This cultural history of the impact Arthur Evan's fanciful interpretations of the Minoan remains at Knossos is essentially a study of how assorted cultural figures, mostly in the shadow of Nietzsche, took the enigmatic remains of the Minoans and ran with them to come up with a critique of an unsatisfactory modernity. Apart from Evans himself, such players as James Joyce, Peter Graves, Hilda Doolittle, Freud, Marija Gimbutas, and Martin Bernal are examined in this study, with particular note being taken of how Evans' image of Minoan culture inspired prophetic rhetoric of varying degrees of dottiness. One gathers that the author came to scoff but stayed to wonder at the phenomena of it all.

Also, one might imagine the author extending her study, considering the propensity of British archaeologists of the first half of the twentieth century to take the archaeological remains of such cultures as Amarna Period Egypt and the Classical Maya and build utopian vistas on them that were ultimately overturned. ( )