1st Edition

Women in Mycenaean Greece The Linear B Tablets from Pylos and Knossos

By Barbara A. Olsen Copyright 2014
390 Pages
by Routledge

390 Pages
by Routledge

390 Pages
by Routledge

Women in Mycenaean Greece is the first book-length study of women in the Linear B tablets from Mycenaean Greece and the only to collect and compile all the references to women in the documents of the two best attested sites of Late Bronze Age Greece - Pylos on the Greek mainland and Knossos on the island of Crete. The book offers a systematic analysis of women’s tasks, holdings, and social and... Read more

1. The Women Of Mycenaean Greece  2. Identifying and Contextualizing Women in the Tablets  3. Women and Production at Pylos  4. Women And Property Holdings At Pylos  5. Women at Knossos: Production and Property  6. Women and Land Tenure at Pylos and Knossos  7. Women And Religion At Knossos And Pylos  8. Conclusions: Women in Aegean Prehistory  Appendix A: All Mentions of Women in the Pylos Tablets  Appendix B: All Mentions of Women in the Knossos Tablets  Bibliography

Biography

Barbara A. Olsen is Associate Professor of Greek & Roman Studies, and Director of Women's Studies at Vassar College, New York, USA.

"...this book is a valuable examination of an important and understudied issue. Although rich in technical detail, its topic and argument will doubtless appeal to a broad audience of Aegean prehistorians and ancient historians. The project is an important one, and Olsen does an good job pulling together all of the textual evidence, demonstrating how differently Pylian and Knossian women appear in the Linear B tablets, and relating these differences to social practices. We need more studies like these: studies that use the rich Mycenaean textual evidence to contribute to broader debates in Greek history and prehistory."

-Dimitri Nakassis, University of Toronto in Bryn Mawr Classical Review

 

"This book addresses a great need in the study of women in antiquity. Olsen brings together textual analyses from 60 years of scholarship on women in Linear B, and sets them into the broader socio-economic context of Mycenaean Greece and Crete."

- Ruth Palmer, Ohio University, in The Classical Review