Minoans: Life in Bronze Age Crete

Since Sir Arthur Evans rediscovered the Minoans in the early 1890s, this people of Bronze Age Crete have become a fixture in European prehistory. The popular imagination has defined a whole string of cultural traits that make up the "Minoan" personality--elegant, graceful, lithe and athletic; these refined aesthetes surrounded themsleves with sophisticated architecture and beautiful objects. Nature lovers and lovers of peace, the inhabitants of each city-state lived in harmony with their neighbors, while their fleets ruled the seas around Crete. Yet to what extent does the later work of archaeologists in Crete support this view? In Minoans, Rodney Castleden uses the results of recent archaeological research to produce a comprehensive vision of the peoples of Minoan Crete.