Population bio-cultural history in the South Aegean during the Bronze Age

Abstract

This research reconstructs the bio-cultural history of the Bronze Age South Aegean population and addresses two widely debated archaeological questions in a bioarchaeological research framework.  It responds to traditional culture history studies that frequently associate cultural discontinuity with population movements.

It applies morphological (metric and non-metric) analysis of the skeleton to the study of Bronze Age populations from Naxos (Cyclades), and principally the Argolid (Mainland) and Crete, in order to explore issues of intra-population variation and inter-population biodistance at the regional and inter-regional level.  Analysis is oriented in time both vertically, providing time-depth, and horizontally, allowing the examination of inter-population biological relationships at the intra- and inter-regional level.  The vertical analytical approach investigates discontinuity or continuity in the biological history of the populations and provides negative or positive evidence respectively for the arrival and admixture of biologically different population elements.  The horizontal analysis assesses inter-population relationships (relatedness vs. divergence) in relation to the two principal archaeological questions examined.  Concerning the biological relationship between the Argolid and Central Crete populations, analysis monitors how it fluctuates in the course of the Bronze Age.

 The two principal archaeological hypotheses explored concern the arrival and settlement of people from the Argolid (Mycenaeans) on Crete and Naxos following the LMIB and LHIIIB-C destructions on Crete and the Mainland respectively.  On the basis of the results of the morphological skeletal and strontium isotope ratio analysis both hypotheses were rejected.  Thereby analysis demonstrated that the introduction of novel cultural features (cultural discontinuity) to Knossos (Crete) and the Chora of Naxos need not have resulted from the settlement of the people suggested to be the first to create them.

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