Pseira is a small island off the coast of Crete on the eastern side of the Gulf of Mirabello. It has a Minoan town of substantial size, which was excavated in two campaigns. Richard Seager (1910) examined it in 1906 and 1907. More recently, the settlement has been investigated in a synergasia directed by Costis Davaras and the author (Betancourt and Davaras, eds., 1995; 1998; 1999; 2002; 2003; Floyd 1998; McEnroe 2001). The early excavations uncovered portions of more than fifty structures, and the modern project excavated six buildings in the town.

Fundamental changes can be recognized at Pseira between...

For most of the 20th century, excavators of Minoan sites have relied heavily on decorated pottery (most often fine wares) to address questions of chronology and ceramic production and exchange. Given the more detailed excavation methods now employed at most prehistoric Cretan sites (e.g., the aim to recover 100% of the material record and process complete ceramic assemblages), it will come as no surprise that approaches to Minoan pottery are changing. One gauge is provided by the heightened value that scholars now assign to pottery in coarse fabrics (e.g., Moody 1985, 51–65; Haggis and Mook 1993, 265–293). With...

Kommos (Fig. 3.1), a harbor-town like Ugarit in Syria or Kition in Cyprus, can serve as a focus for study of east-west connections (see also Shaw and Shaw, eds., 1996, 8–11, 379–398; and, after which this now updated article is taken, Shaw 1998). At Kommos, evidence for interconnections covers a broad spectrum from ca. 1800 b.c. to 600 b.c., some 1200 years. The site was first settled in MM IB. The two major periods are Minoan and Greek (Fig. 3.2). For the Middle and Late Bronze Age, there are three large civic buildings, at least partially designed for...

The recent discovery of a group of three stone anchors off the coast of Crete, combined with the evidence for a possible Minoan harbor on the south coast of the island, provide new insights into the nature and extent of Minoan seafaring and trade. This paper will discuss two finds with a bearing on Minoan seafaring and trade. Since as yet we have conducted only surveys in the tentative harbor area, many questions still remain to be resolved.

Very few prehistoric anchors have been found on Crete. Frost (1963, 38) identified a pierced, gray pebble-stone found in the sea at...

We are indebted to the early archaeologists on Crete for first revealing the islandʹs cultures and for establishing the basic chronology, but the limitations of their work are evident today because of the expansion of knowledge from a century of excavation and survey and advances in archaeological methods and theory. A good example of both the value and limitations of the pioneer work on Crete can be seen in the excavations of Harriet Boyd (Hawes) at Vronda Kavousi over a hundred years ago, and the comparisons provided by more recent investigation of the site. The material recovered from the new...

By rare luck, excavators over the last century have brought to light, in a geographical radius of only 3 km, three shrines belonging to the last days of Minoan civilization. American excavations at Gournia at the beginning of the 20th century and at Vronda Kavousi towards its close, and the excavation of the East Crete ephoreia at Kephala Vasilikis in 1994–1996 (Fig. 6.1), have provided the opportunity not only to study these shrines as individual buildings and as part of their urban and geographical settings, but also to investigate their relations to neighboring shrines and other contemporary religious buildings....

When Harriet Boyd began to excavate at Kavousi in 1900, she was among the first to investigate the archaeological sites of Eastern Crete. At that time, the scholars involved with the fledgling study of Aegean prehistory were occupied with the tasks of preliminary identification and classification not only of sites, but of pottery and architecture. Boydʹs work at Vronda brought to light remains from the Bronze to Early Iron Ages and initiated a discussion of this transitional period after the fall of the Minoan palaces. Although she did not produce a plan of the site, she seems to have concentrated...

The Late Minoan IIIC settlement at Halasmenos belongs to a dense pattern of occupation of the wider Northern Ierapetra isthmus, known from sites excavated or reported by survey. After seven field and two study seasons beginning in 1992, we are in a position to proceed with an initial synthesis. From its very beginning, the project has been a multinational synergasia in its true sense and, consequently, this paper owes much to the input of a dedicated and hard-working team.

