With distance made near: The changing position of identity in Early-Middle Minoan Crete as reflected in seals

In this dissertation I study transitional Early-Middle Minoan glyptic as a means to investigate processes of social change in late Prepalatial Crete. I do so by focusing on the Early Minoan III/Middle Minoan IA Parading Lions seal group. As both explicitly symbolic objects and practical tools of interaction, the seals were involved in crucial spheres of socio-cultural action that underwent change in this moment, and thus provide a unique reflection on the position of the social actor within the transformative processes that were at play. Given their unique social and temporal position, the Parading Lions seals can be used to problematize the reconfiguration of social formations occurring on Crete in the early second millennium BC -- a phenomenon which we traditionally refer to as the "emergence of the first palaces." In order to support this claim I identify stylistic (i.e., morphological and compositional) sub-groups within the broader Parading Lions group which indicate that the seals, while explicitly members of the same symbolic tradition, were produced in different microstyles within multiple micro-contexts around the island. Thus the Parading Lions seals demonstrate how common symbolic material culture was used to forge new links between distanced social actors across Crete in this period.;As such the present study makes three new significant contributions to the current scholarship: First it presents the findings of extensive microscopic analyses of casts of the Parading Lions seals in which new morphological/compositional sub-groupings were identified. Second it incorporates these findings into a detailed semiotic problematization of the dramatic developments occurring in seal design in the late Prepalatial period and the implications thereof for the potentialities of interaction via seals. Third it situates the identified developments within the broader contemporary archaeological evidence in order to suggest a new understanding of how seal-use -- and more specifically production of and interaction with seals of the Parading Lions group -- can be linked to the development of "palatial" social formations on Crete in the early second millennium BC.