Course Descriptions

In ancient Crete, the central divinity was a Nature Goddess or Goddesses who shared powers in partnership with a Nature God or Gods. We question how Crete’s nature religion influenced this extraordinary culture, including gender relations of women and men and the social roles each sex played in family, economic, political, and religious life; the naturalistic and exuberant artwork; and expressions of relative harmony and peace in contrast to violence and warfare in neighboring cultures. Using methodologies of archaeology, mythology, history of religion, and archaeomythology, we trace evidence for ritual activity and for Goddesses and God iconography in Neolithic and Bronze Age Crete from c. 7000 BCE to c. 1100 BCE. Interrelations are situated in the specific eras of cultural history on the fabled isle of Crete.