Halasmenos, although not a unique occurrence (Coulson and Tsipopoulou 1994), adds two significant new elements to our knowledge of the area....

Several authors in this volume discuss extraordinary buildings, such as communal shrines or rulerʹs dwellings; in contrast, I focus on the ʺnot-so-big housesʺ of Dark Age Crete and the interpretation of domestic activities that took place within them. ʺHousehold analysisʺ or ʺhousehold archaeologyʺ is currently a topic of great interest to researchers in many parts of the world. There is a large (and still growing) literature covering not only specific sites and methods of analysis, but also dealing with important theoretical frameworks for understanding site formation processes and their effect on house floor assemblages and the interpretation of past household...

Since 1976, excavations on the south coast of Crete at Kommos have revealed substantial remains of a Minoan settlement. These consist of two main areas: one with monumental buildings to which we refer as the ʺCivic Centerʺ (Fig. 10.1), the other a town to the north built on a hill (Figs. 10.2 and 10.3). Here, I review evidence for religion and whether there were differences in its conduct at the two locations. My approach somewhat resembles that in an excellent recent article by Peatfield (1992) but is more limited in scope, as I confine myself to Kommos, while he compares...

The LM IB period at Mochlos is one of considerable growth. There is a great deal of new construction and an expansion of the settlement into new areas. This growth is not an isolated phenomenon, however, but occurs at Gournia and elsewhere around the Bay of Mirabello. The nature of the settlement is transformed throughout the region. Such a change did not occur in a vacuum: the volcano on Santorini erupted just before LM IB, the Mycenaean occupation of Knossos occurred sometime near the end of the period, and the destruction of Minoan Crete took place at its end. The...

Harriet Boyd Hawes spent the third week of her 1900 excavation season in Kavousi digging some 710 m a.s.l., on the peak of the Kastro (Fig. 12.1), which she described as ʺ … a fine, breezy spot overlooking the narrow isthmus from the Cretan to the Libyan seaʺ (Boyd 1901, 138). There, she uncovered the remains of thirteen rooms situated on seven different levels, but she published only one pot from the site (Boyd 1901, pl. 2). In her general report on the pottery, she concluded, ʺMany fragments of the pottery prove by their designs that the buildings date from...

At its annual meeting in May 1893, the Council of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) chose Crete as a field for exploration and invited the Italian epigrapher and archaeologist Federico Halbherr, of the University of Rome, as project director. Halbherr had been in charge of ʺthe first, the most important and almost the only scientific excavations carried out on Krete, during 1884–6.ʺ During that time he excavated at Gortyn where he discovered ʺbeside many archaic inscriptions, the queen of Greek inscriptions, the Gortyn law codeʺ (ʺAmerican Expedition to Kreteʺ 1894, 538). In 1893 and 1894, Halbherr and a...

Recent excavations at Eleutherna, a polis in West Crete, bring important new evidence to bear on the related issues of Cretan decline and isolation from overseas markets ca. 600–400 b.c. These two centuries form a poorly understood part of the islandʹs history. The new evidence from Eleutherna comes from the excavations of the University of Crete at Orthi Petra. Noteworthy among investigated Cretan poleis, Eleutherna provides evidence for continuity of settlement across the 6th and 5th centuries and allows a chronological sequence of local ceramic shapes to be plotted. In addition, finds of imported pottery, both from abroad and...

Our knowledge about Hellenistic Crete is based largely on the work of historians such as Henri van Effenterre (1991; 1994; van Effenterre and Bougrat 1969), Paul Faure (1989), Stylianos Spyridakis (1970), and, more recently, Angelos Chaniotis (1988; 1996; 1999). The contribution of archaeologists to the subject, particularly the economy of Hellenistic Crete, has been minimal. Most recently, W. Harris commented, ʺ … a great desideratum is that the archaeologists who work on the particulars of Hellenistic and Roman Crete should give more thought to the larger problems of economic history … it is depressing to see that some of those...

