Roman Crete as a place and an object of study might be characterised as a locale that is both familiar and forgettable. Familiar because of the antiquarian legacy of scholars like Schliemann, Hahlberr and Evans; forgettable because it does not figure much in discussions of Roman archaeology, despite more than five centuries of Roman rule and thirty years of dedicated scholarly interest (with the notable exceptions of Baldwin Bowsky, Chaniotis and Sweetman). The antiquarians created a narrative relating to the prehistory of Greece that saw the exclusion of other periods on Crete, while Evans so dominated Cretan archaeology that he was able to craft an entire fictive culture of matriarchal pacifists that stood relatively unchallenged for 100 years, and has only recently been unpicked. The long shadow of Minoan Crete left the Roman period in darkness.

This edited volume by Francis and Kouremenos is a noble attempt to shed some light on the long-neglected Roman period of the island. For scholars already familiar with Roman Crete, this volume offers a welcome snapshot of contemporary scholarship, if little that will surprise; for those coming to the island for the first time, it provides a helpful grounding in the archaeological approaches to Crete’s Roman past, and it should appeal to students and professionals alike. The volume is split between chapters that narrowly focus on single sites or object types (Imperial sculpture, Kissamos, Aptera, Gortyn) and what might be termed broader syntheses of activities on the island as a whole (provincial administration, Italian sigillata, the labrys, climate, apiculture, amphorae production and distribution, civic infrastructure, and late antique ceramics).

There is value in each of the chapters, itself a rare accomplishment for an edited volume, but there were some contributions that this reviewer found most interesting and insightful. These include Chevrollier’s study of the union of Crete and Cyrenaica, which highlights the long-standing pre-Roman links between the island and North Africa. All too frequently Crete is studied as separate and distinct from the other half of the province, but Chevrollier shows the logic behind the union of the two. Baldwin Bowsky offers a contextualised study of Italian sigillata stamps at Knossos and across the island, showing both the ubiquity of sigillatas on Crete, at sites both large and small, and, despite this, its persistent eastern orientation. This is supported, in a broad extent, by Gallimore’s examination of Cretan amphorae distribution from the third to seventh centuries. Francis’s study of apiculture forces a re-think about the nature, structure and evidence of activities in the landscape, and has implications far beyond the shores of Crete. Lippolis offers an excellent summary of contemporary archaeological understandings of Gortyn, a rarity in English. Harrison offers a thought-provoking, if frustratingly brief, study of the relationships between theatrical production, imperial investment and local myth. If, as he says, the third century is when the money ran out, Crete had by that time an extensive and established theatrical infrastructure and a deep well of myth to draw upon for performance that ensured theatres remained core facets of civic life in the third and fourth centuries.

Each of the contributions provide selective snapshots of key facets of Roman Crete; each also shows an indebtedness – for good or ill – to previous scholarly approaches, some of which go back more than a century. That impact is still being felt in Roman studies of the island as well, and the papers in this volume are notable in what they select (and omit). The study of Roman Crete, as it stands now, is the study of sites: it is the history of Knossos, the history of Gortyn, the history of Kissamos and of Aptera. It is not the history of an island. This volume is an attempt to challenge that approach, and shows why that challenge must continue.