Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: International trade and the Late Bronze Age Aegean.

• Author: Bunnens, Guy
• Position: Review

By ERIC H. CLINE. British Archaeological Reports, International Series, vol. 591. Oxford: TEMPUS REPARATUM, 1994. Pp. xxii + 316, 10 plates. [pounds]34.

The subject of the relations between the Aegean world and the East, including Egypt, seems to have found increasing favor over the past twenty years. M. Bernal's Black Athena (London: Free Association Books, 1987) is a sign, more than a cause, of this renewed interest. The book under review advances significantly this debate.

Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea is the revised version of a Ph.D. dissertation submitted to the University of Pennsylvania in 1991. It essentially consists of two parts. Fifteen introductory chapters deal with the chronological and spatial distribution of the "orientalia" and "occidentalia" in the Aegean, and with the institutional aspects of the organization of trade in the Late Bronze Age. The second part presents, in two catalogues and three appendices, the philological and material evidence for western and oriental imports in the Aegean area in the Late Bronze Age. An abundant bibliography completes the volume. The second part is clearly the more substantial and was probably the original topic of the dissertation.

It is most unfortunate that only a year before the thesis was submitted, C. Lambrou-Philipson published her Hellenorientalia: The Near Eastern Presence in the Bronze Age Aegean, ca. 3000-1100 B.C., Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology and Literature, Pocketbook 95 (Goteborg: P. Astrom's Forlag, 1990). There are obvious duplications between the two books, but they do not render Cline's efforts worthless. An interesting feature of Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea is the inclusion of the philological evidence presented, as already said, in catalogue form. Also, a quick look at Cline's catalogue of imported objects shows that it lists items omitted by Lambrou-Philipson. Finally, the "occidentalia," included in the book under review, were not considered by the latter author. There is no doubt that Cline's book deserves careful reading and will serve as a research tool for many years.

After three chapters on methodology, previous studies, and chronology, the author reviews the imports into the Aegean according to their place of origin (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Syro-Palestine, Cyprus, Anatolia, Italy, and Europe). The study is heavily dependent on statistics that are presented in tables at the end of the relevant chapters. The overall conclusion is that Minoan Crete was the...