Marcia Nugent

‘Botanic Motifs of the Bronze Age Cycladic Islands: Identity, Belief, Ritual and Trade’ (PhD in Classics & Archaeology, 2019).

This thesis argues the motifs with which we surround ourselves signify something – about us, our identities, our values and our understanding of the world. Frequently and infrequently represented motifs tell us something about the culture from which they come. Assemblages of motifs from different peoples and places tell us something about the people who created and viewed them – their preferences and their sense of place in their environment. In short, motifs have meaning. Although in many cases the original viewer may have assigned non-intrinsic meaning to motifs, patterns of representation and placement and the context of motifs can allow the uninitiated to recognise meaning. Motifs can communicate feelings, ideas, beliefs, practice and uses of the items represented to observers far removed from the original intended viewers.

Since prehistoric times, the natural world has been a focus of human artistic endeavour. From before people first settled and started practicing agriculture, plants have been important sources of shelter, nourishment and clothing materials. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that plants feature in early artistic representations. The artistic record reflects our early and continuing inextricable link to our natural environment. Our reliance on plant products makes botanic motifs an important subset of the iconographic record.

The temporal and geographical focus of this study is the Bronze Age period (approx. 3000 – 1200 BC) of three sites from the Cycladic Islands, a group of islands in the Aegean Sea north of Crete – Akrotiri (Thera), Ayia Irini (Kea) and Phylakopi (Melos). Motifs are frequently from the Late Bronze Age period (1600 – 1200 BC), but some motifs are first seen and traced from the Early and Middle Bronze Age periods. The thesis seeks to answer two broad research questions:

1. Which plants were represented at the Bronze Age Cycladic Islands of Melos, Thera and Kea and how were they represented?

2. What can the context, form and associations of the botanic motifs tell us about the identity, beliefs, rituals and trade of the people that created and viewed them?

Although a number of scholars have undertaken broad iconographic studies and other research has considered a limited assemblage of plant motifs, none have focused only on the three Cycladic Island sites featured in this study. This thesis also uniquely applies a quantitative and contextual analysis to over 500 botanic motifs to understand broader qualitative archaeological problems. The newly developed analytical methodology of this thesis intends to extend a replicable, scientific approach reaching from a quantitative, numbers based analysis to qualitative analysis utilising theoretical frameworks, enabling a post-processual, post-structuralist, contextualised study of the botanic motifs.

The study ultimately reveals botanic motifs and the plants they represent have an entangled relationship with humanity, built on dependency and co-dependency, which support and enhance the economic, health and spiritual lives of the people of the Bronze Age Cycladic Islands.

Supervisor: Prof. Louise Hitchock