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Excavations at Palaikastro VII

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

L. H. Sackett  and
Mervyn Popham
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Extract

The scope and a summary of the results of the 1962–3 excavations at Palaikastro and their relation to the earlier work of 1902–6 were set out in Part I (BSA lx (1965) 249–52). There is no call to repeat those findings here, nor has further study made it necessary to make any significant revisions.

In this article we publish the Late Minoan IB and reoccupation pottery from Block N (excavation report in PK VI. 252) and from other tests, along with an account of work undertaken in the main area of the town at Palaikastro (Roussolakkos).

As before, the excavation report was written by L. H. Sackett, while M. R. Popham contributed the sections on the L.M. pottery. We are grateful to P. M. Warren for notes on the stone objects and to V. E. G. Kenna for a note on one sealstone.

The material still awaiting final study and publication consists principally of Early and Middle Minoan pottery from Kastri, tests in Block Χ, Block Γ, and Square H3.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 65 , November 1970 , pp. 203 - 242
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1970

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References

1 The earlier publications of Palaikastro excavations and pottery are referred to as before by the following abbreviations: PK I (for BSA viii. 286), PK II (for BSA ix. 274), PK III (for BSA x. 192), PK IV (for BSA xi. 258), PK V (for BSA xii. 1), PKU (for BSA Supplementary Paper i (1923)), PKU II (for BSA xl. 38); add now PK VI (for BSA lx. 248).

2 Cf. PK VI. 250 n. 10. The greater part of these blocks, and the complete blocks Ε, Ο, Π, and Χ were covered in by the excavators, and should for that reason be better preserved today.

3 Robbing was already reported in 1908 (BSA xvi (1909) 299); N. Platon informed us of further depredation which took place during the 1941–4 occupation.

4 It is worth noting also that the south wall of B 12 is slightly out of line with the rest of the street wall, having a small inset of about 0·10 m. at the junction of B 12 and B 13 (Fig. 1 and Plate 54a).

5 The question whether Minoan bathrooms were ever filled with water, and how they would be drained, has been discussed by Graham, J. W., The Palaces of Crete 99 and 103–6Google Scholar, and by Platon, N. in Bathrooms and Lustral Basins in Minoan Dwellings (Festschrift for Grumach, E., Berlin, 1967).Google Scholar Platon concludes that while this practice is not ruled out for some bathrooms in their earliest stages, it is unlikely at the later period, and was in any case made unnecessary by the use of clay bathtubs.

Whatever the real function of these rooms, considerable emphasis was placed on their provision. The main contribution of the room in Block Γ is to show that its provision was considered sufficiently necessary, and its situation below ground sufficiently important, to justify digging the bedrock to a depth of 1·20 m.

6 The line of this wall can be seen in Plate 53b to the right of the door. To the left of the door where the plundering had been done before 1902, our wall is a repeat of the 1902 reconstruction, set back about 0·15 m. from the original rock-cut sill line. Other walls which had to be repaired were the west and south walls of Room 5, and the partition walls of Rooms 5 and 6, and 6 and 7.

7 The earlier excavators found well-stratified E.M. and M.M. material below the floor of δ 32 (PKU 3, 7)

8 These were found in Γ 48 (p. 208 above), 20–5 (PK III 209) and Π 38–42 (PK IV 286).

9 PKU 18, 21.

9a PKU 22, ‘… the general destruction of the town took place in L.M, II’ (we would now say L.M. IB); ibid. 75–6, ‘The last phase of the second Late Minoan period … represented by numerous deposits in burned houses’; ibid. 74, ‘… the original inhabitants who returned and restored a part of the town’.

10 Furumark, , MP Chron 82Google Scholar and OpArch vi. 153–4. ‘We find that fine painted vases are scarce and that the best are imported pieces … we must assign them provisionally to potters of Knossos', PKU 22.’ See also the remainder of this passage, and p. 23

11 Banti, L. in Festos ii. 558–61Google Scholar holds that they are not Knossian. The author's views with illustrations are given in BSA lxii (1967) 339–41. The earlier excavators stressed that the clay of the ‘imported’ vases was different from that of those which were clearly locally made, adding that these vases were exceptional and ‘these fine products inspired few local imitations’, PKU 22. They rightly noted that the local pottery is pale red in colour and liable to suffer badly from the action of the soil at Palaikastro.

