Raw material choices and technical practices as indices of cultural change: Characterizing obsidian consumption at ‘Mycenaean’ Quartier Nu, Malia (Crete)

Abstract

This paper takes a practice-based approach to the study of cultural identity, focusing on how raw material and technical choices involved in the production of quotidian tools served to both reproduce, and reflect a social group’s very way of being. We then consider the (dis)continuity of obsidian blade-making traditions from Middle–Late Bronze Age Malia (north-central Crete), i.e., before and after a period of island-wide destructions, and appearance of foreign elements believed to reflect the arrival of a population from the Greek mainland (Mycenaeans). Methodologically this involves an integrated, ‘thick description’ obsidian characterisation study to detail long-term cultural traditions, including the use of Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) to source the raw materials of 36 artifacts. The results show a significant degree of continuity in the community’s lithic traditions, suggesting that many of the innovative features at Malia can be interpreted in terms of local factions appropriating new and foreign means of social distinction, rather than wholescale changes in community composition.