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Part VI. The Cyclopean Terrace Building and the Deposit of Pottery beneath It

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

Elizabeth B. Wace
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Extract

The Cyclopean Terrace Building lies to the north-west of the Lion Gate on the northern end of the Panagia Ridge and faces almost due west across the valley of the Kephissos and modern main road from Corinth to Argos. It lies just below the 200 m. contour line, and one terrace below the houses excavated in 1950–51 by Dr. Papadimitriou and Mr. Petsas to the east at the same end of the ridge. The area contains a complex of buildings, both successive and contemporary, and in view of the discovery of structures both to the south-west and, by the Greek Archaeological Service, to the north-east it is likely that this whole slope was covered by a portion of the outer town of Mycenae. This report will deal only with the structure to which the name Cyclopean Terrace Building was originally given, the so-called ‘North Megaron’, supported by the heavy main terrace wall.

The excavation of this structure was begun in 1923. The main terrace wall was cleared and two L.H. IIIC burials discovered in the top of the fill in the south room. In 1950 it was decided to attempt to clear this building entirely in an endeavour to find out its date and purpose. The clearing was not, however, substantially completed until the close of the 1953 excavation season, and this report presents the available evidence for the date as determined by the pottery found beneath the building; the purpose is still a matter for study, though various tentative conclusions can be put forward.

Type
Mycenae 1939–1953
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 49 , November 1954 , pp. 267 - 291
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1954

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References

* I am deeply indebted to my father, primarily for the opportunity to excavate at Mycenae on this site during four seasons, and for the suggestion that I should undertake to publish this material. Without his constant advice and encouragement many difficulties would have proved insuperable. The theories and conclusions put forward here, though the result of discussion both on the site and later, are, however, in their omissions and failings my own. My thanks are due to the Craven and George Charles Winter Warr Funds at Cambridge for grants with which to continue this project, to the Ephor of Argolis, Dr. I. Papadimitriou, and his staff, to the British School at Athens, and to my mother, who has continuously lent invaluable assistance, both in discussion and in the technicalities of preparing material for publication. Finally, I wish to thank most heartily the architects who have helped me on this site, particularly Mr. Nevil Chittick and Miss Marian Holland for their excellent working plans and Mr. Herschel Shepard for remeasuring and redrawing the whole area for the publication plans and sections. I have also to thank Dr. J. L. Angel of Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, for his note on the skeletons from the well.

1 See Survey, Fig. 1, p. 230.

2 Fig. 1 (2). PAE 1950, 203 f.

3 ILN 23–12–1950, ‘Agamemnon's Bar’.

4 BSA XXV 403, pl. LXII.

5 See throughout the plan and sections, Figs, 11 and 12.

6 JHS 1951, 255.

7 BSA XLVIII 16.

8 See section A–A, Fig. 12.

9 See plan and section, Figs. 11–12.

10 BSA XXV 403 f.

11 See section C–C, Fig. 12.

12 Additional Notes D 1, p. 286.

13 Additional Note D 2, p. 286.

14 Additional Note D 3, p. 287.

15 See section A–A, Fig. 12.

16 Additional Notes D 5 and 6, pp. 287–8.

17 Additional Notes E, p. 288.

18 Additional Notes D 4, p. 287.

18a The early building of the ‘South Megaron’ in the same area, where the vast collection of stirrup jars was found, had no walls remaining.

18b For the sake of convenient reference the order of motifs is that used by Furumark. The only dates given are for L.H. I and II examples.

19 Cf. Argive Heraeum II 80, fig. 12, fish sherd of similar style.

20 See throughout Additional Note A, p. 284.

21 Cf. Chamber Tombs, fig. 8.

22 Additional Note C, p. 286.

23 Additional Note C, p. 286.

24 Additional Note C, p. 286.

25 BSA VI 73 f.

26 Additional Note C, p. 286.

27 Cf. BCH LIX 337, fig. 1; FdD V 19, figs. 87, 89; also Tell-el-Amarna examples.

28 Cf. Furumark, , MP 498 f., 506 f.Google Scholar

29 Cambridge, Museum of Classical Archaeology TA. 58, 59, Amarna 35/382, 415, 492, illustrated City of Akhenaten III, pl. CIX 3.

30 BSA XLVIII, pl. 11b.

31 Experiments in this scheme are seen in two examples (Plate 49, c, 1 and 5), one from the well and one unstratified.

32 B.M. A 865; BMC Vases I, pl. XIV.

33 Additional Note C, p. 286.

33a Additional Note C, p. 286.

34 Cf. BSA XLII, pl. 13, 7 and 8.

35 Additional Note B, p. 285.

36 Additional Note A, p. 284.

36a See p. 238 above.

37 Cf. BSA XLII 47, pl. 13, 9.

38 Only in the small areas excavated in 1953 and 1954 was the total quantity of the excavated pottery available for close study, but the notes taken during the sorting of the pottery in the previous two years show that the same elements were present.

39 This problem is discussed by Furumark, MP passim, with regard to shape in general, and by Stubbings, , BSA XLII 60 f.Google Scholar

40 BSA XLII 36, figs. 5, 6, 15.

41 Cf. Wace, , Mycenae, pl. 94p.Google Scholar

42 Wace, , Mycenae 127, pls. 47, 48.Google Scholar

43 BSA XXV 79.

44 Wace, , Chamber Tombs 16, fig. 8, pl. XVI.Google Scholar

45 Asine, 359 f., figs. 235, 240.

46 AE 1909, 99, fig. 7.

47 Stubbings, BSA XLII passim.

48 The Chronology of Mycenaean Pottery 52 f.

49 Petrie, Tell-el-Amarna, pls. XXVI–XXX; Pendlebury, , City of Akhenaten II, pl. XLVGoogle Scholar; III, pl. CIX; B.M. A 990–9.

50 E.g. B.M. A 801–970.

51 E.g. B.M. C 429–92.

52 Additional Note C, p. 286.

53 See p. 273.

54 BSA XLVIII 14.

55 BSA XLVIII 16.

56 Fig. 1 (2). PAE 1950, 203 f.

57 See p. 235 and reports of Mycenae Excavations 1954.