12 See the select catalogue of vases below for references.

13 See the select catalogue of vases below for references.

14 A further example of the festoon and spiral pattern was found in an L.M. IB deposit at Knossos recently excavated by Hood, M. S. F.; see BSA lxii (1967), pl. 80aGoogle Scholar; and compare the sherd on pl. 81c, last row. A fine selection of vases, Cretan and Mycenaean, with this design is illustrated in Kantor, , The Aegean and the Orient in the 2nd millenium B.C., pl. 12.Google Scholar

15 ‘At the time of their destruction [i.e. Gournia, Mochlos and Pseira] the houses of those towns were more richly stocked than those of Palaikastro and Zakro, not only with imported vases of the “Knossian” class, but with local painted pottery in which added white and red perpetuate the old polychrome tradition’, PKU 22.

16 OpArch vi. 154.

17 See the select catalogue of vases below for references.

18 See the select catalogue of vases below for references.

20 See the select catalogue of vases below for references.

21 Actual numbers are; Room 18, ogival cups 349, conical cups 27; Room 17, ogival cups 48, conical cups 16.

22 To date we have no statistics on the relative frequency of the conical and ogival-type cups in central Crete in the L.M. IB phase. Xanthoudides, however, in the case of Nirou Chani mentions that they collected thousands of conical cups, but only refers to one ogival handleless cup, and that is decorated: AE 1922, 21–3. So it looks as though the ogival version was rare in central Crete though in use, as appears from Tvlissos (Paris, 1921) fig. 12 f–g.

23 See the select catalogue of vases below for references.

24 Furumark attempted a chronological order of destructions in MP Chron 81–2. The author's reasons for not agreeing that those at Nirou Chani and Tylissos were later than the others are given in The Destruction of the Palace at Knossos, 86 n. 91.

Clearly, where we are dealing with sites with a considerable divergence in local styles, we have to depend on synchronisms established by imports, and in Crete the sequence of Knossian pottery styles is the most helpful criterion to adopt. Unfortunately, until recently, we had no L.M. IB deposit from Knossos to assist; this has in part been made good by the destruction deposit of this period found by M. S. F. Hood. We should, however, still recognize the limitations of our knowledge: our comparative ignorance of developments within the L.M. IB phase at Knossos, and the danger that a vase imported for its intrinsic worth is likely to be prized and so to survive longer than usual. These limitations become yet greater when we turn to sites outside Crete where Minoan pottery was deliberately imitated and possibly also made by itinerant or émigré Cretan potters. In such cases we have to allow for local and personal tastes, variations, and incompetence. ‘Degenerate’ need not imply ‘later’, and divergences in style may not mean development. Precision within say twenty-five years is probably not oblainable in these circumstances.

25 PKU 86, ‘This type, new to us in 1903, became a useful date-mark for houses of this period’ (i.e. L.M. III).

26 PKU 84–7 with references to other vases.

27 Popham, The Destruction of the Palace at Knossos, fig. 4, no. 4.

28 Bosanquet was more convinced of continuity; PKU 74–6. ‘The character of the pottery as of the houses proves continuity of culture and makes it easy to believe that it was the original inhabitants who returned and restored part of the town. Continuity of culture is proved by the survival of such typical forms as the waisted strainer and funnelshaped rhyton and such decorative motives as the horn emblem and the double axe.’ But these shapes and motives are not restricted to Palaikastro or even to East Crete, though the strainer retains an unusual popularity in L.M. III on the site. Equally, if not more, impressive are the innovations, some of which Bosanquet notes: larnax burials, a chamber-tomb with dromos, the pyxis and kylix. Much of the pottery is now decorated. ‘From the point of view of decoration L.M. II [we should now say L.M. IB] had ended at Palaikastro in stagnation and decline, due apparently to isolation, but the fragments from the beginning of L.M. III show a high degree of technical perfection, and include characteristic examples of the Knossian Palace style. The possibility suggests itself that the rulers of Palaikastro … were able to attract skilled potters from the central region of the island.’ This is, of course, a possible explanation, but it loses its force when we see the same thing happening on many sites, including the far west of Crete.

29 PKU, figs. 61, 62, and 63.

30 PK II. 290–1.

31 In the following section the note on the sealstone (no. 1) was contributed by V. E. G. Kenna, while the notes on the stone objects (nos. 2–4, 9, 10, and 12) were contributed by P. M. Warren.