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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 September 2013
Small pockets of neolithic levels were sampled during the 1987 investigation of the Throne Room System in the palace of Knossos. The limited stratigraphic evidence is here presented, as well as sections concerning the pottery, small finds, and animal bones. The most interesting point to emerge concerns the presence of Final Neolithic characteristics in the ceramic evidence that will help towards formulating an appreciation of that elusive period at Knossos.
1 This article is the work predominantly of KM (pottery), with contributions by DE (stratigraphy and other finds) and by Christina Rushe and P. Halstead (animal bone, based on work undertaken by CR and Pippa Smith). The excavation in 1987 was conducted under the aegis of Sinclair Hood, on behalf of the British School at Athens.
2 Note in Figs. 2 and 3 that the numbers indicating the top of the neolithic levels are to be read as 100.xx (where xx is the number indicated in the Figs.), which relates them to the overall levelling sequence at Knossos as seen on the plan of the Palace in Hood, S. and Taylor, W., The Bronze Age Palace at Knossos: Plans and Sections (London, 1981).Google Scholar It should be remembered that the higher the number, the higher the position above sea level: therefore 70 is 20 cm above 50.
3 A very similar effect is surely reflected in the sealing of stratum I in the Central Court (Evans, J. D., ‘Excavations in the neolithic settlement of Knossos, 1957–60: part i’, BSA 59 (1964), 132–240, at 188Google Scholar; id., ‘The Early Minoan occupation of Knossos: a note on some new evidence’, Anat. Stud. 22 (1972), 115–28, at 115). D. MacKenzie also mentions a similar white spread over the LN Houses A and B in the Central Court of the Palace, in Knossos Daybooks, part i, 8 (as stored in the Ashmolean Museum Library); this information courtesy of Katya Manteli.
4 Stratum I lies immediately over stratum II and together they correspond to the LN period at Knossos, as this is established in the Knossos Central Court stratigraphic sequence: Evans 1964 (n. 3), 132–40, 188–92, 225–9. The pottery from stratum I is not fully described in the publication, because the material from it was originally mislaid (Evans, J. D., ‘Sherd weights and sherd counts: a contribution to the problem of quantifying pottery studies’, in Strong, D. E. (ed.), Archaeological Theory and Practice (London, 1973), 131–49, at 137).Google Scholar
5 The only Phaistian-like traits known hitherto from Knossos come from the LN sounding FF in the West Court: Evans, J. D., ‘Neolithic Knossos: the growth of a settlement’, PPS 37.2 (1971), 95–117, at 113–14.Google Scholar
6 The wall thickness of coarse ware varies between 9 and 7 mm, whilst that of fine ware lies between 7 and 5 mm.
7 Coarse ware bowls are larger in size than both fine burnished and unburnished ones.
8 Evans (n. 4), 137.
9 Evans's Central Court stratum I pottery is best described by Furness, A. (‘The neolithic pottery of Knossos’, BSA 48 (1953), 94–134, at 126)Google Scholar, who takes as one of the main criteria for the definition of LN the popularity of unburnished, wiped coarse ware. This type of ware is also considered by Evans (1964 (n. 3), 225) a characteristic feature of the LN, that is of stratum I, since stratum II pottery has a transitional MN/LN character.
10 Due to the remarkable homogeneity and the gradual process of stylistic evolution of Knossian neolithic pottery, data on the frequency of occurrence of various traits are necessary for the proper definition of a date (Furness (n. 9), 100).
11 Evans 1964 (n. 3), 229; Furness (n. 9), 131.
12 Evans (n. 4), 142.
13 Evans 1964 (n. 3), 229; Furness (n. 9), 131.
14 There are 101 decorated sherds per 50 kg from Central Court area AC, strata I and II, and 85 from the Throne Room System area: Evans (n. 4), table 8; id., 1964 (n. 3), 229.
15 Evans 1964 (n. 3), 225, 229; Furness (n. 9), 128.
16 Evans 1964 (n. 3), 229, fig. 38. 9–17, 29, and 5–7.
17 Furness (n. 9), 131.
18 Evans 1964 (n. 3), 229, fig. 38. 23.
19 Fingernail impressions are reported from the LN strata of the West Court (Evans (n. 4), table 9), but it is not specified there to which Central Court LN stratum the West Court ones correspond.
