One of the singular challenges of prehistoric archaeology is interpreting the intent, purpose, and meaning of marks whose regularity of length, spacing, and orientation makes them visually indistinguishable from one another, like those in Fig. 11.1. Were they decorative? conventional? mnemonic? symbolic? notational? numerical? astronomical? calendrical? musical? utilitarian?

The final chapter turns to the symbolism of gold metal. I argue that the polysemous metal of the tablets served as a material counterpart to the theme of memory, offering ritual performers a repertoire that could be developed and explained in various ways. I focus on three areas of symbolism as especially relevant: mythical, ritual, and economic. All three have roots in poetic tradition. Gold in early Greek poetry characterizes the life of the gods; it also is used in Homeric funerals to signify the transformation of the hero’s mortal body into a durable object of culture. In addition, however, gold has an ambiguous economic significance: alongside its poetic symbolism, it also plays an important role in the monetized economy. Using David Morgan’s concept of “Sacred Economy,” I argue that makers of the tablets used gold metal to articulate and reinforce the poetic claims of an exceptional quasi-elite identity for the initiate and mystic group.

Chapter 7 shows how, during the Hellenistic period elite households adopted elements of the architectural vocabulary of the largest fourth-century houses, seeking to align themselves with their peers in other settlements. They thus formed a political, social and economic status group that crossed administrative and cultural boundaries, to reach across much of the Mediterranean and even beyond. At the same time these elites also differentiated themselves from the other members of their own communities who did not (and perhaps in most cases could not) build such houses. Among these households, too, there were changes in the dominant house-forms. The courtyard was often reduced in size and seems to have been less important than in earlier times, either as a location for domestic tasks, or as a communication route for moving around the house – a role which sometimes came to be played instead by an interior space. There is significant diversity across the Mediterranean, however.

Chapter 1 sketches out the nature and scope of the evidence available for Greek housing during the first millennium BCE. Drawing on textual sources (including Demosthenes, Lysias, Xenophon and Plato) the significance of the house in ancient Greek (mainly Classical Athenian) culture is investigated. At the same time the chapter outlines some of the basic structural and decorative features as represented in the archaeological remains of the buildings themselves. Some processes (both human and natural) which shape the material remains of houses are outlined. These include the social context of construction (as far as it can be understood), archaeological formation processes and potential biases introduced during excavation. Emphasis is placed on the need to interpret the archaeology within its own cultural context, setting aside (as far as possible) the urge to draw comparisons with modern, western housing.

In this chapter, we will discuss the theoretical framework – Material Engagement Theory (MET) – used in analyzing material forms as a component of numerical cognition.1 MET is an approach to the study of material culture that assumes it plays a role in human cognition. MET is particularly interested in the roles that tools play in cognition, and how those roles would have influenced human cognitive evolution. In taking this perspective, MET differs from traditional archaeological and cognitive approaches to the study of the mind, both of which have tended to see the mind as something distinct and qualitatively different from the material world.

The Introduction reviews evidence and recent scholarship on private Orphic-Bacchic mysteries of the Classical period. Four recent developments are especially important for the book’s argument: Radcliffe Edmonds’s challenge to the idea of a common Orphic belief system; Walter Burkert’s model of Orphism as a “craft” of competing experts; the Derveni Papyrus, which shows the central importance of poetic performance in private mysteries; and the description of Orphic-Bacchic cults as bricolage, applying the category of Claude Lévi-Strauss. Taking these developments into account, I argue that private mystery cults can be understood as a poetic performance context, and that interactions between experts and clients mirrored the relation of poet and audience in other poetic genres. As products of a poetic performance setting, the tablets can be expected to apply and adapt the verbal and conceptual repertoire afforded by the traditions of early Greek poetry. On this interpretation, the inconsistency and semantic ambiguity of the tablets can be understood as an aid to performance, giving ritual experts flexibility to explain and adapt their performing repertoire in different ways.

Chapter 3 investigates the physical characteristics and social significance of Classical houses from Athens and Attica, comparing structures from the city, outlying villages or deme centres, and rural farms. Houses with four to five rooms or more share some characteristic elements in their basic layout: a single entrance designed to screen the interior from the street; an open courtyard; a portico adjacent to that courtyard; and rooms opening individually from the central court-portico area. These point to a distinctive form of dwelling, the ‘single-entrance, courtyard house’. Underlying this form were social expectations which included: restricting and/or monitoring movement in and out of the house; separation of male visitors from the remainder of the household; and potential for the surveillance of individuals moving around the interior of the house. Together, these elements suggest a desire to regulate contact between members of the household and outsiders. This corresponds with Classical Athenian authors, who imply that the movement and social contacts of citizens’ wives were limited.

Our perceptual experience of quantity means that without counting, we recognize quantities up to about three or four rapidly and unambiguously, and we appreciate quantities larger than this range as bigger or smaller in groups when differences are big enough to be noticeable. These ranges correspond exactly to the first numbers to emerge across cultures and languages, even those widely separated by distance and time: one, two, (maybe) three, (occasionally) four, and many, with many often further specified as big many and small many. In other words, the first numbers are consistent with the functions of numerosity, subitizing, and magnitude appreciation.

We turn now to technologies that can be moved and rearranged, like pebbles and cowrie shells. These material forms and practices both accumulate and group (Fig. 12.1). Accumulation adds like the tally does: one, two, three, four, five, and so on; adjacent markers differ by one. Grouping makes numerical information more concise: One kind of pebble – perhaps one with a certain size, shape, or color – might represent a group of ten, and a pebble with a different appearance might represent one. This reduces the number of pebbles by replacing multiple units of lower value with one of higher value. Alternatively, pebbles might take their value from their spatial placement – their literal place value as units or tens. This reduces the total number of elements needed because ten is represented by a single pebble in the tens place. These strategies bring new relations into the number system, as for example, ten of a lower value make one of the next higher value.