The Conceptualization of Measuring and Counting in the Bronze Age Aegean

This paper examines the textual evidence for categories related to counting, weighing and measuring commodities in the Aegean societies. On the ground of a comparative and diachronic study, changes throughout the Middle and the Late Bronze Age will be outlined. It will be argued that different and autonomous measurement systems coexisted and possibly had their own internal and distinct developments until the Mycenaean Era, when a great effort was put into reducing the range of weight and measurement units. Moreover, the widely shared opinion that Linear B record system implies special units of weight for wool and cloths will be questioned. Some attempts to recognise in the archaeological record evidence for concrete counting in the Late Bronze Age Aegean will be collected and reviewed in the last section. The final outcome is that one–to–one counting and counters were still used when writing had been already well established.