Luoghi per lavorare, pregare, morire. Edifici e maestranze edili negli interessi delle élites micenee

Places to work, pray and die: Buildings and Builders under the Mycenaean elites. Mycenaean architecture is a topic widely investigated by archaeologists, from typological and/or technological and/or artistic perspectives and, more recently, from the socio-economic point of view. Nevertheless, Linear B texts had not been yet explored with the aim of recovering information about this topic. The present study is aimed at filling this gap. It gathers and fully analyses all terms and expressions which refer to buildings (chap. I), builders (chap. III), and supplies of building materials (chap. IV) in Linear B texts. Besides the philological discussion, textual evidence is compared with the related archaeological remains. Because the vast majority of buildings mentioned in the Linear B documents is linked to the religious sphere, all Mycenaean buildings with certain or possible religious functions are collected and discussed in chap. II. Finally, chap. V collects and discusses archaeological evidence of the workforce involved in the construction of monumental structures (i.e. intended for ruling elites), such as tholos tombs, palaces, fortification walls in Cyclopean masonry, roads, bridges and dams, with the aim of detecting work phases, the different tasks required and the builders’ social make-up.