ABSTRACT

Egyptian stone vessels are important evidence for early cultural contact in the Aegean. In the past they have been variously deployed by modern commentators not only as testimony of growing social complexity within certain Aegean communities and emergent elite consumption at a local level (Renfrew 1972), but also as tracers of a wider civilized package (including perhaps palaces and writing), spreading outwards to the Aegean from a Near Eastern core (e.g. Watrous 1987). Stone survives extremely well in archaeological contexts, especially in comparison to organic materials or metals (which often degrade, get re-cycled or otherwise vanish from the record) and this high durability offers both distinct analytical advantages (a larger dataset, less biased by gaps of differential preservation) and raises specific methodological problems (stone vessel curation and re-use). The following discussion considers the scale and significance of Egyptian influence through stone vessels in four different chronological episodes, corresponding to the third millennium, and the earlier, mid-and later second millennium respectively. It emphasizes (a) that the exchange and consumption of Egyptian goods in the Aegean is structured by very period-specific priorities and parameters, and (b) that Aegean patterns must be considered within a wider eastern Mediterranean response to Egyptian material culture.