Animal remains, particularly skulls, have been interpreted as sacrificial ever since the beginnings of Minoan archaeology in the nineteenth century. This chapter argues that these remains can better be understood in terms of butchery and the consumption of animals at commensal feasts. Animal-head rhyta show that heads were used as trophies to commemorate such events.

As a result of its history of discovery, the archaeology of Bronze Age Crete is largely understood through a modernist view of nature and culture. This book provides an alternative framework derived from anthropology and human-animal studies. It introduces the ideas of animal practices, animal things and domestic/palatial collectives which will be used throughout the book.

Depictions of hunting are largely confined to sealstones in Bronze Age Crete and as a result the importance of hunting has been downplayed. This chapter argues that it was instead central to the organisation of territory in palatial Crete and was an animal practice which defined membership of the palatial collective. Large-scale depictions associated elaborately dressed women with hunted animals as a means to bring them into the palatial collective.

Marine-style pottery is emblematic of Bronze Age Crete but its origins in relations with marine animals have been downplayed by art historical approaches. This chapter revives Arthur Evans’s ideas of nature-moulding and nature-printing to broaden the definition of Marine style and link it to fishing and voyaging, and their importance to the palatial collective of Knossos.

Using John Berger’s famous essay ‘Why look at animals?’ as a starting point, this chapter sets out the theoretical basis for the book, replacing an art historical framework in which animal art reflects a love of nature with a relational approach focusing on the interactions between humans, animals and things. An ontological approach is used to identify modern ways of looking at animals/objects and opening up new ways of understanding them.

Exotic animals arrived on Crete during the Bronze Age as depictions and then, in the case of some animals such as cats and deer, became a bodily presence on Crete. This chapter examines how these unfamiliar bodies were absorbed into the palatial collective and were used to demonstrate overseas connections.

Sir Arthur Evans’s concept of the ‘naturalistic spirit’ highlights the importance of animal depictions in Bronze Age Crete, their naturalism peaking in the Neopalatial period. This chapter summarises the book’s argument that animal practices, extended through animal depictions, were central to the formation and development of palatial collectives such as Knossos.

This chapter traces the history of domestic animals on Crete, starting with a group of animals, plants and humans which settled at Knossos in the Neolithic period. Focusing particularly on the herding of sheep and cattle it examines their depiction as clay figurines and their recording in clay documents. Whereas sheep were extensively herded because of their importance to the textile industry, they were rarely depicted, whereas cattle-ranching, which gave rise to bull-leaping, became a prominent part of the expansion of the palatial collective of Knossos.