Women, Children and the Family in the Late Aegean Bronze Age: Differences in Minoan andMycenaean Constructions of GenderAuthor(s): Barbara A. OlsenSource: World Archaeology, Vol. 29, No. 3, Intimate Relations (Feb., 1998), pp. 380-392Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/125037Accessed: 27/11/2008 16:45

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=taylorfrancis.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with thescholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform thatpromotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Taylor & Francis, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to WorldArchaeology.

http://www.jstor.org

Women, children and the family in

the Late Aegean Bronze Age: differences in Mllinoan and

Mycenaean constructions of gender

Barbara A. Olsen

Abstract

This paper discusses how the relationship between women and children is portrayed and under- stood in the societies of the Mycenaean (Greek) mainland and Late Minoan Crete. Child rearing has been long assumed to be the primary social role of Aegean women. Yet the art of Late Minoan Crete reveals almost no interest in idealizing women as child-nurturers. The women of Minoan iconography are almost uniformly depicted outside of domestic contexts. In contrast, Mycenaean imagery provides a systematic, iconographic reinforcement of women's task as child-rearers and suggests a much greater level of investment on the part of Mycenaean society to envision women within the context of the home. Therefore, while the written records of both societies place women as child-care givers in daily practice, their iconography suggests that the two cultures valued this role differently and did not invest equally in placing women primarily within the family structure.

Keywords

Aegean Bronze Age; figurines; gender; kourotrophoi; Minoan; Mycenaean; children.

Introduction

Motherhood and the tending of children has long been assume asas the primary social role of the women of the Late Bronze Age Aegean Minoan and Mycenaean societies. This

assumption, however, has been more based on ethnographic analogies or contemporary ideologies than on examinations of relevant archaeological material. Evidence for Minoan and Mycenaean child-care practices derives from two sources: the administrative records written in the Linear B script and artistic depictions of women and children. The

Mycenaean texts attest that women of Mycenaean Crete and the Mycenaean mainland were the primary tenders of children. Iconographic sources, however, reveal distinct differences among Minoan and Mycenaean depictions of child-care scenes. Child-bearing,

World Archaeology Vol. 29(3): 380-392 Intimate Relations ? Routledge 1998 0043-8243

Women, children and the family in the late Aegean Bronze Age 381

or kourotrophos, scenes are only a trope in Mycenaean iconography; Minoan art evinces no interest in portraying women with children.

Background

The Late Bronze Age in the Aegean Basin (1600-1100 BC) witnessed the rise of two

interdependent civilizations, the Minoans on Crete and the Mycenaeans on the Greek mainland. While the Mycenaean Greeks spoke the same language and worshipped many of the same gods as their historical period descendants, the identity of the Minoans is less apparent. Their language, written in the Linear A script, is untranslated, and their

relationship to known ethnic groups in the Mediterranean remains uncertain. The Cretan civilization, designated Minoan after the legendary Cretan king Minos, held

primacy first. It culminated in the Second Palace period which lasted from Middle Minoan III to Late Minoan IB (c. 1700-1450 BC; for abbreviations and chronology see Table 1). This period witnessed the rebuilding of the Cretan palaces following earth-

quake damage, the emergence of Cretan syllabic writing in the Linear A script, a flour-

ishing of Minoan art in such diverse media as fresco, glyptic, figurines, and ceramics, a

highly-developed system of internal and external trade, and a dominant cultural role in the Aegean which in turn heavily influenced the Mycenaean mainland in art, architec- ture, and possibly in more direct political mechanisms. This cultural hegemony lasted until the Late Minoan IB period (c. 1450 BC). L(ate) M(inoan) IB marks the destruction

by fire of nearly all the primary and secondary sites of the Minoan administration. This destruction has generally been attributed to the Mycenaean Greeks from the mainland and has been traditionally understood as a Mycenaean military conquest of Crete. (A minority of scholars have proposed less directly military explanations for the Mycenaean domination of Crete in the Third Palace Period (LM II-LM IIIB).) In any case, My- cenaean presence and Mycenaean administration are securely attested on Crete in this

period. The most compelling evidence for the Mycenaean administration of Crete is that the language and script of the palatial administrative records changes from the Minoan

Table I Late Bronze Age Aegean chronology, following Dickinson 1994; all dates approximate.

