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Sub-marine exploration in Crete, 1955

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2013

John Leatham  and
Sinclair Hood
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Extract

In 1955 it was decided to transfer the School's undersea activity from Chios to Crete during the time that excavations on land were being continued at Knossos. The Greek Ministry of Education most generously granted permission for the School to carry on diving operations at selected points off the coast of Crete in co-operation with the Ephor of Antiquities, Dr. Nicolas Platon.

The campaign lasted three weeks, from August 9th to 30th, with a party of ten volunteers under the leadership of John Leatham. The sites explored were chosen by Dr. Platon, who gave the party much of his time and interest, and made repeated visits to the places where they were working. The party had its headquarters in an empty house which belonged to the School's foreman, Manoli Markoyiannakis, conveniently situated upon the main road in the suburb of Poros (Katsamba) just east of Herakleion. This was used as a central depot, and the compressor for filling the aqualungs was established here. The work was unfortunately hampered throughout the three weeks by high seas owing to the prevailing north winds (Meltemia). It was difficult therefore to make great use of the aqualungs.

Type
Articles
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 53 , November 1959 , pp. 263 - 280
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1959

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References

Acknowledgements

The School is very much indebted to Professor Sp. Marinatos, then Head of the Department of Antiquities, and to the Greek Ministry of Education, which generously granted permission for the diving; also to the Ephor of Antiquities for Crete, Dr. Nicolas Platon, for his able guidance and help in connexion with it.

The School would like once again to express its gratitude to the Sunday Times for the gift of £1,000 by means of which the basic equipment of compressor and aqualungs was bought in 1954; and to the British Academy and to the Royal Geographical Society for grants which made it possible to continue the work this season.

Those who took part in the expedition were: Ley Kenyon, Richard Mitchell, Igor Pavloff-Melanophides, Raef Payne, Susan Chomley, Honor Frost, Regine Lugo (now Mrs. Pavloff-Melanophides), Alison Marsh (now Mrs. Myles Stoney), Ann Pearce (now Mrs. Joseph Natanson). To all of them we should like to express our gratitude for their help and co-operation throughout the work. The plans, notably that of Chersonisos harbour, are basically the work of Mr. John Carswell; the drawings of the pottery are by Mrs. Myles Stoney.

The observations at Chersonisos were checked and revised in some details by Sinclair Hood with the help of George Huxley and Davina Best (now Mrs. Huxley) under exceptionally favourable conditions of calm weather in the autumn of 1956.

1 Ἐπετήρις Ἑτ. Κρητικῶν Σπουδῶν 2 (1939) 536.

2 See his account in PAE 1926, 141 f.

3 Columella viii. 16–17; Varro iii. 17. See also other references in DA, S.V. Vivarium; RE, S.V. Piscina.

4 Diodorus xi. 25, 4.

5 Republic 453d.

6 Pliny, , HN ix. 59.Google Scholar

7 Columella viii. 16, 6. But Varro strongly disapproves of sea-fish tanks as opposed to tanks for freshwater fish. They are only built at great cost, and stocked at great cost; and the upkeep is expensive (iii. 17, 2).

8 Q. Hortensius used to criticize M. Lucullus because the fish-tanks at his villa near Naples did not have suitable tidal currents. Whereupon Lucullus spent a fortune digging a tunnel through a mountain to bring a stream of sea-water into his fish-ponds so that they should ebb and flow (Varro iii. 17, 8).

9 Columella (viii. 17, 6) recommends bronze gratings with small holes.

10 There is now evidence for the phenomena of a partial regression followed by renewed transgression of the sea in England in the Middle Ages (The Times, Apr. 14th, 1956, p. 11).

11 Archaeology of Crete 3 and n. 1. See Spratt, , Travels and Researches in Crete (1865) ii. 232Google Scholar for Phalasarna. For an exhaustive discussion of this question of the rise of sea-level in the Mediterranean since ancient times, see now J. M. Cook, pp. 11 f., n. 13 above. Cf. Diolé, , Four Thousand Years Under the Sea (translated by Hopkins, Gerard, 1954), 283 f.Google Scholar, Appendix A. Note that the (translated) excerpt referring to Phalasarna contains an important error of fact: the supposed ancient quays lie 18 feet above and not, as stated, below the modern sea-level.

12 Evans, (PM i. 298)Google Scholar estimates ‘a subsidence of quite two metres since Roman times’ at Chersonisos; but this is clearly too much.

13 See Kirsten, , RE Suppl. vii. 84 f.Google Scholar; Guarducci, , Inscriptiones Creticae i. 33 f.Google Scholar

14 ADelt 1918, Par. 31; Ἔργον τῆς Ἀρχ. Ἑτ. κατὰ τὸ 1956. 118 f. Chersonisos was once the see of a bishop, and the name of the nearby village of Episkopi continues the memory of this. See Guarducci, , Inscriptiones Creticae i. 34Google Scholar, for references to bishops here in Early Christian times.

15 See Lehmann-Hartleben, , ‘Die antiken Hafenanlagen des Mittelmeeres’, Klio, Beiheft xiv (1923) 252.Google Scholar The harbour works are there ascribed to Roman Imperial times at the earliest. Vitruvius (v. 12) has an illuminating chapter on hydraulic construction in this age.

16 Diolé, , Four Thousand Years Under the Sea 298, Appendix C.Google Scholar

17 See Xanthoudides, , ADelt 1918, Par. 31.Google Scholar

18 Seager, , AJA xiii (1909), 273 f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Excavations in the Island of Mochlos (1912).

19 Pendlebury, , Archaeology of Crete 3.Google Scholar

20 Seager, , Excavations in the Island of Pseira (1910) 6.Google Scholar

21 Ibid. 7.

22 For an account of the discovery and finds, see AE 1948–9, Ἀρχ. χρον. 1–6. Cf. Ἐπετήρις Ἑτ. Κρητικῶν Σπουδῶν 1 (1938) 610–11, 2 (1939) 529.

23 AA 1937, 229–34.