logo top header humanities west header
logo bottom
 
 
 

Resource Materials
 
 
Minoan Crete: The Dawn of European Civilization




 
To request A Sourcebook To Accompany Humanities West's "Minoan Crete: The Dawn of European Civilization," please .

Note: Books may be purchased at  Amazon.com by clicking on this link.

A percentage of each purchase (or any other purchase made through this link) helps fund Humanities West programs. Learn more by clicking here.

Many of these books are also available at local bookstores including Books Inc and Keplers, or at your local library.


Short Resource List for Minoan Crete

Compiled by Chuck Sieloff

One of the best introductions to the rediscovery of Minoan civilization is Alexandre Farnoux's Knossos: Searching for the Legendary Palace of King Minos (1996, 159pp), part of the excellent Discoveries series (i.e., concise, lavishly illustrated, with selected historical documents). The Minotaur's Island is an informative, if somewhat melodramatic, video documentary (2008, 98 minutes, available through Netflix or Amazon) featuring historian Bettany Hughes summarizing what we know about Minoan Crete today. Cathy Gere's Knossos & the Prophets of Modernism (2009, 234pp. also in Kindle format) details how the rediscovery and interpretation of Minoan culture was heavily influenced by a war-ravaged Europe's eagerness to find and embrace a more benign and peaceful cultural heritage. For those who enjoy historical fiction, Mary Renault's classic The King Must Die (originally 1958, but numerous recent editions plus audiobook format) retells the legend of Theseus' encounter with the Minoans, against the backdrop of a cataclysmic volcanic eruption.


Suggested Reading and Resources

Blitzer, Harriet. Despoina Hadzi-Vallianou, Livingston Vance Watrous. Plain of Phaistos: Cycles of Social Complexity in the Messara Region of Crete. Monumenta Archaeologica, 2006.

Cadogan, Gerald, Eleni Hatzaki, and Adonis Vasilakis, Eds. Knossos: Palace, City, State. British School of Athens, 2004.

Clark, Andrew, Maya Elston, and Mary Louise Hart. Understanding Greek Vases: A Guide to Technical Terms (Looking at Series). 2002. 

Cottrell, Leonard. The Bull of Minos: The Great Discoveries of Ancient Greece. Tauris Park, UK; Palgrave Macmillan, US, 2009. [HW book choice for 3/2/11at Commonwealth Club of SF]

Evans, Sir Arthur. The Palace of Minos (Five Volumes). London: Macmillan, 1921-1935.

Fitton, J. Lesley. The Minoans. British Museum, 2002.

Hatzaki, Eleni. Knossos: the Little Palace. 2005.

---. Late Bronze Age (MM IIIB to LM IIIC) chapters of the Knossos Pottery Handbook . Ed. Nicoletta Momigliano, 2007.

Marinatos, Nanno. Minoan Kingship and the Solar Goddess: A Near Eastern Koine. University of Illinois Press, 2010.

Morris, Ian. Why the West Rules—For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future. Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2010. [a well-regarded book by a HW presenter that examines eastern and western history from the Ice Age into the twenty-first century, named one of the best books of 2010 by The Economist, Foreign Affairs, Newsweek, The Independent, and the London Evening Standard]

Scarre, Chris, Rebecca Stefoff. The Palace of Minos at Knossos (Digging for the Past). Oxford, 2003. [Available on Kindle from Amazon]

Shelton, Kim. “Late Bronze Age Mainland Greece.” Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean. E. Cline, ed. Oxford, 2010.

---. The Late Helladic Pottery from Prosymna. 1996.
Watrous, Livingston Vance. The Cave Sanctuary of Zeus at Psychro: A Study of Extra-Urban Sanctuaries in Minoan and Early Iron Age Crete. Aegaeum 15, 1996.

 

Web Resources. Accessed January 15, 2011

The Prehistoric Archeology of the Aegean at Dartmouth University

Minoan Crete. Digiserve by Ian Swindale. 1998-2008. Rethymno, Crete, Greece

Minoan Crete by the Foundation of the Hellenic World

The Knossos Snake Goddess, by Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe, Sweet Briar College in Virginia

E-book: The Prehistoric Tombs of Knossos(1906) by Sir. Arthur Evans.

Minoan Cultural Achievements: Links to many images of Minoan pottery, painting, jewelry, etc.

Palace of Knossos: Virtual reality tour





> Return to the resource materials main page