Cyprus Research Fund Lecture Wrap Up

I want to thank everyone who helped out during Dimitri Nakassis’ visit this past week. For the fourth year in a row, the Cyprus Research Fund Lecture was successful. We have just over 100 people at his talk on Thursday afternoon, a pleasant discussion during his seminar on Friday, and a few good meals along the way. It was particularly exciting to see a nice crowd of folks join us online and even ask the speaker questions at the conclusions of his talk.

Nakassis’ talk offered a new perspective on the organization of Late Bronze Age society. By following the relationship between previously overlooked names in the Linear B tablets, he was able to identify a group of individuals who possessed significant wealth and power, but were not associated with the palaces. This “middling” group of people filled out the gap between the powerful centralized power of the palace and the toiling masses typically identified in scholarship in Mycenaean society. In his Friday seminar, he noted that the strain of scholarship that sees the Mycenaean palaces as separate from Greek society and as invasive institutions derived from the Near East has roots in Orientalism. According to this view, the collapse of palaces articulated in this way set the stage for the expansion of “western” society with decentralized economies and democracy. Nakassis suggested that a more subtle reading of the evidence and a critical awareness of the meta-narratives in play in many textbook descriptions of Mycenaean society opens the doors to new insights.  

If you missed his talk on Thursday, you can check out an archived version here.