Components as a Possible Enabler of ‘Hobby’ Crafters in the Mycenaean World

That crafting is undertaken by a range of individuals outside of economic necessity is a well-known feature of modern societies. These ‘hobby crafters’ have a diverse set of motivations, but the phenomenon as a whole has been strongly linked to the Industrial Revolution and associated emergence of distinct ‘leisure time’, in which craft hobbies can be pursued. Thus a narrative has been established that hobby crafting is a product of the modern era and, with few notable exceptions, little to no attention has been directed towards investigating whether such a mode of production was also present in premodern or even prehistoric communities. As distinguishing between artefacts made by professional specialists and those produced by hobby crafters is by no means straightforward, this paper explores whether the practical and social conditions essential for hobby crafting could have been present in ancient communities. It demonstrates that, for such a mode of production to exist, intra-cross-craft communication between professional specialists and hobby crafters, materialised through components, is crucial. A particular form of jewellery from the Mycenaean Palatial-era Greek mainland (c. 1400–1200 BC) is used as a case study to illustrate how hobby crafting may have been present in an ancient society.