Date BC Mainland (LH = Late Helladic) Crete (LM = Late Minoan)

1600 ------------ LMIA, 1500 LH1, IIA IB

1400 LH IIB, IIIA1 LM II, IIIA1

1300 LH IIIA2, LM IIIA2, IIIB1, IIIB2 LM IIIB

1200 1100 LH IIIC LM IIIC

1000 Submycenaean Subminoan

382 Barbara A. Olsen

Linear A script to the Mycenaean Linear B script, which records an early version of Greek. The question of how deeply Mycenaean influence permeates Minoan culture remains open (see Driessen 1994).

Women and children in the Aegean Bronze Age

The role of women and the nature of gender relations in the Late Bronze Age civilizations of the Aegean Basin have long attracted both scholarly and popular interest. Ever since the first modern excavations in the early 1900s at the Minoan administrative centre of Knossos recovered depictions of powerful and prominent female figures in frescoes, fig- urines, and glyptic, the gender relations of prehistoric Crete have enjoyed a great deal of attention. To date, the majority of the focus both in academic circles and the popular press has largely centred around attempts to posit a Mother Goddess-centred religion (Evans 1932; Gimbutas 1989) or to recover a matriarchal society among the Minoans (Thomas 1973). The Mycenaeans, usually dismissed as the bearers of Indo-European patriarchal baggage, received much less scholarly attention. Scholarly opinion, however, is by no means in consensus on these assertions. Recent scholarship has severely questioned read- ings which allege a goddess-centred prehistory, noting severe methodological flaws in these analyses as well as essentialist biases (Talalay 1994; Meskell 1995; Conkey and Tring- ham 1995). At very least, the notion of a pre-Indo-European Great Goddess, especially a Great Mother Goddess, has been strongly challenged.

In the last decade, scholarship on women in prehistory has become increasingly sophisticated, beginning with Conkey and Spector's ground-breaking synthesis of femin- ist and archaeological theory (Conkey and Spector 1984). Much recent work in the Aegean has focused on the social status of women in the prehistoric societies, particularly through the analysis of gendered space (Tringham 1994). To date, discussions of the social positioning of women in Aegean pre- and proto-history have tended toward polarization: products of two vastly different theoretical and methodological approaches. In analyses that privilege evidence from Aegean art, where female figures often occupy prominent spatial positions, women are assigned power and status. They are commonly identified either as representations of the so-called Minoan Mother Goddess, or, in human contexts, as high-ranking public officials or priestesses, whose social status is suggested by their jew- ellery, costume or administrative regalia. In contrast, assessments privileging either ethno-

graphic analogies inspired by modern Mediterranean societies or essentialist models

inspired by hunter-gatherer ethnographies tend to conceptualize women as remaining close to home, occupied primarily with domestic affairs and the raising of children, whether in human contexts (N. Marinatos 1995; Dickinson 1994), or in the divine realm (Evans 1935). Only recently have feminist scholars begun challenging the androcentric biases of such interpretations, calling instead for a greater awareness of gender as a culture-specific phenomenon, and for the study of gendered social roles as products of specific societies. This paper examines more closely one of the primary social roles scholars have attributed to Bronze Age women, the conflation of woman and the social role of child-rearer or kourotrophos.

Women, children and the family in the late Aegean Bronze Age 383

Women and children in the Linear B tablets

For the Late Aegean Bronze Age, evidence relevant to women's role in the raising of chil- dren stems from two sources: from the administrative records written in the Linear B

script from both Crete and mainland Greece, and from the evidence of Late Bronze Age iconography. The Linear B records, written on clay tablets and intended for temporary use, were serendipitously preserved when the buildings in which they were stored were burned, effectively firing the tablets. The two best textually attested centres, Pylos on the mainland and Knossos on Crete, have between them produced nearly 5,000 tablets. The tablets record matters relevant to each palace's economy such as counts of personnel, records of rations allotted to workers, quantities of materials and goods being received or distributed by the administrative centre, dedications to divinities, and records of land

