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Reviewed by:
  • Mycenaean Greece, Mediterranean Commerce, and the Formation of Identity
  • Charles Heiko Stocking
Bryan E. Burns . Mycenaean Greece, Mediterranean Commerce, and the Formation of Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. xii + 246 pp. 2 tables, 41 black-and-white figs. Cloth, $85.

The gold ring from Mycenaean Chamber Tomb 55 that decorates the cover of Burns' work, with its hybrid plant (ivy-papyrus) and hybrid creatures (sphinxes), foreign images re-appropriated into a specifically Mycenaean context, perfectly encapsulates the force of Burns' book in demonstrating how "trade makes culture" (1) and, more specifically, how "trade made Mycenae" (2). Burns' work marks a critical new stage in scholarship on cultural contact and cultural identity in the ancient Mediterranean. In the last decade, much work has been done to move away from old models of unidirectional cultural influence, whether that direction was from East to West or from West to East. Yet, despite recent efforts to clear the path of old models, there still remains a need for new metaphors and a new way of understanding the relationship between contact and identity. By seamlessly blending postmodern theories of consumerism with anthropological and archaeological models of consumption, Burns provides just such a model, which succinctly answers the shortcomings of previous scholarship on the subject. At the same time, Burns effectively incorporates Bronze Age Greece into the larger dialogue on Greek cultural identity, since the application of a consumption model of trade to Greek pre-history effectively destabilizes any efforts towards an evolutionary or essentialized notion of Ancient Greek cultural history.

The first chapter, "Aegean Agency in Mediterranean Exchange," seeks to reverse the previous trend in the analysis of foreign imports. Rather than analyze foreign imports in Mycenae in terms of origin of production, Burns seeks to account for the use of those objects within their Mycenaean context and considers how access to imports might provide a source of symbolic power for those who have access to such items. He relies on two particular objects, the Amenhotep I faience plaques and the Minet el Beida pyxis lid along with its Mycenaean variants in order to deconstruct previous interpretations that rely on origin of production models. In his analysis of these two objects and their relevant scholarship, Burns argues that the determination of foreign imports must rely on stylistic analysis as well as archaeological context. The multiplicity of objects such as the Amenhotep faience plaques, some of which may have even been manufactured in Greece, make it impossible to attribute a single meaning or adduce a single historical event to account for their presence in Mycenae. Burns then discusses theories of consumption in detail as a solution to the problems of interpretation posed in the origin of production analysis. By focusing on consumption, as it is proposed [End Page 499] by scholars such as Miller, Appadurai, and others, Burns effectively shifts focus away from the object as metonym for the culture of its purported origin, and instead places emphasis on the multiple uses and significations of such objects within a specifically Mycenaean context. By shifting focus to consumption rather than production, to the destination of imports rather than their origin, Burns argues that such foreign items operate as a "pathway to power" because such imports exist as "incarnated signs," in Appadurai's sense of the term, for distant peoples and places (31-32). However, Burns takes the assumptions involved with current theories of consumption at face value without entertaining any possible objections to this theoretical model.

Before performing an analysis of those objects deemed to be imports, Burns first focuses, in his second chapter, on the implications of a "Mycenaean" context of such imports. Rather than attempt to articulate an essentialized definition of Mycenaean culture, Burns brilliantly shifts focus to the role of Mycenae in the history of scholarship on cultural contact and Greek cultural identity. Burns points to the fact that prior to Schliemann's excavation of the shaft graves, the monuments of Mycenae, including the Cyclopean walls and the Lion Gate, were already involved in a dialogue of East-to-West cultural contact. Schliemann's efforts to validate Greek mythology through material culture can in many ways be viewed, according to Burns...

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