The Phaistos Disc as an Administrative Tool: Identities, Concessions and Population Cycles

This paper proposes an administrative reading of the Phaistos Disc. Instead of treating the object primarily as a ritual, linguistic or purely symbolic artefact, it is analysed as a tool for managing people, land and rights around Phaistos. Drawing on archaeological context, iconographic patterns and comparison with later administrative devices, the study explores how identities, concessions, herds and cultivated areas could be encoded on the Disc. Particular attention is paid to cyclic mechanisms (seasons, generations, renewal of rights) and to the way human, animal and vegetal components are aligned. This exploratory model does not claim to “decipher” the script, but to reframe the Disc within a coherent ecosystem of population regulation and resource allocation in Minoan Crete.