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Home > Ancient History > Ancient societies > Greece > Bronze Age: Society in Minoan Crete

Bronze Age: Society in Minoan Crete

Everyday life

Principal focus Outcomes Occupations Farmers and herders Sheperds and goatherds Scribes Workshops Olive oil production Clothing

This tutorial was written by Dr V G Callender Assoc. Lecturer, Macquarie University

Principal focus:

The investigation of the key features of Minoan society in Crete through a range of archaeological and written sources and relevant historiographical issues.

Outcomes

H 1.1	describe and assess the significance of key people, groups, events, institutions, societies and sites within the historical context
H 3.4	explain and evaluate differing perspectives and interpretations of the past

Occupations

Archaeological evidence gives us information about the ordinary activities of Minoan people. The remains of their tools tell us about the sorts of work that people did. The occupants of the palace workrooms, for example, left behind a number of huge bronze saws, some stone hammers, different sorts of knives and stone axes. In the town of Gournia too, the excavator, Harriet Boyd, found a large collection of specialist tools, such as chisels, knives, awls, punches, nails, hammers, grinding querns, loom weights, and fish hooks. It is easy for you to work out the occupations from those. And we need only to look at the remains of buildings in Gournia and other places in Crete to realise that the masons, or workers who cut stone, must have been among the most essential Minoan tradesmen.

Mud bricks, still in situ at Gournia, have been preserved because they were turned to terracotta pottery by the fire that burned the palace. Most of the ordinary houses would have been made of mud brick with stone foundations, so the brick-makers would have been busy. Poorer people would probably have made their own bricks when they wanted to build their houses.

Farmers and herders

Although the artisans of ancient Crete are very noticeable because of the tools and other evidence that they left behind, by far the largest proportion of the population must have been taken up by subsistence farmers. Subsistence farming is growing sufficient food, and keeping sufficient animals to feed all the members of a family. Before the 20th century most of the world was kept alive by subsistence farming, and it is still the most important means of feeding people in the majority of countries around the world today.

Olive presses and separators have been found in several farming sites, and so have the basins and separators used in wine production. Only in the last year or two have the differences between the equipment of these two industries been sorted out. Both items were made on the farm, but it is thought that wine production, which was small in size, was for palace, possibly religious, consumption only.

Grain was the main crop, with emmer wheat and barley as the staple foods. The major tool of the Minoan farmer was the plough, and bronze sickles were used for harvesting during the era of the palaces. 1

Fishing and hunting would have added seafood and meat to the diet of the ancient Minoans, but we know nothing about the numbers of people who may have engaged in these occupations. It is very likely that most of the men went hunting at some time during the year, even as they did in Crete at the beginning of this century. Since the pictures we have of hunters always show men, it is unlikely that women went hunting very often.

Other information has been gradually accumulating about the farmers. Warren's study of Myrtos 2 has revealed that the most common items of production among the early Minoan farmers were olives, cereals and grapes. Both men and women would be involved in this agricultural work. Sheep were herded and eaten, and it is most likely that the children would have had the job of looking after the animals — even as they do today in many Mediterranean countries. Ninety per cent of the bones from animals found on the archaeological sites were those of sheep, so lamb and mutton would have formed an important source of protein in the Minoan diet.

Wool from the sheep was used in the manufacture of textiles, and leather from the deer and cattle killed was used for work aprons, headgear, shoes, belts and other items of clothing. Unfortunately, leather items seldom last long in rainy climates such as Crete, so we do not have the remains of Minoan leather items.

1 R.W. Hutchinson, Prehistoric Crete, Penguin Books (Harmondsworth, 1968), p.241.
2 P. Warren, Myrtos, and Early Bronze Age Settlement in Crete, BSA Supplement 7 (Oxford, 1972), pp.262ff.

Shepherds and goatherds

Watrous 3 has suggested that the herding population of Crete throughout the Minoan period probably practised transhumance, taking the animals into the upper mountains for fodder in summer, and returning to their homes on the lower slopes at the approach of cold weather. Watrous suggests that these wandering herders brought their supplies of oil and olives with them from the plains below.

