Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T19:46:23.511Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Part IV. The Perseia Area

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

W. D. Taylour
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The following is an account of several excavations that I undertook on behalf of Professor Wace during the seasons of 1952 and 1953 at Mycenae. These were roughly confined to the area between the so-called Tombs of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, but also included an extension to the east of the Perseia Fountain House, excavated in 1952. The excavations are dealt with under four sections which are as follows:

1. Area Z (the extension east of the Perseia Fountain House).

2. The East–West Wall (south of the Perseia Fountain House).

3. The area round the Tomb of Aegisthus.

4. The Great Poros Wall (on the east flank of the Tomb of Clytemnestra).

Type
Mycenae 1939–1954
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 50 , November 1955 , pp. 199 - 237
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1955

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

I am more than grateful to Professor Wace for the privilege of working with him, and I have benefited greatly from his guidance and advice. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Dr. F. H. Stubbings, with whom I have discussed this article in detail, and who has given me many helpful and constructive suggestions which I have incorporated in this work. I wish to express my appreciation to Dr. Papademetriou for his unfailing kindness and courtesy, and for allowing me to extend the excavations on the Great Poros Wall (trench D) into his territory. Lastly, I wish to thank Mrs. Wace for her constant help and advice in dealing with the registered finds.

1 BSA XLVIII (1953), 19–29.

2 Ibid. 20–2.

3 BSA XLVIII (1953), 20, 21 and pl. 15, a.

4 Ibid. 21.

5 Ibid. 21, 22 and pl. 12. The stone trough is there described as the ‘east-west channel’ and associated with the earthen floor conduit farther to the east, of which a small section was uncovered in 1952. This conduit, described as ‘Water Channel?’ in Fig. 1, had no relation to the earlier stone channel, being at a much higher level.

6 BSA XLVIII (1953), 21 and pl. 12.

6a See Part V by Mr. A. G. Woodhead.

6b The inscription is dated to the fourth century B.C. (see Part V) when Mycenae was deserted. The block may have been in some ruined classical building in this area, possibly one connected with the Perseia. Euxitheos was perhaps a casual visitor to the site in the fourth century who scribbled his name in the ruins. On the re-occupation of Mycenae in the third century B.C. the block was presumably re-used in a Hellenistic building. Otherwise it is hard to explain the presence of a probable fourth-century inscription in a Hellenistic building.

6c The tomb Geometric Grave G. II (BSA XLIX 260) lies partially on the ruins of this wall.

6d For Wace's dating of the Tomb of Aegisthus, see BSA XXV 316 and Wace, Mycenae 39; and for the Tomb of Clytemnestra, see op. cit. 35. Cf. also the Tabulation in op. cit. 17.

6e BSA XXIV 205, fig. 2; Wace, Mycenae 68, pl. 110, e.

7 The upper two layers were missing in the northern trenches, but as these were encumbered with later buildings, this is not surprising.

7a BSA XLVIII (1953), 5–6; JHS LXXIV 170.

8 BSA XLVIII (1953), 23, Wall α. On Fig. 3 it is that section of the wall immediately north of the East-West Wall trenches.

9 Op. cit., pl. 10 (d). On the plan on Fig. 3 it is the heavily inked stretch of wall against the letters ‘NW’.

10 An example of ashlar with a crotched joint can be seen on the extreme right in op. cit., pl. 10 (d). In the same photograph there are two blocks of triangular shape in the top course. This is a characteristic method of Mycenaean building. To ensure a level face for the wall the touching surfaces at the sides of the blocks are reduced to a minimum. This method is known at Pylos (AJA 59 (1955), 36) and elsewhere at Mycenae (Wace, Mycenae 129 f.).

11 It must have been roughly at this spot that a Geometric pithos burial was found in the 1939 excavations. According to Professor Wace's notes, the pithos was found quite near the surface, lying on its side by the curving wall (sc. on the east side of it) and south of the modern aqueduct. It would presumably therefore be situated between the bronze hoard (see Fig. 3) and the wall, for just to the north is the East–West Wall, and beyond that again is the modern aqueduct. With the pithos was found a small jar of Pie Ware (BSA XLIX 265 and pl. 46).

