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The Find Places of the Knossos Tablets
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
Extract
MR S. Hood’s article on the date of the Knossos tablets (Antiquity 1961, 4) is much to be welcomed as providing a further opportunity of removing mis- conceptions. In view of the magnitude and the contentiousness of the issues it is fortunate that the question can be reduced to one of simple physical location. No scholar can date a tablet from its physical appearance. There is no such thing as an LM II tablet. This is a pottery classification. The chronology is determined by the ceramic associations. Thus we simply ask where and in conjunction with which particular pieces of pottery these inscribed lumps of clay were found. A simple pattern of enquiry is imposed, which, I hope, will be followed by future contributors to the discussion. I first identify the particular deposit by their Scripta Minoa II numbers and then quote my sources for their location.
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References
1 The following abbreviations have been used throughout article: BSA, Annual of the British School at Athens; DB, Daybook; DM, Duncan Mackenzie; SM, Smipta Minoa; and POM, Palace of Minos; SMK, Guide to the Stratigraphic Museum at Knossos.
2 Evans in his discussion of this wall (POM, III, 17) states that the separation into two rooms by a dividing wall dates from an advanced stage of MM II, quoting pottery of the fully developed MM 11 class found on both sides of the wall. He refers to excavations of 1928, of which I have not been able to find any record. But there is in any case no mention of the very precise data recorded by DM in 1923 as above and in particular no awareness of the LM 11 b pithos although DM in his discussion of the stratigraphy especially singles out ‘the presence of the LM II pithos fragments alongside a slab of pavement ‘32 down’ as one of the facts ‘to be kept in view’. It remains to add that Evans altered the sketch plan in his note book of 1900 (dated 4 May), re-inking the gypsum block and correcting its position with the annotation against it ‘later’. His own records, in so far as I have been able to trace them, thus agree with the above. On the reoccupation plaster see below.
3 Evans assigns the plaster floor to the Great Restoration at the end of MM m. He adds that the ‘late wall’ has been removed (POM, III, 22). His marginal comment in DM/DB 1923 reads: ‘later shown to be MMIIIb’; but we are not told how.