grants, among others. The tablets depict a highly gendered society with clear task dif- ferentiation between the sexes, both in domestic and in palatial contexts. Men and women

occupy different spheres and perform tasks as members of single-sex workgroups. Of the

twenty-two occupations held by women at Knossos, only two of these occupations are shared with men: those of religious functionaries and slave. The situation is much the same at Pylos where, of thirty-five occupations performed by women, only four are shared with men: again, religious functionary and slave with two additional categories of leather-

working and weaving. The texts, however, are clear that, even for these last two shared

professions, men and women still do not work within the same workgroups and their work environments remain segregated by sex.

The texts also provide a fair amount of material on the complexities of domestic social organization at both Knossos and Pylos. By no means all families governed by these poli- ties are recorded. The only family units discernible in the tablets are ones that the palaces have some interest in regulating. This may imply that we may read palatial ideology reflected in the organizational structures of these families, for example in terms of heads of household choices or, useful to this study, child-care choices. At both centres, child care is a task performed by women. Approximately 200 tablets from these two centres record children in the so-called personnel series tablets; approximately 90 tablets at Knossos with an additional 110 at Pylos. Children appear primarily in three contexts: as components of family units, as recipients of rations, and accompanying workgroups of specialized labour- ers. About a dozen or so tablets record what appear to be households, listing numbers of men, women, girls, and boys, respectively; the remainder record children accompanying workgroups of women. At Pylos, in the personnel series that record the working strength of women's workgroups, the census and rations tablets consistently count boys and girls with their mothers. At Knossos the process is further elaborated since the children are differentiated not only by sex, but also by age with two separate age grades for 'older' and 'younger' children. We see, accompanying the women of working groups, children differ- entiated by sex and by age grades: younger girls, older girls, younger boys, and older boys. It is interesting to note that the persons designated older boys continue to be grouped with their mothers rather than their fathers. There is unfortunately no way of knowing just what is meant by 'older' and 'younger'. But it is clear that once they pass the line from 'older boys' to men, they return to a rigidly gendered society. In the few tablets where boys are recorded as accompanying men, the texts are explicit that these sons are older

384 Barbara A. Olsen

boys and accompany their fathers for the purpose of instruction in their trade: these are not young children requiring care. Men are never listed with children unless those chil- dren are older boys specifically undergoing training in a trade, in contrast to women who tend children of both sexes until the age when boys leave for professional training. In short, child care in both the Mycenaean mainland and Mycenaean Crete is clearly a role assigned to women and receives fairly equal treatment in the tablets of each centre. It is the manner in which Minoan and Mycenaean societies display women with children and infants in their iconographic repertoires which is extremely different.

Mycenaean kourotrophoi

While kourotrophoi scenes, or images of women holding children, are well attested in Neolithic Greece as well as in the Greek historical period (Price 1978), this theme receives rather differential attention in the Bronze Age Aegean. While Cyprus, for example, has a continuous tradition of kourotrophoi scenes in all phases of the Bronze Age (Merrilees 1988), on the Greek mainland kourotrophos images appear only in the Late Bronze Age (termed Late Helladic in this region) and then only within specific genres. Images of women and children are absent from Mycenaean frescoes, glyptic, pictorial painted pottery, and metalwork; Mycenaean depictions of nurturing scenes are limited to figurines where female figures are depicted cradling infants. The corpus of kourotrophoi consists of approximately seventy terracottas, a small but significant subset of Mycenaean terra- cotta figurines, and one ivory group. They derive from at least eighteen sites: seventeen on the Mycenaean mainland (Fig. 1) and one on Cyprus. Two sites have produced large clusters of figurines: a votive deposit at Aphaia on Aegina produced twenty-seven groups, and at least twenty were excavated at the site of Mycenae. These figurines are not without methodological difficulties. French (1971), in her valuable and exhaustive study of the development of the Mycenaean terracotta figurines, points out that these figurines often survive in highly fragmentary condition, were often not recorded by earlier excavators unless they were found in tombs, and most have not been thoroughly published.

