N.'s monograph is a redacted and updated version of his doctoral dissertation for the University of Texas (‘The Individual and the Mycenaean State’ [2006]). His simple and productive premise is that the scribes of Mycenaean Pylos used personal names for concrete ends, and that institutional relations between the palace archives and diverse social groups can be traced through methodical examination of the names' textual collocations. I should state, as a disclaimer, that he cites my own prosopographical dissertation several times to support his arguments (M.F. Lane, ‘Names and Numbers’, Univ. of Sheffield [2003]). Although I agree with his major arguments and conclusions, I find some substantive disagreements too.

N. first critiques the ‘traditional’ or ‘simple tripartite’ model of stratification of the Late Helladic (Mycenaean) state into ‘palatial elites’, ‘regional elites’ and lower classes (Chapter 1). He argues that archaeologists have failed to investigate interpersonal dynamics that give rise to structures attributed to the state, and that the model runs afoul of empirical evidence. He asserts evidence of ‘entrepreneurial activity’, by which he seems to mean economic transactions realised independently of the palace's ‘administrative grid’, which the scribes nevertheless record because they are in some way associated with the palace through individual persons. He is especially interested in named persons known as ‘collectors’, identified mainly in the Pylian and Knossian livestock and closely related wool and textiles tablets. N. next criticises previous scholars' simplistic, when not occasionally tendentious, interpretation of the scribes' usage of personal names (Chapter 2). He rightly emphasises that the scribes wrote for the benefit of their kind, not ours. The radical sceptic's insistence on agnosticism with respect to the indefinite number of possible references of a given name is untenable, because it requires foolishly dismissing the demonstrably structured relationships among names, titles, awards or obligations in texts on certain topics (e.g. landholding, bronze-working). Partial belief, manifest in singling out certain sets of names for special treatment, is likewise methodologically unacceptable.

Chapters 3 and 4 comprise the analytical section of N.'s book. He distinguishes ‘lexical’ from ‘contextual’ identity of named persons. The former is based on appearance of the same name in different texts, the case for identity being strongest when the name is lexically disambiguated by an ethnic, patronymic or the like. The latter is defined by the collocation of names in more than one clearly delimited textual context. Drawing on the observation that the order in which names of bronze-smiths is recorded appears to be neither arbitrary nor strictly determined by the particular function ascribed (J. Smith, ‘The Pylos Jn Series’, Minos 27–28 [1992–1993], 107–23), he postulates that sequential collocation, or ‘clustering’, makes the strongest case for contextual identity. N. is concerned only with cross-references between sets of texts, what network analysts would call ‘first-order relationships’. He attempts to show statistically how the number of cross-referenced names is greater than should be expected if they are distributed randomly. Sceptics might point out that the difference between observed 30 and expected 14–20 is not especially significant in fragmentary archives, where the estimated number of personal names ranges between 700 and 1,000 (pp. 33–4).

N. proceeds to show how the 199 ‘herders’ (versus ‘collectors’) of the Cn tablets and the 263 ‘smiths’ (k ^h alkēwes) of the Jn tablets have similar ‘prosopographical profiles’ (Chapter 3). For instance, e-do-mo-ne-u, i-ma-di-jo and Kotullōn co-occur in the Cn, Jn and E– (landholding) texts. He concludes that they are involved in craft production or other economic pursuits in scattered locales. He infers they are not ‘low-status’ farmhands or mere metalworkers but rather can delegate tasks to kin and retainers, perhaps indicated by ‘son’ or ‘servant’ on certain tablets. I concur entirely with this inference. N. discovers further connections between hundreds of herders, smiths, ‘soldiers’ (men in ‘coastguard’ detachments) and landholders (Chapter 4), which confirm his observation of the wide array of activities in which named persons may participate, and how their personal authority may extend across the realm.