20 Evans 1964 (n. 3), 229.
22 See n. 15.
23 See n. 21.
21 Furness (n. 9), fig. 14. 23; pl. 32 a, 13; Figs. 13 b, 5 and 15. 1–5.
25 Evans 1964 (n. 3), 225–7.
26 Ibid. 227, Figs. 37. 43–5 and 38. 1.
27 Vagnetti, L., ‘L'insediamento neolitico di Festos’, ASA 50 (1972), 7–138, at p. 71, fig. 66. 6.Google Scholar
28 Ibid. fig. 63. 23.
29 Ibid. fig. 68. 22.
30 Ibid. fig. 70. 7–9.
31 Ibid. 75, figs. 71. 1–4, 6–7; 100. 19 (stamped).
32 Ibid. fig. 45.
33 Evans (n. 5), 113–14.
34 Renfrew, C., The Emergence of Civilization (London, 1972), 71Google Scholar; Warren, P., ‘Problems of chronology in Crete and the Aegean in the third and earlier second millennium BC’, AJA 84 (1980), 487–99, at 489CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cadogan, G., ‘Early Minoan and Middle Minoan chronology’, AJA 87 (1983), 507–18, at 508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
35 See n. 4.
36 See n. 34; also Warren, P. and Hankey, V., Aegean Bronze Age Chronology (Bristol, 1989), 12–13.Google Scholar
37 Vagnetti (n. 27), 77.
38 See n. 5.
39 Vagnetti, L. and Bello, P., ‘Characters and problems of the Final Neolithic in Crete’, SMEA 19 (1978), 125–63, at 132.Google Scholar
40 Manteli, K., The Transition from the Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age in Crete, with Special Reference to Pottery (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of London, 1993).Google Scholar The author had access to all unpublished material from the West Court, where the typological distinction between LN stratum I and the FN West Court deposits is clearly manifested.
41 Wilson, D. E., ‘The pottery and architecture of the EM II A West Court house at Knossos’, BSA 80 (1985), 281–364, at 294–9, 359–4.Google Scholar
42 Evans 1964 (n. 3), 231, pl. 65. 1–3.
43 Evely, D., ‘The other finds of stone, clay, ivory, faience, lead etc.’, in Popham, M. R., The Minoan Unexplored Mansion at Knossos (Oxford, 1984), 224–9.Google Scholar
44 Evans 1964 (n. 3), 231, fig. 54; pl. 63; and in the same article J. R. Cann and A. C. Renfrew, ‘The source of the obsidian from the neolithic levels at Knossos’, 239.
45 Evans 1964 (n. 3), 236, fig. 59. 15, 16, 19, 20.
46 Boessneck, J., ‘Osteological differences between sheep (Ovis aries Linné) and goats (Capra hircus Linné)’, in Brothwell, D. and Higgs, E. (eds), Science in Archaeology (2nd edn; London, 1969), 331–58.Google Scholar
47 Binford, L. R., Bones: Ancient Men and Modern Myths (New York, 1981).Google Scholar
48 Jarman, M. R. and Jarman, H. N., ‘The fauna and economy of early neolithic Knossos’, BSA 63 (1968), 241–64.Google Scholar
49 Halstead, P., ‘From reciprocity to redistribution: modelling the exchange of livestock in neolithic Greece’, Anthropozoologica, 16 (1992), 19–30Google Scholar; id., ‘Dimini and the “DMP”: faunal remains and animal exploitation in Late Neolithic Thessaly’, BSA 87 (1992), 29–59.
50 Forbes, H., ‘“We have a little of everything”: the ecological basis of some agricultural practices in Methana, Trizinia’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 268 (1976), 236–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Halstead, P., ‘The economy has a normal surplus: economic stability and social change among early farming communities of Thessaly, Greece’, in Halstead, P. and O'Shea, J. (eds), Bad Year Economics (Cambridge, 1989), 68–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; P. Halstead, ‘From reciprocity …’ (n. 49), 19–30.
