In Search of the Labyrinth

Nicoletta Momigliano is Professor of Aegean Studies at the University of Bristol, UK. She specialises in Minoan archaeology and has directed and co-directed several archaeological projects in Crete and Turkey, including excavations at Knossos and Palaikastro, and field surveys in Lycia. Her previous books include Duncan Mackenzie: A Cautious Canny Highlander and the Palace of Minos at Knossos (1999), Archaeology and European Modernity: Producing and Consuming the ‘Minoans’ (edited with Y. Hamilakis, 2006), Knossos Pottery Handbook: Neolithic and Bronze Age (Minoan) (2007), and Cretomania: Modern Desires for the Minoan Past (edited with A. Farnoux, 2017).

• List of tables and figuresPreface and AcknowledgmentsChapter 1. Introduction: desperately seeking Ariadne – the cultural legacy of Minoan CreteChapter 2. Sons of Europa: from medical remedies for constipation to bestiality, sexually transmitted death, and the dawn of the ‘Minoan Age’ (from antiquity to mid-19th c.)Chapter 3. Rediscovering European origins: Ariadne as the Great Mother Goddess (mid-19th century-World War I)Chapter 4. Minoans and World Wars (c. 1915-1949): the Aryan revengeChapter 5. The Minoans in the Cold War and swinging sixties: from the end of the Greek civil war to the end of the Colonels’ dictatorship (c. 1949-1974)Chapter 6. Minoan paradises lost and regained: from cannibalism to postmodernism (c. 1975-1999)Chapter 7. Minoan cultural legacies – every age has the Minoans it deserves and desiresNotesBibliographyIndex

Momigliano offers a remarkably detailed and nuanced overview of archaeological research on Crete and the history of the island in general. Such an attentive introduction and contextualisation ensures that readers unfamiliar with the ‘crypto-colonial’ roots of Minoan archaeology are given a solid foundation.