On March 28, 1986, Manolis M. Koukourakis reported to the local police authorities at Tourloti in eastern Crete that he had uncovered pits, perhaps belonging to ancient tombs, while bulldozing terraces in the fields of Dr. Emmanuel M. Katapotis at Limenaria, on the hill that rises just to the south of the village of Mochlos and within the agricultural territory of the village of Lastros. Acting on this information from the police, Nikos Papadakis, then Supervisor of the 24th Ephoreia of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities, visited the site and confirmed the existence of a row of tombs belonging to the...

Some 30–40 years after the destruction and abandonment of the LM IB town at Mochlos, settlers returned to reoccupy the site. ¹⁴C analysis of a short-lived sample from the earliest level of reoccupation, associated with LM II as well as LM IIIA pottery, places their arrival between 1450–1400 b.c. at 1 σ (Soles, forthcoming a). LM II pottery on the site is relatively rare, however, and they are more likely to have arrived at the end of this period, around 1400–1390 b.c. (Warren and Hankey 1989, 169). They remained on the site into the LM IIIB period,...

The main cemetery for the LM III settlement at Mochlos lies directly across from (south of) the island on the hill that rises south of the modern village of Mochlos and forms the eastern boundary of the small bay known as Limenaria (Fig. 1; P1. 17A). The hill rises ca. 75 m above sea level, and it is composed of a marly limestone, known locally as kouskouras, that was formed in the upper Tertiary or Neogene period 22–1.6 million years ago. The limestone contains numerous marine fossils. It is a soft yellow (2.5Y 7/6–7/8) stone with mica and...

Late Minoan III Mochlos is unusual among Cretan sites of the period because it preserves extensive remains of both a settlement and a cemetery. A large number of LM III cemeteries have been excavated elsewhere on the island (Pini 1968; Tzedakis 1978; Kanta 1980; Andreadaki-Vlazaki 1997; Davaras and Banou 2003; Alberti 2004). Many of them are larger than the Mochlos cemetery or have more impressive tombs, but, for the most part, their settlements have not been located or excavated. Those settlements that have been excavated tend to be incomplete (Hayden 1987), and, in the few cases where both the settlement...