Our perception of the cultural landscape is formed by two dominant fields of reference, which are independent but equally vivid systemic contexts affecting our interpretation of archaeological remains and informing our inferences about the past. One is the living, contemporary environment—the modern landscape, settlement patterns, communication routes, and so on. The other is the archaeological record itself. The modern landscape has become a conceptual framework for archaeologists; it has not been a definable realm of analogy subjected to methodological scrutiny. It is a vivid picture that assumes not only cultural continuity but also environmental constancy. Perhaps it is difficult...

In 1903, Richard Seager and Harriet Boyd visited Vrokastro, a 300 m high peak that flanks the coast of the Gulf of Mirabello near its midpoint (Hall 1914, 80) (Figs. 17.1, 17.2, 17.3). Vrokastro is located 2 km east of the fertile, well-watered Kalo Chorio or Istron River Valley, and it is the highest peak in a series of hills and ridges that parallel the coast of the Gulf of Mirabello in this area. Its summit is located at the eastern end of a series of hills (Kopranes) and a long ridge, Karakovilia, that extend west toward the Aphendi Christos...

In 1939, when Pendlebury called parts of West Crete ʺthe back of beyond,ʺ no one disagreed. Now, however, after nearly 70 years of hard work by the 25th Ephoreia in Chania and Rethymnon, and an international cast of archaeologists (including Swedes, Danes, Italians, Canadians, British, Irish, French, and Americans), it is clear that Pendleburyʹs phrase no longer applies. Recent publications by Tzedakis and Martlew (1999), the Hallagers (2000), Andreadaki-Vlasaki (1992a–b; 1997a–d), Godart and Tzedakis (1992), as well as the near completion of four intensive archaeological surveys—the Khania Archaeological Survey Project (KASP) (Moody 1987; 2000; Moody et al....

During the last two-and-a-half decades, several excavations and intensive surveys have been undertaken by American archaeologists in the Mirabello area. Although they covered mainly sites and areas already investigated at the beginning of this century, new methods, a better knowledge of the archaeology of Crete, and a more complex understanding of Minoan society allowed not only re-examination of the archaeological evidence and clarification of some chronological problems but also shed new light on several key questions concerning the Cretan Bronze Age. In this chapter, I address only a few selected problems that are in some way related to that activity...

On several occasions Z. Stos-Gale (1993, 119; 1998, 727) has quoted a remarkable passage from Renfrewʹs seminal work The Emergence of Civilisation. It reads:

One of the problems concerning the development of Aegean metallurgy is to understand why it underwent its tremendous expansion in the Early Bronze 2 period … The appearance of the dagger perhaps presents a clue. For while the Aegean smiths of the final neolithic could make flat axes and awls … daggers are not seen … anywhere in Europe until the inception of the Aegean Early Bronze 2 period. In Europe and the Near East, daggers...

In this chapter, I hope to shed some light on how Mochlos defined itself in its East Cretan, Minoan, and Aegean contexts. It will be argued that during EM II and LM IB, Mochlos was the primary procurer of Melian obsidian in East Crete, an activity that formed a component in how this communityʹs elite forged and expressed their political identity. This interpretation is based not only on the quantity of obsidian found at the site, but also on the manner in which it was consumed.

Ever since Seagerʹs (1909; 1912) excavations of the ʺHouse Tombs,ʺ the wealth and importance...

The idea of the unity of Minoan culture begins with Sir Arthur Evans and survives to this day. In the first volume of The Palace of Minos, Evans wrote:

From the close of the Neolithic Age to the transitional epoch when iron was coming into use—throughout a space of time extending, at a moderate estimate, over two thousand years—the course of the Minoan civilization is singularly continuous and homogeneous. (1921, 13)

Although Evans was aware of differences in regional styles of Minoan pottery, he spent little time considering them. For Evans, the great palaces were the centers of...