Colloque From Static Data to Dynamic Processes

This international workshop brings together specialists of Cretan Bronze Age architecture and urbanism with scholars from outside the field of Minoan archaeology to critically assess the current state of research, stimulate fruitful cross-disciplinary approaches, and outline promising agendas for future research. Since Sir Arthur Evans’ excavations at Knossos at the dawn of the 20^th century (Evans 1921-1935), Minoan Crete (c. 3100-1200 BCE) displays one of the most idiosyncratic and distinctive built environments of the ancient world (McEnroe 2010; Papadopoulos 2011). Consequently, Cretan Bronze Age architecture and urbanism have attracted a lot of scholarly attention. Although this long tradition of studies of the Minoan built environment clearly laid solid bases, ongoing excavations and new field projects provide us with a tremendous amount of new data. Simultaneously, new interpretive frameworks for examining the socio-political organization of Bronze Age Crete are opening up (Driessen et al. 2002; Hamilakis 2002; Schoep et al. 2012), while theoretical and computational approaches to ancient space, adapted from the fields of urban studies, geography, and complexity science, are gaining ground (Bevan and Lake 2013; Knappett et al. 2011; Letesson 2013; Paliou et al. 2014). A forum to allow the sharing of recent results and new methods is therefore particularly timely. Ongoing research on architectural configuration (Hillier 1996) and the current emergence of a new science of cities (Batty 2013; Bettencourt 2013) indeed invite us to go beyond static descriptions of our data, and to generate a more dynamic understanding of Minoan buildings and urban environments in terms of flows of people, matter, energy, and information.