Paupers and Peasants and Princes and Kings: Reconstructing Society in Late Bronze Age Greece

William Caraher

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-22-2012

Abstract

Paupers and Peasants and Princes and Kings: Reconstructing Society in Late Bronze Age Greece

Studies of Mycenaean Greece often focus on the vast divide between themost powerful and the least powerful individuals: the king and the officialsof the palace on the one hand, and lowly laborers on the other. Betweenthose extremes, however, were local leaders, administrators, and skilledcraftsmen whose activities we can document through texts and thearchaeological record.

Thursday, October 25, Professor Dimitri Nakassis, of the University of Toronto, will present his lecture, "Paupers and Peasants and Princes and Kings: Reconstructing Society in Late Bronze Age Greece." This paper proposes a new model of Mycenaean culture that incorporates evidence about kings, slaves, and the middling ranks of society.

"Professor Nakassis' talk will be a great opportunity to hear a world renowned expert on prehistoric Greece introduce his most recent and important research," says William Caraher, an Associate Professor in the Department of History.

"As the Bob Dylan quote in the title of his talk makes clear, Professor Nakassis has the ability to make even the most distant past seem relevant today. His presentation will consider how individuals of middling rank served to bridge the vast gulf between the the very powerful rich and utterly disenfranchised poor in a society that is both distant from and sadly relevant to our own," says Caraher.

This is the fourth annual Cyprus Research Fund Lecture. The goal of this annual talk is to bring active, exciting, up-and-coming, archaeologists or historians of the Mediterranean World to the University of North Dakota community. The Fund also supports UND research on Cyprus and a growing group of small projects involving the archaeology and history of our own community.

This lecture is sponsored by Cyprus Research Fund & UND Department of History.

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