Wealth and Status in Iron Age Knossos

Abstract

Summary. Knossos Tekke tomb 2 is one of the richest tombs in the Iron Age Aegean, renowned for its deposits of gold. The tomb is widely attributed to a family of goldsmiths, who migrated to Knossos from the Near East. This article, however, questions this attribution. An alternative interpretation is pursued through surveys of the distribution of some luxury materials, amply represented in the Tekke tomb, in all known Knossian tombs. By setting the Tekke find against the large corpus of Knossian burial material, I identify the Tekke occupants as members of a local élite. This group is shown to have had privileged access to the products of a goldsmith's workshop, as well as to the sources of some lavish, mostly imported, raw materials, and to have regulated their distribution within Knossian society during the eighth century. The means through which the Tekke élite claimed and defended their wealth and status are assessed and their possible Late Bronze Age pedigree is conjectured.

6 Crete: Early Iron Age to Classical

“…four times larger than previously assumed). This was a nucleated settlement surrounded by cemeteries, but involved no dispersed villages, which refutes the model of polis formation through synoecism at Knossos (Kotsonas 2019c;cf. Kotsonas et al 2018).…”

Gold and electrum jewellery in the strategic area of Gadir in Phoenician period

“…An ingot of electrum found with two other ingots of gold in the Knossos Tekke tomb (Crete) dated from the end of the ninth century to the beginning of the seventh, in Iron Age. No analyses of this electrum have been specified [33]. A few objects made of silver, silver rich gold or electrum are reported in the Pit-grave Culture burials of Hungary, and in central Europe (both belonging to the third millennium) [34].…”

Untitled

“…They rise issues concerning East-West relationships, new commercial routes and enterprises, meetings of cultures far from each other, formation and, then, transformation of social structures (Kotsonas 2006, Stampolidis 1998, Stampolidis and Karageorghis 2003. This is the period in which the roots of the concept -Greek Polis‖ sink and the preparation of a precise social and ideological substratum takes place.…”