Conference Presentations by Kim Shelton
Shelton, K., Kvapil, L., Price, G.C., Meier, J.S. Beyond City and Country at Mycenae: Urban and r... more Shelton, K., Kvapil, L., Price, G.C., Meier, J.S. Beyond City and Country at Mycenae: Urban and rural practices in a subsistence landscape. City in the Country Conference, Marseille, France, October 16-17, 2014.
Text-based and historical accounts are useful in interpreting provisioning strategies in early co... more Text-based and historical accounts are useful in interpreting provisioning strategies in early complex societies regarding animals as they offer direct evidence of managed resources. In the case of the Late Bronze Age (LBA) settlement of Mycenae, Greece, Linear B tablets offer insight into the management and distribution of fauna under the purview of the palatial administration. However, the study of fauna utilized outside of elite areas is needed to understand the nuances of the economic, political and social roles of animals across a broader cross-section of this complex society. The large, well-preserved faunal assemblage excavated from a well at Petsas House at the site of Mycenae, has yielded a unique, temporally-refined view of the faunal economy of a domestic and industrial-use structure located outside of the walls of the elite, state-provisioned hilltop citadel. This study utilizes zooarchaeological analyses of species abundance and body-part representation to explore household subsistence in this multifunctional structure. Next, isotopic data is analyzed to investigate intra-taxonomic variation and delineate disparities in management and distribution of exploited fauna. Finally, these preliminary findings are integrated and discussed in relation to contemporary sites to contribute to the broader picture of regional variation in animal use in the LBA Aegean.
Book Chapters by Kim Shelton
City in the Country. Agricultural Functions in Protohistoric Urban Settlements (Aegean and Western Mediterranean), 2019
MNHMH/MNEME Past and Memory in the Aegean Bronze Age. Elisabetta Borgna, Ilaria Caloi, Filippo Carinci, and Robert Laffineur (eds), 2019
Papers by Kim Shelton
Nature Ecology & Evolution
The Neolithic and Bronze Ages were highly transformative periods for the genetic history of Europ... more The Neolithic and Bronze Ages were highly transformative periods for the genetic history of Europe but for the Aegean—a region fundamental to Europe’s prehistory—the biological dimensions of cultural transitions have been elucidated only to a limited extent so far. We have analysed newly generated genome-wide data from 102 ancient individuals from Crete, the Greek mainland and the Aegean Islands, spanning from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. We found that the early farmers from Crete shared the same ancestry as other contemporaneous Neolithic Aegeans. In contrast, the end of the Neolithic period and the following Early Bronze Age were marked by ‘eastern’ gene flow, which was predominantly of Anatolian origin in Crete. Confirming previous findings for additional Central/Eastern European ancestry in the Greek mainland by the Middle Bronze Age, we additionally show that such genetic signatures appeared in Crete gradually from the seventeenth to twelfth centuries bc, a period when the in...
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports
This paper examines vessel morphology and degrees of standardization of ceramic vessels using Gau... more This paper examines vessel morphology and degrees of standardization of ceramic vessels using Gaussian mixture model cluster analysis (GMMC). GMMC is an unsupervised data mining technique that identifies natural groups in a dataset. This project first tests whether GMMC can classify certain shape categories correctly according to human assigned Furumark Shape (FS) pot types using basic vessel dimensions. We then propose that vessels can be considered standardized if they were grouped into the cluster of their own shape category (or pot type). Vessel data are derived from the Late Bronze Age Petsas House ceramic workshop, located in the settlement of Mycenae in southern Greece. The sample comes from a sealed well deposit found within the workshop. GMMC identified three clusters within a group of 488 pots that correspond to three known vessel types with a high degree of sensitivity and specificity so that clustered shapes mostly align with shape categories, and each shape can be defined as standardized. The maximization of information enabled by GMMC and the ability to analyze multiple interrelated variables can thus indicate cognitive approaches to vessel production, such as the perception of vessel shape by potters, and socio-economic factors relating to use by consumers.
This volume presents the results of the excavations in the Tsountas House Area at Mycenae conduct... more This volume presents the results of the excavations in the Tsountas House Area at Mycenae conducted under the direction of Wace (1950) and Taylour (1959–60) in collaboration with Papademetriou and later Mylonas. Located in the ‘Cult Centre’, the Tsountas House Area contains two buildings and multiple access ramps. It represents both the earliest and latest constructions in this sanctuary complex. First investigated by Tsountas in the late 19th century but never fully published, the remains were fully restudied, and the excavation expanded to discover the first evidence of ritual architecture, features, and paraphernalia. This study is essential for understanding the conception and function of Mycenaean religious space, the associated features and finds, and the socio-political development of cult in the earliest known religious installation at Mycenae. It is also important for a diachronic understanding of the Cult Centre’s development from an individual extra-urban shrine to a sanc...