I will use French's (1971) typology to outline the chronological development of these figurines. Mycenaean terracotta figurines begin to appear during the Late Helladic II period and are found in large numbers during all phases of Late Helladic III. As Mylonas (1956) observed, the figurines appear suddenly and their types are fully developed. Although the figurines employ a variety of compositional forms, there are three major types, designated the Phi, Tau, Psi figurine types after the letters of the Greek alphabet they resemble. They tend to be rather small, typically between 10 and 20 cm in height. They depict single female forms, often with articulated breasts; they are also typically cur- sorily painted, with curvo-linear lines on the body to suggest decorated clothing. The fig- urines' legs are covered by their garments. All have articulated arms. Phi figurines have their hands resting on the hips with the elbows bending outwards resembling the Greek letter (>. (The Phi type is preceded by the Proto-Phi type, introduced in LH II, which is very similar to the standard type but has not quite reached the canonical proportions.) Tau figurines hold their elbows straight out, parallel to the ground reminiscent of the letter T. And Psi figurines hold both arms extended over the head at diagonal angles resembling

Women, children and the family in the late Aegean Bronze Age 385

PHOCIS

PELOPONNESE

Figure 1 Mainland sites where kourotrophos figurines were excavated.

386 Barbara A. Olsen

the letter T. In terms of chronological development, the earliest type to appear is the Phi, followed by the Tau and Psi types, respectively. Both of the earlier forms continue to persist with the introduction of the later variantso

A subset of Mycenaean terracotta figurines adds a child to the woman; these figurines are termed kourotrophoi figurines from the Greek for 'child-nurturer'. Kourotrophoi vari- ants of each of the three standard types are to be found. The majority of these figurines follow a canonical form: a single female figurine of the Phi, Tau or Psi types nestles a single child against its mother's left breast, either clasped in the left arm (in the Phi and Tau fig- urines) or unclasped as in the Psi figurines. The child faces forward and may be rather stylized or may be rendered with greater detail.

The earliest known Mycenaean kourotrophos dates to LH II and was discovered in the Aidonia cemetery excavations at Nemea in the Argolid (Demakopoulou 1996). Found in a chamber tomb which contained the secondary burial of a child, it is a highly naturalis- tic figurine of Proto-Phi type with a long, ellipsoidal torso and a short thick stem. The infant nurses at one breast and rests its hand on the other. Even in this figurine, the ear- liest, all the canonical features are present - the child is clasped in front over the left breast of a standing woman of the popular figurine type.

In the following LHIIIA period, Mycenaean figurines become dramatically more numerous on the mainland. Kourotrophoi occur at many sites and are found in a variety of excavation contexts, including graves, settlements, and votive deposits. Kourotrophoi groups of LH IIIA include several typological forms, but the majority follow the develop- ment of single figure Proto-Phi and Phi types as identified by French (1971). Three Proto- Phi kourotrophoi figurines dating to LHIIIA1 have been found: one from the Mycenaean cemetery of Deiras near Argos (Deshayes 1966) and a second group from the Atreus Bothros at Mycenae. Another Proto-Phi group of uncertain provenance is on display in Geneva (Price 1978). LHIIIA2 contexts have produced six kourotrophos groups, all of the Phi type. Of these one was found at Berbati in a tomb containing six adults and a child

(Saflund 1965), three were found at Mycenae - two from the Petsas house excavations and a third from a chamber tomb - and one came from Palaiopolis on Kythera (Water- house and Hope Simpson 1961; Coldstream and Huxley 1972). The Kythera group war- rants further comment as it displays a number of unusual features: the female figure has pierced breasts and holds a remarkably large child who sits upright and wears a polos-cap. It has been suggested that this figure may be a local imitation of a better made example from the mainland. (It has been suggested that Kythera began as a Minoan colony or fell under heavy Minoan influence but, by the LHIII period, the material culture of Kythera reflects Mycenaean and not Minoan traits.)

Contemporaneous with the above is a Phi group from chamber tomb 41 at Mycenae (Tsountas 1888; French 1971) of a more unusual composition. Instead of the more typical one-woman, one-child convention, this figure carries two children and a parasol-like object. One child is nestled against her left breast in the usual formula but, on her back, below the parasol projecting from the left shoulder, is a second child partially hidden beneath the parasol. Two other triplet groups have been excavated, one from the votive deposit at Aegina, and the other from chamber tomb 80 at Mycenae.

