The Cambridge Companion to the Aegean Bronze Age by The Cambridge Companion to the Aegean Bronze Age (Cambridge Companions to Literature & Classics)

Author:The Cambridge Companion to the Aegean Bronze Age (Cambridge Companions to Literature & Classics)
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2014-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

Plate 9.5 Canaanite amphora found at Kommos, LM IIIA2. Height 76 cm. Courtesy of the author.

One of the most important of the new trading ventures involved increased trade with Italy and other areas to the west.72 The introduction of the Aegean weight system into these new regions indicates the seriousness of the policy involving trade in this direction.73 The western Mediterranean offered vast amounts of raw materials – timber, hides, foods, and potentially even metals – to compensate for local Aegean and Near Eastern resources that were increasingly being depleted. Purple dye from the murex shell may also have come from the west. In return, the Minoans could provide luxury goods to an almost untapped market. Finds of metal objects in Crete and discoveries of Minoan pottery in Italy and Italian pottery in Crete demonstrate that Italian trade was an important component of Minoan foreign policy.74

Less evidence survives for trade with the other maritime frontier for the Aegean world, the Black Sea , but a review of the evidence leaves little doubt that trade by sea existed with this region.75 The nature of the evidence, including oxhide ingots and double axes , is not specific enough to prove the presence of Minoan ships, but it is possible that they were among the Aegean merchants who traveled to the northeast.

During the two millennia of the Minoan civilization, Cretan trade expanded from regional Aegean exchange to a much wider network. By the end of the Bronze Age, around 1190 BCE, Cretans were participating in an international network that routinely shipped goods over great distances. Commodities traveled over routes that reached from Mesopotamia to Italy and from North Africa to the Black Sea. Crete, near the center of this network of shipping lanes, profited greatly from the active exchange.

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