Unavailable for too long, this new edition reprints the original text of Renfrew's groundbreaking study, supplemented with a new introduction by the author and a foreword by John Cherry, in order to make this landmark publication available once again to the scholarly community. Contents: Foreword by John Cherry; Introduction to the 2009 Edition; Civilisation; The Explanation of Culture Change; The Multiplier Effect; the Minoan-Mycenean Civilisation and its Origins. Part I - Culture Sequence: The Neolithic Background; Crete in the Third Millennium BC; Mainland Greece in the Third Millennium BC; The Eastern Aegean in the Third Millennium BC; The Early Cycladic Culture Sequence; The Grotta- Pelos Culture; The Keros-Syros Culture; The Phylakopi I Culture; Aegean Interrelations and Chronology in the Third Millennium BC. Part II - Culture Process: Patterns of Settlement and Population in the Prehistoric Aegean; Natural Environment and the Subsistence Subsystem; The Development of Aegean Metallurgy; Craft Specialisation and the Transformation of the Physical Environment; Social Systems; Symbolic and Projective Systems; Trade, Communication and Innovation; The Multiplier Effect in Action. Appendices.