Contare a Haghia Triada. Le tavolette in lineare A, i documenti sigillati e il sistema economico-amministrativo nel TM IB

The volume, which has been published with the generous financial support of the Institute for Aegean Prehistory (INSTAP), Philadelphia, offers the first comprehensive study of the Linear A archival documents from the Cretan site of Hagia Triada. The 147 clay tablets and the more than 1,000 sealings found in the excavation at the beginning of the last century and dating to the 15th century BC still constitute the largest assemblage of archival documents in the Neopalatial period and represent the fundamental starting point for any attempt of interpretation of the Minoan economy. Through a careful analysis of their textual, palaeographic and sphragistic features, as well as their respective archaeological contexts and patterns of distribution, the author tries to reconstruct the contents and functions of the individual archival deposits found both in the Villa and the rest of the settlement. A special attention in this process is paid to the roles and status of the people involved in sealing and writing practices, in an attempt to understand how much the individuals responsible for accounting also “counted” in an economic, political and social sense. Finally, the results of this analysis are compared with the Messara archaeological data, in order to draw an updated picture of the settlement dynamics in the region, with a special attention to the relationship between Hagia Triada and the Phaistos palace.