The most frequently cited Mycenaean scene portraying the interaction of women and children - the Ivory Trio from the citadel of the site of Mycenae (Wace 1949; S. Marinatos

Women, children and the family in the late Aegean Bronze Age 387

1973; etc.) - also dates to LH IIIA. This group differs from the rest of the Mycenaean kourotrophoi in that it is the one depiction of child-rearing rendered in a luxury material - imported ivory rather than native clay. This group depicts two female seated figures accompanied by a male child. It has often been read as having religious overtones, with the participants identified as goddesses with a young god (Wace 1949) or divine nurses

caring for a human child after death (Mylonas 1956). Additionally, three kourotrophoi figurines are attested from the transition from LH

IIIA to IIIB: one from tomb 35 at Prosymna, which was a cist with no extant bones, a second from tomb 1 at Dendra which contained five skeletons, and the third from the Petsas house excavations at Mycenae.

LHI IIB introduces two new types of kourotrophos figurines to the corpus. Here, the

original Phi type is supplemented by child-carrying Tau and Psi figurines. Canonical Psi

kourotrophos groups are attested at Aegina, Mycenae, and by another group of uncertain

origin, now on display at the Alte Museum in Berlin. None of the Tau kourotrophoi are well preserved; French (1971) publishes one highly fragmentary group from Mycenae and mentions the existence of an additional six unpublished groups.

Two terracotta triple groups depicting two women with a single child also appear in LH IIIB. From chamber tomb 79 at Mycenae was excavated a group of two female Phi fig- urines, attached at the body, carrying a child between them on their shoulders (S. Mari- natos 1933; Mylonas 1956). A similar figure was found at chamber tomb 6 at Voula by Papademetriou and Theochares. The interpretation of these groups has given rise to much

speculation. French (1971) argues that they should be read as related to the triple ivory group from Mycenae, in which the child wears similar clothing and jewellery.

A final compositional type, differing from the canonical type, is the seated kouro- trophos type, attested by two figurines, one from the Louvre, reportedly from Mycenae (Mollard-Besques 1954), and the other from grave A at Voula. In both groups, the child rests on the lap of a seated Phi figurine, otherwise of canonical proportions.

Furthermore, we have several kourotrophoi for which no date more specific than LH III can be assigned. These figurines remain undatable for several reasons: because of their extremely fragmentary condition, because they derive from excavations very early in this century, or because their excavation contexts are no longer known. Among the latter cat- egory is the group in Brussels which is the only published wheel-made kourotrophos (Price 1978). While this figurine is unique in its production technique, it otherwise closely follows traditional compositional conventions; the figure's small plastic arms curve over her chest, and the child is held in the left arm as usual. Other undatable groups include the Phi figurines from Priphtiani, Eleusis, Zygouries, Aegina, and Mycenae, as well as the group from Cyprus, the sole Mycenaean kourotrophos figurine found outside of mainland Greece. French (1971) reports additional kourotrophoi from the sites of Eutresis and Thebes in Boeotia, but there is some doubt as to whether the Eutresis figurine is actually carrying a child rather than a snake (Goldman 1931) and I have been unable to verify the existence of the latter group.

Finally, Rutter reports a possible kourotrophos of Late Psi type from Korakou dating to the LH IIIC period, following the collapse of the Mycenaean palatial system (Rutter 1974).

A variety of explanations for the function of these groups has been proposed. Most of these explanations focus only on one type of findspot, namely tombs, to the exclusion of

388 Barbara A. Olsen

the others. Explanations based on groups found in tombs tend to identify the female figure as a goddess (Mylonas 1956; S. Marinatos 1933) or, similarly, as a divine nurse who pro- tects the child after its death (Demakopoulou 1996). Mylonas (1956), following S. Mari- natos (1933), argues that Psi figurines especially were divinities to be placed in graves, presumably graves of children. It should be emphasized, however, that many of the graves where kourotrophoi figurines were found show no evidence of containing child burials. Others propose that these figurines were deposited in graves to ensure health and fertil- ity (Van Leuven 1994). Finally, figurines from intra-settlement findspots have been sug- gested to be children's playthings (Blegen 1937). It is again necessary to note that the largest cache of kourotrophoi figurines, namely the twenty-seven kourotrophos figurines from Aegina, was not found in either necropolis or a settlement, but came from a votive deposit. The most judicious reading might then be that the meaning of these figures varies

according to context. They may be votives, grave offerings, and/or household objects. What is significant here is that all three of these contexts are loci where the placement of women with infants is emphasized.

