The topic of Cretan state formation has attracted some attention over the past decade in the form of papers, however it has been over twenty years since the last monographs touching on the subject were published: Branigan's The Foundations of Palatial Crete in 1970 and Renfrew's The Emergence of Civilisation in 1972. It is thus hoped that this study comes at an opportune time, as it seems appropriate to reconsider the process of state formation on Crete in the light of new developments both in published data and in methodological perspective over the last generation. In order to provide a perspective on the influence of past works on current views of state formation in the Cretan Bronze Age, the first section of this work will present a historiography of works which have formed milestones in the topic's history. The identification of some effects of this long process is the goal of this section, and it will be concluded with the presentation of an investigative model which will be followed in the hopes of providing a methodological alternative to some of these long held assumptions. The second section of this work follows the investigative model which has been suggested, concentrating on integrating contextual site analyses to produce a model of intra-site organization and inter-site relations in the Early Bronze Age, coupled with a reconsideration of the character of the first palatial centers themselves. The result of this study will be the presentation of a model for Cretan state formation which stresses the roles which resource management, the exploitation of unusual status, and the effects of community interaction had on the development of the first Cretan state system, which is presented as a core-periphery system based on the elaboration of long standing cultural traits rather than a cultural invention stratified over old beliefs.
Note: This dissertation was originally completed in 1994 and defended in 1995, although it was only processed and published in electronic form in 2008.