You are invited to a hybrid lecture on Thursday December 11th, 2025 at 19.00 pm (Greek time) 17.00 pm (Ireland time), 12.00 pm (Standard Eastern Time) by Dr Angelos Papadopoulos (College Year at Athens), on ‘Access and Control: Inequality and Economic Power in the Late Bronze Age Aegean’.

Abstract: In discussing Mycenaean trade, James Wright asked how the elites at Mycenae achieved domination (on the mainland and across the Aegean), suggesting that at least part of their power derived from controlling production and distribution. In addition, the idea that social inequality is fundamentally rooted in access to and control over resources forms the basis of this presentation. Here, “resources” include not only cultivable land, water, minerals, metals and clays, but also passages, bridges, safe anchorages and harbours that enabled mobility and exchange. The central hypothesis is that the groups who accessed or extracted these resources were not always the same as those who profited from their distribution. Furthermore, it is proposed that individuals such as merchants or warriors may have operated privately, at times beyond the supervision of state institutions like the palaces, offering an additional layer of inequality within the Late Bronze Age Aegean. Examples from the contemporary Eastern Mediterranean will be used to illustrate these dynamics.

For online attendance register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/6YfAdSI7SgiLkplsuR8pKA

To attend in person, please register by email:irishinstitutegr@gmail.com