Knossos 1993: Excavations outside the south front of the palace

The Annual of the British School at Athens

Volumn 91, Issue , 1996, Pages 1-57

  Momigliano, Nicoletta ^a   Wilson, David E ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BRADFORD   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO   (Canada)

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EID: 85008543461     PISSN: 00682454     EISSN: 20452403     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0068245400016385     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. A. J. Evans, PM i. 71, 73-5, 108 and fig. 40. Some of the pottery from the levels above the EM II B deposits, which is mostly EM III as defined in Cadogan et al. 1993 (see also n. 47 below), has been published by Momigliano (1991, esp. 198-204 and 242-5), who used the term EM III/MM I A not to indicate that the material covered the chronological span traditionally assigned to these two pottery phases, but to indicate that this material had been traditionally used to illustrate Evans's ‘polychrome’ MM I A phase, whereas, following Hood's suggestion, it might in fact be called EM III at Knossos; the term EM III/MM I A was also used to express the difficulties in relating deposits from Evans's excavations to Evans's and Hood's definitions of EM III and MM I A; Hood, Cadogan, Wilson, and Day are preparing detailed studies of the EM II B material (Wilson and Day, in preparation; Hood and Cadogan, forthcoming).
2. Mackenzie's sketch (Fig. 2), a photograph taken during the 1907 excavations (Plate 1), and photographs taken during Platon's cleaning operations show that the ninth westernmost slab visible today―hatched in Figs. 4-5―was added in 1957 or later.
3. Some of the pottery from the levels above the EM II B deposits. 85; KP no. 11.
4. Numbers in square brackets refer to pages in Mackenzie's 1908 daybook and to figures in the present text.
5. The full report of these important soundings will appear in Hood and Cadogan, forthcoming. We are most grateful to Sinclair Hood and Gerald Cadogan for allowing us to make reference to their discoveries here.
6. Paving stones removed during the excavations were later cemented back in place. We should like to thank Dr Alexandra Karetsou (Herakleion Museum) for arranging this conservation work for us.
7. This was excavated as level no. 5 (#3-4).
8. This was excavated as levels nos. 6 (#5-13, 16a) and 9 (#34, 58).
9. MM I B as defined in Cadogan et al. 1993, 25: Royal Road South, Basements, Middle Floor group.
10. Only one fragment from this possibly earlier level was selected for publication, the drain P 55.
11. I, 6 #12. The ware composition of this ‘zembil’ (in terms of weight) is as follows. Drab ware = 30% of the deposit (amongst the diagnostic sherds we counted 31 goblet bases and 19 straight-sided cup bases); Coarse plain = 29%; Coarse decorated (including Monochrome and Dark-on-light) = 23%; Cooking ware = 5%; Red Burnished ‘Lamp’ ware = 4%; Fine Red Slipped ware = 3%; Fine Black Slipped ware = 3%; Neolithic-MM I A = 2%; Fine Polychrome = only 5 small fragments, of which 2 are probably imports from east Crete (P 7, 10). (Fine Plain, Fine Barbotine, and Coarse Polychrome not attested in this ‘zembil’.)
12. No systematic and comprehensive study of MM wares from Knossos has yet been undertaken, though some deposits have been published by ware groups: see e.g. S. Andreou, ‘Pottery groups of the Old Palace period in Crete’ (Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of Cincinnati, 1978), ch. 1; E. A. Catling, H. W. Catling, and S. Smyth, ‘Knossos 1975: Middle Minoan III and Late Minoan I houses by the acropolis’, BSA 74 (1979), 1-80 at 21-56; see also J. A. MacGillivray, ‘Pottery of the Old Palace period at Knossos and its implications’ (Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of Edinburgh, 1986). Results of a programme of petrographic analyses by P. M. Day of the EM II B-MM I B pottery from these excavations will appear elsewhere.
13. This must be what Mackenzie described as ‘pale clay bedding’ and ‘clay mortar of a greenish yellow colour’ (see above). This yellowish stratum was excavated as levels 2, 8, and 11.
14. All the pottery illustrated comes from level 8.
15. Evans's backfill was excavated as levels 1-2; the neolithic was excavated as level 3.
16. See S. Hood and G. Cadogan, forthcoming.
17. For EM II B material see above and Wilson and Day (n. 3 above); for EM III see trenches IV and V below, and Momigliano 1991.
18. The fill was excavated as level 11.
19. The fill was excavated as level 9.
20. Neolithic levels were left unexcavated, except for the removal of a very small portion in trench IV (excavated as level 4).
21. Samples of the red-painted floor were collected from both trenches (samples 12, 19).
22. No internal dividing walls survive now in the NW area of the building, but these were illustrated in Mackenzie's 1908 sketch (cf. Figs. 3 and 4) and must have been removed to reach the underlying EM II B deposits (cf. Introduction above).
23. For a recent summary and discussion of the EM II B and EM III periods at Knossos see Wilson (n. 12).
24. Detailed publication of these deposits is now in preparation and should be consulted to place the 1993 finds in their larger context.
25. Results of a programme of petrographic analysis by P. M. Day of the EM II B-MM I B pottery from this excavation will appear elsewhere.
26. MacGillivray's schematic plan of the Old Palace at Knossos, though an improvement on Evans's (PM i, fig. 152), is still largely based on conjecture (J. A. MacGillivray, ‘The early history of the palace at Knossos (MM I-II)’, in Evely, Hughes-Brock, and Momigliano (n. 12), 47 Fig. 1, 50 Fig. 2).
27. See P. Warren and V. Hankey, Aegean Bronze Age Chronology (Bristol, 1989), 176, and Warren, Myrtos: An Early Bronze Age Settlement in Crete (London, 1972), 344 S. W. Manning, The Absolute Chronology of the Aegean Early Bronze Age: Archaeology, Radiocarbon and History (Sheffield, 1995), 145-9, 172. We should like to thank S. W. Manning for discussing the results of these analyses with us.