This paper considers the recruitment of young archaeologists into the German military on Crete and its impact upon the development of archaeological agendas during the period of the Third Reich. It explores – as a case study – the archaeological activity of August Schörgendorfer, an Austrian archaeologist, on German-occupied Crete. Schörgendorfer enlisted as a Wehrmacht officer, was upgraded to a Kunstschutz officer through the intervention of Major General Julius Ringel, and in 1941–2 undertook illicit excavations at Knossos and in the Mesara. By presenting data collected through archival research and Schörgendorfer's previously unpublished photo album of Crete, I explore his ideological trajectories and his archaeological itineraries on the island under occupation. Integrating the latter with the recent historiography of Nazi-era archaeology illuminates undocumented aspects of the Wehrmacht’s archaeological research on the island. Facets of the cultural policies of the German Archaeological Institute and wider questions of archaeological ethics are informed by analysing the entanglement of archaeological institutions and archaeologists with the political turmoil of the era of World War II.

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This study aims to provide insights into the patterns discernible in the Pylian sealing practices with regard to the identity of the seal-owners involved. The focus is on reassessing the problem of the function of glyptic imagery and on testing the working hypothesis that differences in the subject matter of the seal devices used to produce the seal impressions may have reflected the hierarchical status of the Pylian seal-owners. On the basis of context, typology and iconography it is suggested that the heirloom signet rings impressed upon the direct object sealings and the combination nodules from the Archives Complex as well as upon a set of hanging nodules from the Northeastern Building designated offices within the Pylian administrative system. In the case of the open irregular string nodules from the Northeastern Building, the Wine Magazine and the Southwestern Building, it is argued that they mainly reflect a system of receipts. Last but not least, the example of a gold ring impression reproducing key palatial iconography is used to demonstrate that the seal devices should be interpreted as visual symbols that acquired their meaning through convention. One of the mechanisms through which the rings and the seals would have been differentiated and associated with individual offices or other institutions was possibly the way specific symbols were embedded within the composition of image.introduction: sealed documents as means for detecting agency in mycenaean administrationIn the Mycenaean polities of the Late Helladic III period ( Fig. 1) documents produced by impressing seals on lumps of clay have indicated standardized administrative acts such as the receipt of incoming goods in the palatial establishments, the securing of commodities and, possibly, the distribution of their contents. The premise underlying the perception of the Mycenaean sealed documents as an effective means of institutional control is that the seals impressed upon them had a representational value, and plausibly signified individuals or their offices as well as collective groups. The study of the clay seal impressions can, accordingly, give insights not only into the nature of the transactions of each polity with its periphery but also to OXFORD JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 29(1) 57-88 2010 58 involved in the supervision of consignments to the palaces, which involved clay sealings and nodules as accounting and mnemonic devices.Nonetheless, the sealed documents recovered from the final destruction of the Ano Englianos palatial complex and from the early LM IIIA2 destruction deposit of the Knossian palace (object sealings, nodules, 2 noduli) imply the participation of a large number of persons in the sealing process (Fig. 2). If these clay documents are viewed as artefacts having semantic properties beyond the amuletic attributes of their seal devices, they can provide a new way to study agency. The morphology of the clay nodules, as well as the impressions of seals and/or gold signet rings that they bear, namely of objects with inherent social ...

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