What Aegean ʺSimple Styleʺ Pottery Reveals about Interconnections in the 13th-Century Eastern Mediterranean

Among the many contributions of the excavations at Kommos—directed with vision and skill by Joe and Maria Shaw—has been the discovery of the widest range and largest number of Late Bronze Age Cypriot, Levantine, and Egyptian ceramic imports from any site in the Aegean (Watrous 1992, 156–163; Rutter 1999). These ceramics document the continued reciprocal participation of Crete in the trade networks of the eastern Mediterranean during the 13th century b.c.e., albeit on an apparently smaller scale than the participation of Mycenaean mainlanders.One aspect of the interconnections in the 13th-century Eastern Mediterranean was discussed by the