Marine styles in Bronze Age Aegean material culture

Marine Style pottery vessels are among the most famous Bronze Age Aegean objects. Produced on Crete and the Greek Mainland at the start of the Late Bronze Age, Marine Style consists of underwater scenes, most characteristically with sea creatures with writhing tentacles. Examples of this pottery style have been extensively published and discussed; in addition to a narrow typological focus authors have frequently sought religious meanings behind the depiction of marine animals. This contribution seeks to locate these discussions of Marine Style within a broader framework, both historical and archaeological. This chapter will focus on the material culture of the Bronze Age Aegean (rather than zooarchaeological remains) in order to examine the different ways in which marine animals were brought into society via craft production. Depictions of the sea and marine animals occur throughout the Bronze Age, but become prevalent in palatial Crete. Here relations with the sea, both deep-sea fishing and voyaging, were of particular social significance, resulting in the production of detailed depictions of marine animals. Over time there appears to have been a decreasing emphasis on relations with the animals of the sea and an increase in symbolic uses of marine forms, particularly related to death and burial. The increasing stylisation of marine forms, particularly on Mycenaean pottery, can be attributed to the imitation of previous depictions established in palatial Cretan culture. Changes in depictions of marine animals in material culture were part of the changing relationships between humans, marine animals and the sea over the course of the Bronze Age.