The "Master of lions" at Prinias. Function of images and identity construction in Iron Age Crete

The wide and complex cultural exchanges which concerned Crete in the Early Iron Age had a strong impact on stylistic and iconographic repertoire of the material culture. New figurative schemes and themes, phantastic beings, minor decorative motifs of Near Eastern origin reached the Cretan repertoire and affected the artistic environment of the island; actually, some of them, already known in the Minoan and Mycenean Age, came back via Near-Eastern imagerie. Seminal studies have extensively discussed the Near-Eastern roots of that repertoire and outlined the features of a local craft production . It is beyond the scope of this study to address these issues; instead, this paper focusses on the theme of the Master of lions in a Cretan perspective, considering the function of this image and the contexts in which it occurs. The assessment of a few examples found in the Siderospilia necropolis at Prinias provides an opportunity to broaden the analysis to some further Cretan contexts with the aim of suggesting some remarks on the role played by this image in the dynamics of identity and status construction in Early Iron Age Crete.