What kinds of records were kept on Minoan and Mycenaean clay tablets?

Clay tablets from the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations served primarily as tools for economic administration and bureaucratic accounting within royal palaces. Because these records were intended to be discarded or reused annually, they provide a snapshot of data from the final year of the establishments where they were found, having been preserved only because the fires that destroyed the palaces baked the clay.12

The records are concise, practical, and quantifying in nature, covering a wide range of administrative details. Common subjects documented on these tablets include:2

• Personnel: Lists of workers and individuals.32
• Agriculture and Livestock: Inventories of sheep, goats, cattle, and agricultural produce.32
• Commodities: Records of oils, spices, wool, textiles, vessels, and furniture.32
• Military and Industrial: Inventories of metals and military materiel, such as swords, arrows, corselets, and chariots.32
• Land and Religion: Details regarding landholding, cadastral inventories, and records of temporal and cultic tribute, which have provided evidence that many Classical Greek deities existed during the Mycenaean period.32

While Linear B tablets are well-understood as Mycenaean Greek, the language of the earlier Linear A script remains unknown.1