<P> The construction of fortified sites is often assumed to reflect a threat of warfare, but such fortified centres were multifunctional; they were also often the embodiment or material expression of the central places of the territories at the same time as being monuments glorifying and merging leading power . </P> <P> Stella Chryssoulaki's work on small outposts (or guardhouses) in eastern Crete indicates a possible defensive system; type A (high - quality) Minoan swords were found in the palaces of Mallia and Zarkos (see Sanders, AJA 65, 67, Hoeckmann, JRGZM 27, or Rehak and Younger, AJA 102). Keith Branigan estimated that 95 percent of Minoan "weapons" had hafting (hilts or handles) which would have prevented their use as such . However, tests of replicas indicated that the weapons could cut flesh down to the bone (and score the bone's surface) without damaging the weapons themselves . According to Paul Rehak, Minoan figure - eight shields could not have been used for fighting or hunting, since they were too cumbersome . Although Cheryl Floyd concluded that Minoan "weapons" were tools used for mundane tasks such as meat processing, Middle Minoan "rapiers nearly three feet in length" have been found . </P> <P> About Minoan warfare, Branigan concluded: </P> <P> The quantity of weaponry, the impressive fortifications, and the aggressive looking long - boats all suggested an era of intensified hostilities . But on closer inspection there are grounds for thinking that all three key elements are bound up as much with status statements, display, and fashion as with aggression...Warfare such as there was in the southern Aegean early Bronze Age was either personalized and perhaps ritualized (in Crete) or small - scale, intermittent and essentially an economic activity (in the Cyclades and the Argolid / Attica). </P>

In aegean island culture which of the following was an indigenous cultural element