Minoan and Mycenaean Crete

In contrast to the numerous kourotrophoi from the Mycenaean mainland, images placing women with young children are virtually absent from Minoan art before the LMIB destructions which herald the Mycenaean presence on Crete. Excavations have recovered no Cretan Middle Minoan or LMI kourotrophos scenes in any medium; not in terracotta, metalwork, frescoes, stone work, glyptic, or faience. The closest associated image is the Minoan-inspired fresco from the West House at Akrotiri on the island of Thera where an older child stands near to a woman (LMIA) (Immerwahr 1983), but this depiction is not an image from a Cretan context. Minoan art from Cretan contexts does show an interest in the depiction of children. For example, there are two LMI ivory children from the town of Palaikastro and an LMI bronze infant from the cave of Psychro. Furthermore, Minoan art depicts in high numbers figurines of individual women, especially as votives at Minoan

peak sanctuaries. We also see a few group compositions involving women. Yet nowhere in all of Minoan art do these elements combine to produce scenes where women nurture children.

Nurturing scenes do occur in Minoan (pre-LMIB) iconography, but they are never

anthropomorphic. Animal mothers and young are depicted in ivory, glyptic, and on the two Middle Minoan III faience plaques from the Temple Repositories at Knossos which

depict a cow and her calf and a goat with her young. The nearest nurturing image in an

anthropomorphic setting is substantially earlier - the Early Bronze Age Goddess of

Myrtos (EM II), a terracotta figurine who reserves the space in her arms not for children but for a miniature terracotta juglet resembling those found in excavations at Myrtos (Plate 1).

Kourotrophos imagery in Mycenaean Crete is equally sparse. Following the LM IB

destructions, kourotrophoi remain extremely rare. The sole representation depicts an

anthropomorphic mother and child - the so-called goddess from the Mavrospelio ceme- tery near Knossos (Forsdyke 1926-7). This figurine, of the LM III cylindrical-skirted

Women, children and the family in the late Aegean Bronze Age 389

Plate 1 'The Goddess of Myrtos.' (Reprinted by permission of Editions Hannibal.)

goddess type, is rendered in terracotta and holds a small male child. This child is not cradled against her left breast as per the Phi, Tau, and Psi figurines of the Mycenaean mainland but rather is held face-forward, at arms' length as if in presentation. While the

cylindrical-skirted goddess is a frequent Late Minoan type, attested at numerous Cretan sites, the Mavrospelio example is unique among the cylindrical-skirted 'goddesses', on two

grounds. First, she alone holds something in her arms (all other cylindrical-skirted 'god- desses' raise their arms above their heads) and, second, she was placed in a burial whereas the others of this type most commonly come from shrine areas within settlements. I contend that she is problematic as a source for Minoan conceptualizations of child care for the following reasons. Her late date of LM IIIA, roughly contemporaneous with the Knossos Linear B tablets, places her well into the Mycenaean period. Her pose is repeated nowhere else in Minoan iconography. And her findspot in a burial is highly atypical since Cretan figurines are more commonly found in peak sanctuaries, sacred enclosures, or domestic shrines. Very infrequently are they found in graves. Additionally, several of the cemeteries near Knossos in this period, Mavrospelio included, have unusual features that have prompted suggestions that they were used by an intrusive Mycenaean population. Since burial of figurines is a more common Mycenaean practice, and given her marked

390 Barbara A. Olsen

differences from other Cretan figurines, it is plausible that this figurine may have been produced by a Minoan artist commissioned by a Mycenaean mourner. Regardless, nothing about her appearance or function implies her use by a 'Hellenized' Minoan rather than by a mainlander on Crete. It is also interesting to note that, while Mycenaean Phi and Psi figurines have been found on Crete, none has been a kourotrophos. Finally, it is not until the eighth century BC that child-rearing scenes are to be found as a regular motif on Crete when they begin to appear at the cave of Cave of Eileithyia, 'he goddess of child- birth.

