Currently, craft activities and artisans in the Late Bronze Age Aegean form the main focus of my research. Within the project “Cross-Craft Interaction in the cross-cultural context of the late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean” (http://www.tracingnetworks.org/content/web/cross_craft_interaction.jsp) I study diverse objects and other archaeological remains of craft activities and workshop areas and explore technical and technological choices and practices. Data recording and material analyses are focused on workshop contexts in the Mycenaean palatial and postpalatial site of Tiryns in the Argolid that flourished during the last quarter of the second millennium BCE. The project was instigated by Dr Ann Brysbaert and investigates the transfer of materials in multiple chaînes opératoires and the sharing of techniques between artisans of different crafts. To this end, the material remains of craft activities are analysed with regard to motor habits, communities of practice and Cross-Craft Interaction as well as the affordances of materials that encourage technological transfer. To firmly ground the study of such concepts in archaeological data and to develop a methodological framework, we focus on specific case studies of Tirynthian workshop areas. It is hoped that by implementing a variety of scientific techniques and analyses we will be able to further the understanding of material properties and manufacturing techniques of diverse artefact groups from select case studies in Tiryns. Moreover, since the project aims to reconstruct the potential social impact of crafting on the artisans and the wider community, stratigraphic and contextual studies of the finds, of the architecture and the location of workshop areas within the settlement of Tiryns play a vital role in our study.

As a corollary to the study of technological transfer in the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean I became interested in the material traits that indicate Mycenaean – Levantine contacts during the later part of the second millennium BCE. The objective of identifying imports and imitations entails questions as to why foreign materials, objects or practices are accepted in new social contexts and how cultural transmission functioned in specific instances. Network approaches that surpass models of trade relations and integrate objects and individuals as vital nodes in changing network constellations offer new ways e.g. of conceptualizing dots on distribution maps in the 13th and 12th centuries BCE. Thus, I am intrigued by recent developments in network theories as applied to archaeological data and their interpretation with regard to sociological and historical models. Another venue of research that I currently follow concerns the materiality of scripts and the use of script in proto-literate societies or rather the impact inscribed media might have had on the majority of people in Late Bronze Age societies that were illiterate.

Furthermore, stemming from my PhD research on Mycenaean figurines I am interested in the study of ritual via material remains, especially in the Aegean Bronze Age. In my opinion, the contextual study of prehistoric figurines as remnants of ritual actions forms the basis for any further interpretation of their performative potential in religious rituals and ceremonies. Therefore, I consider a reconstruction of depositional histories in settlement contexts and a focus on stratigraphy and an assessment of the figurines’ preservation an essential first step. Methodologically, I have employed detailed contextual analyses in my study of the Mycenaean figurines in Tiryns, where the chronological phasing of archaeological deposits and the depositional histories of assemblages were given considerable attention. Finds and architecture were contextualized with regard to diverse ritual practices in public, artisanal and private settings as well as with a view to diachronic changes from the palatial to the postpalatial period. This was integrated into a discussion of different locales for ritual in the settlement that ultimately lead me to suggest modifications to current models of Mycenaean religion.