Forum : "minding the gap" : a problem in eastern Mediterranena chronology, then and now

The articles collected in this Forum were presented in Jeremy Rutter's honor in a Gold Medal Colloquium held at the 114th Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America (Seattle, 2013). The focus is Rutter's note "Some Observations on the Cyclades in the Later Third and Early Second Millennia" (AJA 87 [1983] 6976). His observations there pointed to a chronological "gap" in the stratigraphic sequences of the Cycladic Islands at the end of the third millennium B.C.E. Material culture and ways of life in the islands before and after the gap are radically different. How long was the gap? What caused it? Does it still exist? Our goal in this Forum is to reconsider these and other issues raised by Rutter in 1983 in light of more recent research. In these articles, authors bring their particular expertise and individual perspectives to bear on the gap period, and their conclusions are reviewed by the honoree himself. [Publication Abstract]