This The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean provides a detailed survey of the Greek Bronze Age, roughly 3000 to 1000 bc. This period witnessed the flourishing of the Minoan and Mycenean civilizations, the earliest expansion of trade in the Aegean and wider Mediterranean Sea, the development of artistic techniques, the evolution of early Greek religious practices and mythology, and violent conflict in Asia Minor. The first section of the book establishes the discipline in its historical, geographical, and chronological settings and in its relation to other disciplines. The second section examines the Bronze Age Aegean by chronological period. Each of the periods are further subdivided geographically, so that individual articles are concerned with Mainland Greece during the Early Bronze Age, Crete during the Early Bronze Age, the Cycladic Islands during the Early Bronze Age, and the same for the Middle Bronze Age, followed by the Late Bronze Age. The third section examines thematic topics, including religion, state and society, trade, warfare, pottery, writing, and burial customs, as well as specific events, such as the eruption of Santorini and the Trojan War. The fourth section contains articles examining the most important regions and sites in the Bronze Age Aegean, including Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos, Knossos, Kommos, Rhodes, the northern Aegean, and the Uluburun shipwreck, as well as adjacent areas such as the Levant, Egypt, and the western Mediterranean. -- Publisher description.

The first contacts between Greece, the Aegean and India are generally thought to have occurred at the beginning of the sixth century BC. There is now, however, growing evidence of much earlier but indirect connections, reaching back into prehistory. These were initially between India and its Indus Civilisation (Meluhha) and the Near East and then finally with the societies of the Early and Middle Bronze Age Aegean,with their slowly emerging palace-based economies and complex social structures. Starting in the middle of the third millennium BC but diminishing after approximately 1800 BC, these connections point to a form of indirect or what might be called 'trickle-down' contact between the Aegean and India. From the start, until 2500 BC, the objects and commodities that formed this contact were transported overland, through Northern Iran, but after that time, the Harappans took control and we see a structured trade using the sea out through the Persian Gulf. These contacts can also be placed into three categories: (a) the importation of objects manufactured in India or made from Indian commodities imported into the Near East,which eventually found their way to the Aegean and have parallels at Indian sites; (b) the importation of inorganic commodities such as tin, possibly some gold and lapis lazuli, exported from India or Central Asia under Harappan control; and (c) the importation of non-perishable organic commodities. This study views the Aegean as part of a greater trade network and here the author has attempted to both evaluate and re-evaluate what evidence and speculation there are for such contacts, particularly for the commodities such as tin and lapis lazuli as well as more recently discovered objects