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Evans, Mackenzie, and the history of the Palace at Knossos*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2012

Nicoletta Momigliano
Nicoletta Momigliano
Affiliation:
Balliol College, Oxford/University of Bradford
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Extract

At Knossos Mackenzie seems again to have performed the duties that we would now designate as those of the site supervisor. But the exact nature of his responsibilities, the limits of his authority and the personal relationship between him and Evans are something of an enigma. The problem has important scientific implications in view of the controversy that has developed since 1962 about the dependability of some aspects of Evan's publications. The conundrum, in short, concerns the exact roles that the two men played in the gradual evolution of theories from the moment of discovery of crucial evidence until the final arguments and conclusions appeared in definitive publications.

Type
Notes
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 116 , November 1996 , pp. 166 - 169
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1996

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References

1 See, e.g., Horwitz, S., The find of a lifetime (London 1981) 105Google Scholar: ‘Hired as an assistant, Mackenzie was destined to remain in second place…’. Levi, D., Festós e la civiltà minoica I (Rome 1976) 8Google Scholar: ‘…unico archeologo di professione, esperto e accuratodurante tutti gli anni delle spettacolari scoperte del Palazzo minoico…’. Colin Renfrew, in his introduction to his transcription of Mackenzie's ‘Day-books of the excavations at Phylakopi’ describes them as ‘outstanding examples of systematic archaeological reasoning, produced at a time when scientific principles of excavation had not yet been established. Duncan Mackenzie was one of the very first scientific workers in the Aegean, and his Day-books have therefore a considerable historical value, which I believe would alone warrant their duplication’. Copies of this transcription are in the libraries of the British School at Athens, the Museum of Classical Archaeology, Cambridge, and the University of Cincinnati. There is no complete transcription of the ‘Day-books of the excavations at Knossos’. Momigliano, N., ‘Duncan Mackenzie: a cautious canny Highlander’, in Morris, C. (ed.), Klados: essays in honour of J.N. Coldstream (London 1994) 163–70Google Scholar, is a short biographical note containing a bibliography of published works by Mackenzie.

2 We can trace the history of the twelve tins of asparagus one year back. The invoice from the Junior Army and Navy Stores listing the twelve tins, dated 9 February 1900, is still kept among the Evans Archive papers in the Ashmolean Museum.

3 Mackenzie also mentions a much later phase represented by structural remains over part of the West Magazines, probably what was later identified as a Greek temple (Hood, S. and Taylor, W., The Bronze Age palace at Knossos [London 1981] no. 62Google Scholar, with references).

4 Indeed, another passage in the main text (‘About the proposal … I made to you in my letter before last …’) shows that this letter was preceded by at least two which are now, unfortunately, lost, probably written between September 1900 and January 1901.

5 Hood, S., ‘“Last palace” and “Reoccupation”at Knossos’, Kadmos iv (1965) 17–18.Google ScholarCf. Mackenzie's 1900 ‘Day-book’, passim (especially entries for Thursday 5 April, Friday 13 April) and Evans, A.J., ‘Knossos. 1. The Palace’, BSA vi (1899–1900) 3–70Google Scholar, especially 63–66. See also Hallager, E., The Mycenaean palace at Knossos. Evidence for final destruction in the 111 B period (Stockholm 1977) 15–16.Google Scholar

6 Although Mackenzie did not use the word ‘reoccupation’ itself in his 1900 ‘Day-book’, nor in the letter published here, it is clear that this is what he meant.

7 See Mackenzie's 1901 letter: ‘the wall going across the long corridor between the 2nd and 3rd galleries…’. ‘2nd and 3rd’ is likely to be a mistake for ‘3rd and 4th galleries’, for this must be a reference to the wall described in Mackenzie's 1900 ‘Day-12 book’ (27 April) as follows (my italics): ‘The gallery 3 opening out W from this, where several fragments of inscription tablets were previously found has a doorway 2.29 wide and the N jamb of the gallery has just appeared behind a later wall which had been apparently built up for dwelling purposes and in order to close up the wide passage N-wards, at a time when the palace must have already fallen into ruins but previous to the erection of the wall which appear next the surface above the walls of 1, 2, 3, 5 [The Greek Temple: see n. 3 above].’ Mackenzie's 1900 ‘Day-book’ also provides a sketch of the wall blocking the long Corridor (entry for 18 April, sketch no. 26), reproduced in Hallager (n. 6) 36 fig. 19. Evans in his 1900 ‘Notebook’ also refers to a wall between Magazines 3 and 4 (quoted in Hallager, ibid.).

8 The ‘N Propylaea’ in Mackenzie's letter. The later structures must be the wall which blocked the eastern door-jambs on the south side of the North West Portico, and the wall to the west of the door-jambs: see Mackenzie's 1900 ‘Day-book’, entries for 23 and 26 May and sketches no. 60 and 62; Evans, A.J., BSA vi (1899–1900) 46Google Scholar and The Palace Minos III (London 1930) 37 note 1. See also Raison, J., Le palais du second millénaire à Knossos I: le quartier nord (Paris 1988)Google Scholar, chp. V, especially 193–196, with quotations from Mackenzie's ‘Day-book’.

9 For the South Propylaeum see Mackenzie's 1900 ‘Daybook’ (5 April): ‘It is important to notice that the bases of the pithoi 3, 4, 5 came about .30 [m.] higher than the level of the adjacent cement-flooring. Also wall 4 is quite clearly later construction. The pithoi taken in connection with this wall and in this position so near the important looking column-bases would seem to belong to a period when the palace was no longer inhabited as such.’ See also Hood and Taylor (n. 3) no.32, with references. It is well known that in his 1900 ‘Daybook’ Mackenzie described a few areas where Linear B tablets were found associated with pottery later assigned to the ‘reoccupation': see, e.g. Palmer, L.R., ‘The find places of the Knossos tablets’ in Palmer, L.R. and Boardman, J., On the Knossos tablets (Oxford 1963) 115–16, and 121Google Scholar (North Entrance Passage).

10 Hallager (n. 5) 16; Hood (n. 5) 18 and especially 28–32; Popham, M.R., ‘The Palace of Knossos: its destruction and reoccupation reconsidered’, Kadmos v (1966) 21.Google Scholar

11 As pointed out by Hood (n. 5) 27, some of the problems with the reoccupation theory ‘would be removed if it could be assumed that the “reoccupation”was “palatial”in character’.

12 In BSA xi (1904–5) 16 and in the first volume of Scripta Minoa (1909) 53–5, Evans maintained that Linear B continued to be used in the ‘reoccupation’ period, but he retracted this statement quite emphatically in Palace of Minos iv (1935) 737–8.