Knossos: Stratigraphical Museum Excavations, 1978–82. Part III

Abstract

The previous report, Part II (AR ig82—8j, 63—87), presented the main evidence of the site from Late Minoan II to Sub-Minoan/Early Protogeometric. Part III is concerned with the subsequent occupation through the independent Greek period down to and including Hellenistic. Part IV will deal with the Roman period. I am most grateful to Professor J. N. Coldstream and Dr P. Callaghan for help with the Geometric-Orientalizing and Classical-Hellenistic pottery respectively. The most notable feature of the Greek Iron Age occupation is the absence of building remains from the end of Sub-Minoan (or possibly Early Protogeometric) around 970 B.C. until Hellenistic in the later 3rd century, the evidence for the long intervening period comprising mainly wells and pits. It is unlikely that Hellenistic and Roman builders would have removed every trace of buildings of the previous centuries, or that all buildings would have been of mudbrick, without stone foundations. The Iron Age remains above the Minoan Unexplored Mansion east of our site were more plentiful, but there too little of actual buildings was preserved other than a roadway with a terrace wall (Sackett, AR IQ72—73, 62—4). It is probable therefore that the built urban area of the city at this time lay further to the east, towards the central zone where the Minoan palace had once been. A classical building that is likely to have stood in the region of our site, perhaps higher to the west, was a 5 th century B.C. temple; a metope depicting Herakles and Eurystheus was found in 1910 close to or on the site, reused as a Roman drain cover (Benton, JHS lvii [1937] 38—43; Hood and Smyth, Archaeological Survey of the Knossos Area [ 1981J 44, no. 132).