If there was ever a year in which readers would tire of learning of conditions, transmissions, adaptations and variations, it would be 2020. Published in the throes of a global pandemic, M.'s monograph thankfully details an ailment of a different kind – ‘Cretomania’ – a productive, creative phenomenon, whose careful exploration provides insight into modern responses to the material culture of Bronze Age Crete. Epidemiological allusions aside, the ‘mania’ for all things Minoan has been increasingly examined by M. and others in the last fifteen years, as illustrated by the edited volumes Archaeology and European Modernity: Producing and Consuming the ‘Minoans’ (2006, co-edited with Y. Hamilakis) and Cretomania: Modern Desires for the Minoan Past (2017, co-edited with A. Farnoux). This publication, however, is the first monograph to broach the subject and offers a broad survey of specialist and non-specialist receptions, uses and adaptations of Minoan material culture. While the examples employed are less detailed than those found in the focused papers of edited volumes, their combined consideration makes for a clear message: the cultural legacy of Minoan Crete is both a product and a producer of interpretative responses, made and re-made over time.
This overarching argument is supported through reference to a particular and explicit data set; responses that demonstrably engage with the material culture of Bronze Age Crete, as opposed to those that solely reference later, mythological elements related to the island. This methodological focus means that some of the most famous examples of Minoan influence are purposefully excluded. Pablo Picasso, for instance, for all his matador and Minotaur imagery, is out – an absence positively reflected in the attention afforded to lesser-known artists, writers, mediums and what M. terms ‘rather obscure and not exactly high-quality materials’ (p. 16). That M. finds it pertinent to justify the inclusion and importance of these examples (e.g. pp. xii, 16) perhaps reflects a reluctance by archaeologists to acknowledge their interpretative value. For instance, although the impact (and, by implication, financial importance) of mass tourism on Bronze Age archaeological sites has been explored (e.g. A. Karetsou, BSAS 12 [2004]), there has been little discussion to date of the material products of this archaeo-tourism, which frequently exist as one of the Cretan visitor's first (and lasting) encounters with the echoes of Minoan material culture.
One supposes that these are the recondite ‘materials’ to which M. refers; those that are mass-produced, explicitly commercialised or incorporated into popular entertainment, such as the Knossian throne in the sci-fi television programme Dr Who (p. 182), bull-leaping trading cards for a meat extract company (pp. 183–4) or limited-edition labyrinthine Coca-Cola bottles (p. 223, see also C. Morris, Aegaeum 44 [2020]). While previous research has largely focused on what might traditionally be considered ‘high’ forms of artistic expression – dance performances, literature, haute couture (see multiple chapters in Cretomania) – the monograph's original contribution is its discussion of these examples alongside less traditionally revered responses to the Minoan archaeological record. The inclusion of the latter in this synthesis emphasises that, although these materials may be comparatively ‘low-quality’ in terms of stylistic ideals, manufacture, archaeological accuracy or monetary value, they are rich with interpretative potential, existing as the means through which larger audiences encounter and engage with the material culture of Minoan Crete. After all, as M. reminds us, ‘Cretomania … is not limited to the fine arts, as it occurs in a wide variety of different cultural forms and practices’ (p. 3).
Beginning with an introductory overview, the book's subsequent six chapters are arranged chronologically, ranging from antiquity to the present day. This chronological division works to support one of M.'s central arguments: that engagements with the Minoan material record are historically and culturally situated, continually afforded new (albeit often overlooked) inspiration by ongoing archaeological excavation and analysis. It is in this context that M. 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’ (p. 50) roots of Minoan archaeology are given a solid foundation, albeit one characterised by shifting political, national and ideological narratives. M.'s reception theory is one that looks within, as well as outside, the discipline, and the frank exposition of prominent specialist publications provides insight into the development and persistence of ‘established clichés’ (p. 96) that underpin much of Minoan archaeology. The ‘Great Mother Goddess’, the binary opposition between feminine, decadent Minoans and masculine, hardened Mycenaeans, the continued expectations of Minoan archaeology in relation to classical texts: these are the real ‘myths’ to which M. attends. Readers thus follow not Ariadne's thread but the various strands of interpretation that have led to these models’ continued influence and relative conservatism in Minoan archaeology, their trajectories traced and unpicked through the decades. The idea of Minoan pacifism, for example, comes particularly (if somewhat paradoxically) under fire, and it is in M.'s rejection of Arthur Evans as its source (‘he does not deserve to be criticized for this’, pp. 65–9) in which one may find an integral point related to the modern construct of Minoan Crete, namely that ‘other people influenced considerably the production and diffusion of knowledge … other people contributed greatly to this creative process’ (pp. 65–9).
These ‘other people’ and their diverse contributions are discussed throughout – painters, sculptors, ceramicists, academics, excavators, travel writers, poets, novelists, designers, dancers, tour guides, architects, filmmakers, modern pagans, composers – all illustrated to have engaged with the material culture of Minoan Crete in multifarious forms and to various extents. Significant attention is given to the archaeological narratives of novels, ranging from the widely read work of Mary Renault to the lesser-known Minoan undertones of science fiction, detective stories and erotica. While the inclusion of selected repartee between fictional characters adds a touch of humour (‘I think I'd feel at home with the Minoans’/‘Gorgeous plumbing’, p. 211 and DeLillo's The Names), the actual dialogue emphasised by M. is that between Minoan archaeology and the creative responses it has inspired. M.'s discussion of these Cretomanic creations within the context of both their own socio-historical backgrounds and that of archaeological research illustrates that this relationship is a two-way conversation, with artists and writers not just reacting to the material culture of Crete, but, in multiple cases, anticipating theoretical and interpretative developments in its specialist study.
Illustrations, while numerous, lack the vibrancy of colour and sharpness characteristic of Minoan art and of many modern responses to it, but the blanket black-and-white is arguably mediated by the relative affordability of the volume and the wide availability of a high proportion of images online, links to which are frequently provided in the endnotes. While the sustainability of such an approach is uncertain, sufficient detail provided in the main text ensures that any online (or offline) search will yield similar results. The endnotes themselves are extensive, resplendent with further detail and directions for future research, to such an extent that readers with particular interest will also require a certain level of patience and dexterity. The overall impression is of a culmination of years of the careful collection of sources, yet one which, in a refreshing rejection of academic territorialism, urges others to continue this search or delve deeper into the examples already described. While reception studies, often the briefest section, continue to be positioned at the back of volumes in Aegean archaeology, M. has shown that they should be at the forefront of our minds, as valid, non-destructive and rewarding interpretative approaches to the material record. Dedicated to ‘all the people who have been affected by Cretomania’, this monograph highlights that this condition – the Minoan mutation at least – is endemic.