Conclusion

Merrilees (1988) in discussing Cypriot terracotta kourotrophoi refers to mother and child scenes as variations on an eternal theme. While this 'eternal theme' is certainly resonant with Mycenaean cultural ideology, it is at best a flimsy one for the Minoans. In contrast to previous scholars who have asserted the centrality of mother-child imagery in Minoan religion and society (Evans 1935), I argue that nothing in Minoan iconographic depictions of divine or human life promotes or even associates women with children. Furthermore, I argue that this represents, if not a fundamental difference in gender construction between Minoan and Mycenaean societies, at very least a fundamentally different approach to a gendered social role.

This study has several implications. First, Crete and the mainland cannot be read as sharing identical gender ideologies, either in the Minoan or Mycenaean period. Aegean societies share no standardized investment in depicting motherhood as women's primary social role. Motherhood occupies a much more central role in Mycenaean cultural ideol- ogy than it does in Minoan. This might be surprising in light of the allegations of a matri- archal or goddess-centered Minoan culture and the patriarchal nature of Mycenaean culture. I suggest, however, that the iconographic record be read as reinforcing cultural- specific conceptualizations of where women's time and energies should be invested. It may not be motherhood per se that is being celebrated in Mycenaean society but rather the locating of women in domestic contexts which is being iconographically reinforced.

In contrast, Minoan society does not invest in idealizing women as mothers. It seems instead to place them in capacities other than those associated with the care of infants. We see in Minoan iconography images of women in more public contexts: occupying prominent spatial positions in outdoor assemblies and processions, interacting with each other either in conversation or in dance, and acting in religious contexts either as indi- vidual worshippers or as officials involved in sacrificial rituals. Above all, emphasis is on the social rather than the biological, the public rather than the domestic.

The second implication of this study is that this difference between Minoan and My- cenaean iconographic interests persists into the Mycenaean period on Crete. While the tablets reveal that both Mycenaean women and the women of Mycenaean Crete share the same social role of child-care provider, their societies are not uniform in their represen- tations of this role. The art of Mycenaean Crete continues to follow the Minoan traditions regarding child-rearing scenes rather than adopting the contemporary Mycenaean inter- est in them, implying the survival of at least some aspects of Minoan child-care ideology.

Women, children and the family in the late Aegean Bronze Age 391

The final point pertains to Minoan religion. It must be noted that, if one wishes to place a 'Minoan Mother Goddess' at the centre of the Minoan pantheon, one must take into account the complete iconographic silence on anthropomorphic motherhood in Minoan Crete and the near-complete silence even in the period of Mycenaean domination of

Crete. There is simply no evidence for the celebration of motherhood, divine or human,

among the Minoans.

Duke University, USA and American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Greece

References

Blegen, C. W. 1937. Prosymna. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Coldstream, J. N. and Huxley, G. L. (eds) 1972. Kythera, Excavations and Studies. London: Faber & Faber.

Conkey, M. W. and Spector, J. D. 1984. Archaeology and the study of gender. Advances in Archaeo- logical Method and Theory, 7: 1-29.

Conkey, M. W. and Tringham, R. E. 1995. Archaeology and the Goddess: exploring the contours of feminist archaeology. In Feminisms in the Academy (eds D. C. Stanton and A. J. Stewart). Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, pp. 199-247.

Demakopoulou, K. (ed.) 1996. The Aidonia Treasure. Seals and Jewelry of the Aegean Late Bronze Age. Athens: Ministry of Culture.

Deshayes, J. 1966. Argos, les Fouilles de la Deiras. Paris: J. Vrin.

Dickinson, 0. 1994. The Aegean Bronze Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Driessen, J. 1994. La Crite mycenienne. Les Dossiers d'Archeologie, 195: 66-83.