3 L.V. Watrous, 'Aegean Settlements and Transhumance' in Temple University Aegean Symposium 2 (1977), pp.2 –6.

Scribes

Scribes were another category in the Minoan social structure, but we do not know how important they were within their society. In Mycenaean society they do not appear to have been on a high social stratum, but in other countries at that time scribes were considered to be very important indeed. All of the scribes that appear in our evidence from Crete were bureaucrats — government officials; usually bureaucrats work in offices, but many of the Minoan bureaucrats also travelled a lot between palace centres and the important villas that were dotted over the countryside. We know this because they took their personal sealing stones with them to stamp the clay tablets of officials in the various palace centres. Other scribes seem to have been employed in a few of the large villas that channelled records to the palace centres.

Potter's marks (some of which include figures from the Minoan Linear A script) suggest that some people, apart from scribes, could read. The use of seals in Minoan Crete has been shown to have been extensive (over 6 000 clay sealings were found in the room of the lobby at Phaistos palace, for example), and this points to a well-developed bureaucratic organisation of various workers and officials. The large number of Linear A tablets, and the frequent examples of numeracy testify to literacy, accountancy and bureaucracy being well-developed within the palace economies c. 2000 B.C. These activities continued up until the collapse of the country palaces, but it is likely that only a few hundred persons at any one time in Minoan society could read or write.

Workshops

Other signs of specialised jobs can be found in the palaces, in workplaces, such as the lapidary workroom, and the pottery workroom at the Palace at Knossos. From these places we learn that there were stone carvers and potters. The large collection of loom weights that was found in the palace indicates that the female weavers had their workplace in the upper floor near the stone workers. In the Greek Linear B tablets the huge extent of the Minoan weaving and embroidery industries of Knossos and Phaistos are revealed, and it is very likely that Minoan women were doing that during the Minoan period, too. Those tablets show us that this textile industry took place in the palace, and it is very likely that the Minoan palaces were in charge of that industry. It has now been realised that the palace at Knossos gained most of its wealth and did much of its trading not in olive oil (as was formerly stated), but in the wool and textile industries.

Another type of occupation now known to have existed in several palaces was that of the faience makers. Faience is a mixture of materials that make a sort of glass. Usually faience covers pottery, but it can also be coated over stone objects. Sometimes whole objects are made from faience. All these different techniques were used in the Minoan manufacture of faience objects. A famous example of faience work is the celebrated Snake Goddess that Evans found in the Temple Repository in the palace at Knossos, but there are others.

Other special rooms found in various palaces and large villas show that vase makers, metalworkers and carvers of stone and ivory had special areas set aside for their work. At Zakros there were both a dye works and a furnace; the first palace at Malia also has evidence of intense metal working. Another furnace was found at Hagia Triada, and there was a blast furnace at Phaistos palace. The vast amount of Minoan jewellery, tools and weaponry, and the large quantity of miniature votive offerings made in metal also tell us that the metalsmiths must have been numerous in Minoan Crete, but there has been only a limited amount of evidence for the remains of metalworking installations. This has led some scholars to think that the metalsmiths were itinerant, or wandering workmen, who went from town to town making and mending instruments.

Olive oil production

From the numbers of magazines set aside for the storage of olive oil we can estimate that there must have been many people employed in the manufacture of olive oil. However, we do not know whether it was a job done by everyone at harvest time (as it is today in Crete), or whether there were specialist oil workers. Oil appears to have been pressed out on the local farms, then transported (probably by cart) to the palaces, where it was stored in long, narrow magazines. Some of this oil was used for cooking, some for heating, and some was used to make perfume. A lot of it was used in trade, probably with Egypt, which had little vegetable oil.

Clothing

Some of the clothing depicted for both men and women is much more elaborate (and therefore more costly) than the clothing worn by other Minoans. These people wear jewellery, too. This would suggest that Minoan society was stratified, or in layers; when society is stratified it means that some people are in a higher stratum (or level) than others. The higher the stratum, the more important those people are considered to be. It is normal for societies to be stratified.

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