In Chapter 5 N. argues that the ‘tripartite’ model of Mycenaean society cannot be sustained given how difficult it is to pin any role or set of roles on an official title, even that of royal hek ^w etās ‘Companion’. He certainly succeeds in showing how the scribes qua representatives of the ‘palatial elite’ have a complex, quantitatively precise and yet mutable relationship with the Pylian nomenklatura (my term), which onomastic cross-referencing facilitates. Nomenklatura members themselves to some degree enjoy common interests. Many or most therefore belong to a single class or ‘status’ group vis-à-vis the palace. He admits that these conclusions appear ‘compatible’ with the traditional model, yet he maintains that his prosopographical data are non-conformant. He thinks social classes should be ‘distinguishable’ in the data, and he remarks that many named persons do not belong to the traditionally conceived palace elite. Having raised the possibility that some hek ^w etai are ‘collectors’ – even ‘international collectors’ whose names appear in several roughly contemporary archives (J.-P. Olivier, ‘Les “collecteurs”: leur distribution spatiale et temporelle’, in S. Voutsaki and J. Killen [edd.], Economy and Politics in Mycenaean Palace States [2001], pp. 139–60) – he feels he cannot generalise the equation, noting that Amp ^h imēdēs is the odd one to appear in both livestock and landholding records (p. 164).

However, given his premise of implicit knowledge (p. 30), lack of onomastic disambiguation in at least some tablets (p. 155) could be a sign of social intimacy: one should expect the palace officials generally to be nameless. He points out that the names of just 3 of 16 koretēr administrators are known. The same or less is true of persons holding other titles associated with the ‘administrative grid’: prokoretēres, klāwip ^h oroi and du-ma-te. Conversely, the hek ^w etās Kahesamenos is hapax, two hek ^w etai are known only by probable toponymics (Pleurōnios, Wrot ^h umnios) and one destined for Nedwōn with the ‘coastguard’ remains unnamed, despite none having an obvious role in palatial administration (p. 163).

Hence I find no unambiguous prosopographical case for a class of ‘entrepreneurial’ agents, free in principle from the palace, whose transactions the palace records, as much as internal evidence suggests local kin and households are important to holding certain offices and delegating regional authority. N. has none the less created a space for reasonably discussing such agents (see W.A. Parkinson, D. Nakassis and M.L. Galaty, ‘Crafts, Specialists, and Markets in Mycenaean Greece’, AJA 117 [2013], 413–22). He admits that one should not expect the data to ‘conform slavishly’ with any model (p. 165). This seems a high expectation even of ‘clustered’ tablet cross-references, given that the preserved archives present a temporal snapshot of between a month's and a year's time (pp. 30–1, 157). Multiple roles may be occasional or periodic, not concurrent. The hek ^w etai could belong to a realm of interaction different from either the palatial or regional elite, since it seems they can be regional, interregional or from distant places (e.g. a-pu ₂ -ka, p. 151).

N.'s pioneering work challenges us to create methodologies for achieving his maximal prosopographical ambition, to ‘provide one of the most detailed synchronic discussions of the practices of political authority anywhere in the ancient world’ (p. 20). One way to resolve persistent problems would be to explore second-order relationships between texts, thus decreasing the probability of accepting chance cross-references and permitting a statistical degree of freedom from latent interdependence of particular pairings of text sets, which could lead to circular generalising arguments. Resulting prosopographical networks could span any discrepancy between cycles of recordkeeping, and their analysis would provide a more refined picture of the dynamic political constitution of the Pylian state's offices, rights and duties.

Pages 187 to 414 comprise an annotated prosopography. N. relies on the most highly respected authorities in Greek and Indo-European onomatology whenever rendering Mycenaean names from sometimes obscure Linear B spellings. This appendix therefore supersedes Lindgren's simple tables of names versus loci (M. Lindgren, The People of Pylos [1973]). The back matter includes just two indexes: Linear B words and texts.

My great hope is that N.'s work will not be exploited piecemeal, as a reference handbook, but that his general analytical approach to Linear B texts will be adopted too, engendering development of subtler models of Mycenaean society that make allowances for personal agency and institutional contingencies. It should be employed wherever archaeology intersects these interpretations, as in studies of settlement pattern, metallurgy, craft production and agro-pastoral landscapes.