Evans, A. J. 1921-35. The Palace of Minos at Knossos I (1921), II (1928), III (1930), IV (1935). London: Macmillan.

Forsdyke, E. J. 1926-7. The Mavro Spelio cemetery at Knossos. BSA, 28: 243-98.

French, E. 1971. The development of the Mycenaean terra-cotta figurines. Annual of the British School at Athens, 66: 142-4.

Gimbutas, M. 1989. The Language of the Goddess. San Francisco: Harper & Row.

Goldman, H. 1931. Excavations at Eutresis in Boeotia. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Immerwahr, Sara A. 1983. The people in the frescoes. In Minoan Society. Proceedings of the Cambridge Colloquium 1981 (ed. L. Nixon). Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, pp. 143-53.

Marinatos, N. 1995. Formalism and gender roles: a comparison of Minoan and Egyptian art. In Politeia: Society and State in the Aegean Bronze Age. Proceedings of the 5th International Aegean Conference /5e Rencontre egeenne internationale, University of Heidelberg, Archdologisches Institut, 10-13 April 1994 (eds R. Laffineur and W-D Niemeier). Vol. II. Aegaeum, Annales d'archeologie egeenne de l'Universit6 de Liege et UT-PASP, 12. Universite de Liege, Histoire de l'art et arch6olo- gie de la Grece antique; University of Texas at Austin, Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory, pp. 577-85.

Marinatos, S. 1933. Funde und for Schungen auf Kreta. Archiologischer Anzeiger, 48: 287-314.

Marinatos, S. 1973. Kreta, Thera, und das Mykenische Hellas. Munich: Hirmer.

392 Barbara A. Olsen

Merrilees, R.S. 1988. Mother and child: a Late Cypriote variation on an eternal theme. Mediter- ranean Archaeology, 1: 42-56.

Meskell, L. 1995. Goddesses, gimbutas and new age archaeology. Antiquity, 69(262): 74-86.

Mollard-Besques, S. 1954. Catalogue Raisonnee des Figurines et Reliefs au Musee du Louvre. Paris: The Louvre.

Mylonas, G. 1956. Seated and multiple Mycenaean figurines in the National Museum of Athens, Greece. In The Aegean and the Near East: Studies Presented to Hetty Goldman on the Occasion of her Seventy-Fifth Birthday (ed. S. S. Weinberg). Locust Valley and New York: J. J. Augustin, pp. 110-21.

Price, T. H. 1978. Kourotrophoi: Cults and Representations of the Greek Nursing Deities. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Rutter, J. 1974. LHIIIB and IIIC Periods at Korakou and Gonia, Vol. II. Dissertation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.

Saflund, G. 1965. Excavations at Berbati 1936-1937. Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell.

Scott, J. W. 1986. Gender: a useful category of historical analysis. The American Historical Review, 91(5): 1053-75.

Spector, J. and Whelan, M. K. 1989. Incorporating gender into archaeology courses. In Gender and Anthropology. Critical Review for Research and Teaching (ed. Sandra Morgen). Washington: American Anthropological Association, pp. 71-94.

Talalay, L. 1994. A feminist boomerang: the great goddess of Greek prehistory. Gender and History, 6(2): 165-83.

Thomas, C. G. 1973. Matriarchy in early Greece: the Bronze Age and Dark Ages. Arethusa, 6(2): 173-96.

Tringham, R. 1994. Engendered places in prehistory. Gender, Place, and Culture, 1(2): 169-203.

Tsountas, Ch. 1888. AvUOKrKL Tc rwc v ev MIKqVOLXv (Excavations of the tombs in Mycenae). ApXaLtoX,YLKo E 4)(ULepeLs, 1888: 119-80.

Van Leuven, J. 1994. Tombs and religion at Mycenaean Prosymna. Journal of Prehistoric Religion, 8: 42-61.

Wace, H. 1949. Ivories from Mycenae I. The Ivory Trio. In Mycenae (ed. A. J. B. Wace) Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 101-3.

Waterhouse, H. and Simpson, R. Hope 1961. Prehistoric Laconia: Part II. BSA, 56: 114-75.