends' Lecture
Throughout the history of Minoan studies scholars have felt that there was something distinctive about the way that Minoans depicted people. Arthur Evans and the first generation of scholars were struck by what seemed to them the dominant position of women in iconography. For some, this reflected a religious system dominated by one or more female divinities. For others, this was evidence of a matriarchal society. Historians of ideas, like Cynthia Eller, have done much to illuminate the wider context of this early scholarship. They situate Evans and his contemporaries in an intellectual tradition concerning a matriarchal prehistory that has deep roots in the European imagination. But, at the same time, there remains a general agreement amongst leading Cretan archaeologists that women really do dominate Minoan iconography. The aim of this lecture is to present the evidence as it is now available to us. What categories of people can we discern in the iconography?