12 BSA XLVIII (1953), 23.

12a This was also observed in 1939, but the pottery then found was lost in the Nauplia Museum during the War.

13 They were undoubtedly at the same level, but more earth appears to have piled up over the SW and SE sectors than was the case in the NW and NE sectors.

14 BSA XLVIII (1953), pl. 10, d.

15 Nos. 36 and 44 in the description of finds below. (BSA XLVIII, pl. 1, b and c.)

16 Plate 42, a. One of these was the ‘horned’ kylix reproduced in ILN 1 Nov. 1952, p. 721, fig. 23. It is no. 74 in the description of finds, given below.

17 No. 65 (see below) illustrated in BSA XLVIII (1953), pl. 1, d.

18 BSA XLVIII (1953), pl. 16, b.

19 JHS LXXIV (1954), 170. These are the Treasury of Atreus (Wace, Mycenae 125, pls. 8, 9), the Lion Tomb, and the Argive Heraeum (AM 1878, 273); cf. also Valmin, Swedish Messenian Expedition 207.

20 BSA XLVIII (1953), 24.

21 Miss Holland gives the same explanation in regard to the displacement of some blocks in the Main Wall of the Fountain House area, which she attributes to ‘the weight of earth piled over the Tomb of Clytemnestra’, op. cit. 20.

22 This is the area of the new Grave Circle.

23 The ‘Tomb of Aegisthus’ and the Lion Tomb.

24 Op. cit. 24, Trench VI a, pl. 12.

25 Op. cit. 24.

26 Cf. JHS LXXIV (1954), 170.

27a We must not exclude the possibility that on the top of the ridge at any rate, where the uppermost course of poros blocks was so close to the modern surface, the upper part of the wall had been further destroyed in the course of ploughing or other cultivation.

27b BSA XLVIII (1953), 23. He suggests that the fragments are probably the remains of complete vases. Many such fragments were also found here in 1939.

28 Ibid. 24, including the cavalryman described op. cit. 84–93.

28a Diodorus IV 57–8; Apollodorus II 8, 1–2.

29 The pottery found in association with the skeleton in trench G appears to be earlier than that in trench L. It could therefore relate to a burial prior to the destruction or collapse of the wall.

30 PAE 1950, 203 ff.

31 BSA XLVIII (1953), 15–17; XLIX (1954), 291.

32 The vases from the first house (Dr. Papademetriou and Petsas) are contemporary. On the basis of Furumark's stylistic analysis they belong to either IIIA or IIIB. They could therefore be attributed to the period of transition between IIIA and IIIB.

33 Prosymna 242; Annuario VI–VII 238.

34 The prevailing winds at Mycenae come from the north. At times they blow with terrifying force over the exposed ridge in which the tholoi are built. The winter rains driven by these winds are continually eroding the soil and its contents, and impelling them south down the hill. This is borne out by the varying depths of the soil on this hill. In the Perseia Fountain House area, on top of the ridge, the average level of the rock was 1 m. below the surface (BSA XLVIII (1953), 24). As one proceeds southwards down the hill, the overlying earth becomes deeper and deeper. The burnt patch shows the ‘washing process’ very clearly. The layer is thick in the north, but is attenuated to zero in the south; and some of the beads and ornaments were washed out of the patch completely and found farther to the south.

35 BSA XLVIII (1953), 23. Hood remarks that there were very few post-Mycenean sherds behind the Fountain House.

36 MP 243.

37 Hesperia, XVIII (1949), pls. 23, 24.

38 These should no doubt be interpreted as ringed tufts of the horse's mane rather than ‘plumes’. Cf. the fresco fragment from Mycenae which doubtless provided the prototype for ceramic decoration (AE 1887, pl. 11, top right).