City Walls

The Classical Review vol. 62 no. 2 © The Classical Association 2012; all rights reserved W. recognises and strongly emphasises the crucial role played by both settlement development and economic factors in the socio-political changes taking place in the period from the Early Iron Age to the fi fth century B.C. and in the process of polis formation on Crete, giving to them the importance they deserve and that other authors have not recognised to this extent. It is also very welcome that W. concentrates on the symbolic appropriation of the past in constructing Early Iron Age social identity and underlines the role played by stable ‘extended kin groups’ on Crete. Nevertheless, the question of democracy’s alternatives that she refers to in the title remains undefi ned, since the socio-political system of democracy was not the norm in Ancient Greece. Finally, W.’s treatment of the socio-political processes after the collapse in shaping later developments and the connotation of the collapse as successful, are very deterministic. This is, however, a helpful work which includes a plethora of data and some new evidence. It constitutes the fi rst move in a new direction for scholarship.