American Journal of Archaeology, 2022
It is with a profound sense of loss that we mourn the passing of Elizabeth B. French—British arch... more It is with a profound sense of loss that we mourn the passing of Elizabeth B. French—British archaeologist, Aegean prehistorian, and former director of the British School at Athens—at 90 years of age on 10 June 2021. Through her leadership, scholarship, and teaching, Lisa made a significant impact on several generations of international scholars, especially female scholars, and we are grateful for her life and her contribution to all aspects of archaeological research whether in the field, the lab, or the archive. An important figure in the archaeology of the prehistoric Aegean, Lisa was a leading authority on the site of Mycenae, where she worked for most of her life, and a foundational specialist in Mycenaean ceramics, pottery, and terracotta figurines, forging a distinguished career over a period of almost 70 years. Using stratigraphic and contextual evidence, she created the chronological schemes for these artifact classes that are still the basis of current research almost 60 y...
This paper explores variation in the management and distribution of faunal resources recovered fr... more This paper explores variation in the management and distribution of faunal resources recovered from disparate socio-economic spheres of consumption at the palatial settlement of Mycenae, Greece, during the Late Bronze Age (1600-1100 BC). It has long been acknowledged that early state economies comprise multiscalar, intertwining spheres of economic activity. Mechanisms driving these spheres of interaction are predicated on the modalities of exchange which connected nodes of production and consumption. Commodity chain analyses of exploited goods offers one effective method to model how socio-political systems of production and consumption and exchange networks were interconnected. Fauna are versatile and ubiquitous, operating at all levels of economic exchange and social hierarchical divisions. As fauna are purposefully managed with their consumption in mind, faunal commodity chains comprise their life history. Management practices, in turn, are recorded in the biological tissues of exploited fauna. Isotope ratios (Pb, Sr, O) allow us to “follow the materials” by tracing individual life histories of exploited fauna. We present new isotopic faunal and baseline data to demonstrate how isotope ratios can track commodity chains of faunal resources to assist in the identification of distinct faunal economies within a larger socio-political network using management and distribution practices as a proxy.
Country in the City: Agricultural Functions of Protohistoric Urban Settlements (Aegean and Western Mediterranean), 2019
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2017
This research uses stable isotope analyses to identify disparities in management strategies among... more This research uses stable isotope analyses to identify disparities in management strategies amongst faunal resources consumed in disparate socioeconomic sectors of the Late Bronze Age palatial settlement of Mycenae, Greece. δ 13 C , δ 15 N, and δ 18 O data from four species (99 individuals) known to have been purposefully managed during this time period are presented. Data demonstrate species-specific management disparities between consumptive contexts: the exploited Sus population shows the most variation, largely predicated on diet, whereas caprines exhibit no inter-context variation, but similar intra-context variation, suggesting ubiquitous access to caprine resources, at least between these two contexts. This study aims to broaden the application of isotope analyses in this region where faunal isotopic data have been largely relegated to constructing baselines for interpreting human isotope data and environmental reconstructions.
Minos: Revista de filología egea, 2002
Información del artículo A New Linear B Tablet from Petsas House, Mycenae.
The Annual of the British School at Athens, 2001
This article presents a new built chamber tomb from Argos. The tomb was found intact, allowing fo... more This article presents a new built chamber tomb from Argos. The tomb was found intact, allowing for detailed observations on its architecture and construction. It contained the remains of at least fifteen burials, together with abundant Mycenaean pottery, bronzes, ivory items, a sealstone and other small finds, dating from LH I to LH III B1 (although most are LH I–II B/III A1). Another two tombs of the same type have been found on the site, dating to LH I and LH II A. Comparison with other Early Mycenaean graves from Argos suggests that built chamber tombs were the largest and wealthiest, apparently belonging to local élite groups.
PLOS ONE
At the renowned archaeological site of Mycenae, striking depictions of animals in ancient art and... more At the renowned archaeological site of Mycenae, striking depictions of animals in ancient art and architecture, such as the ‘Lion Gate’, reflect the great power of elite residents in the Late Bronze Age. To better understand how social complexity relates to human-animal interactions at Mycenae, more research is needed on the animals who actually lived there. In a first for the archaeological site of Mycenae, we utilized a contextual taphonomic approach and statistical analysis to study a faunal assemblage, focusing on a massive deposit recovered from a well feature located in Room Π of Petsas House. Petsas House was an industrial-residential complex at Mycenae used at least in part by ceramic artisans at the time of its destruction in the Late Helladic IIIA2 period. Intra-contextual analysis of the animal remains detected sub-assemblages with variable histories of animal use and deposition. The results revealed multiple disposal events and possible dog interments. Most of the refuse...
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Conference Presentations by Kim Shelton
Book Chapters by Kim Shelton
Papers by Kim Shelton