Complexity, power and "associations that matter" : rethinking social organisation in the Early Bronze Age 2 mainland Greece

The aim of this thesis is to introduce a new approach to the analysis of social
organisation of the southern Greek Mainland during the Early Helladic II period.
Central to this approach is a view of social organisation less as a "problem" faced by
society and more as an open-ended project that involves defining particular networks
of relationships as "associations that matter". From this point of departure, this thesis
undertakes a novel analysis of domestic and monumental architecture (and their
related artefactual assemblages), placing emphasis on the definition of contexts of
practice where particular models of groupness were promoted and reproduced. The
analysis establishes the "domestic" and the "public" as historically specific statements
of belonging, firmly grounded in the ways specific activities, commensal events
involving the sharing of a collectively procured produce, were structured.