Wine in the Mycenaean Palace Economy (Paperback)

Wine production was clearly an important activity in the Mycenaean Palace economies as Linear B tablets make clear. However the archaeological evidence for prehistoric vintners has never been systematically evaluated before this book, partly because of the scholarly divided between Linear B scholars and excavators. The author here, however, draws on both kinds of evidence to discuss an industry that reveals much about the relationship of Palaces to ordinary people, and about the way in which Pylos, Knossos and other Palaces bolstered their power bases. Contents: Background to Wine as an Agricultural Commodity; The Development of the Wine Ideogram; Mycenaean Vocabulary in Reference to Viticulture and Wine; Derivatis of dateomai' and the Distribution of Wine; Wine in the Pylos Commodity Tablets; Wine in the Knossos Fs Tablets; The Impressed Nodules from the Wine Magazine at Pylos; Wine in the Knossos and Mycenae Tablets; The Place of Wine in the Mycenaean Palace Economy.