THE MINOAN FALLACY: CULTURAL DIVERSITY AND MORTUARY BEHAVIOUR ON CRETE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE BRONZE AGE
Summary 
 
We are becoming increasingly aware of regional data patterning in the archaeological record of Prepalatial Crete, yet a theoretically informed and methodologically systematic study assessing the significance of such differences is still lacking. This article investigates variation through the rich mortuary record of the period and explores the significance of such diversity for our understanding of Prepalatial Crete. A detailed analysis using mortuary data reveals a complex spatial and temporal variation in the record which raises questions about social, political and ideological differences between communities on the island during the early periods of the Early Bronze Age. Prepalatial Crete emerges from this analysis as a complex context resulting from an intricate combination of local and regional histories and trajectories and far from the unified culture that the term ‘Minoan’ implies.
A matter of scale. Assessing the visibility of circular tombs in the landscape of Bronze Age Crete
Abstract This paper is concerned with the application of viewshed analysis to the study of the circular tombs of Early Bronze Age Crete (Greece). It aims at testing the hypothesis that these monumental burial structures were positioned so as to maximize their visual impact. The question of whether circular tombs were visually prominent has serious implications for our understanding of the social strategies at play in mortuary practices before the emergence of the Minoan palatial civilization. In order to explore the visual structure of the landscape in accordance with the scale of the human body, the issue of prominence is addressed by 1) taking account of the limit of visibility of circular tombs depending on their height and 2) comparing the settings of the tombs with their nearby surroundings instead of the whole study region. The local total viewsheds computed for the cemeteries of interest allow concluding that visibility was indeed one of the factors that were considered in the course of the decision-making process that led to the location of circular tombs in the landscape of Early Bronze Age Crete.
Sealings from the Olive Press Room, Knossos: new information from the unpublished notes of Sir Arthur Evans
This paper is based mainly on an unpublished page with drawings, made by Arthur Evans, dealing with sealings recovered from the Olive Press Room, Knossos. In order to date the sealings identified through Evans's drawings, an attempt is made to place them in their correct stratigraphic perspective; this is done by studying the stratigraphy of the Olive Press Room as presented by Evans in two of his notebooks.