Mostly about student involvement in the dig:
Category: Archaeology
Questioning the Pax Minoica?
A team of archaeologists have discovered a fortification system at the Minoan town of Gournia, a discovery which rebukes the popular myth that the Minoans were a peaceful society with no need for defensive structures.
The team’s efforts were led by Professor Vance Watrous and Matt Buell of the University at Buffalo. Located on the north coast, Gournia was in use during the neo-palatial period (ca. 1700-1450 BC), when Minoan civilization was at its height. The town sits atop a low ridge with four promontories on its coastline. Two of these promontories end in high vertical cliffs that give the town a defensive advantage, and it is here that the fortification system was discovered.
The team weren’t able to excavate the area, and so relied on photography, drawing and surveying to identify the fortifications. The eastern-most promontory had a heavy wall that was about 27 meters long. Beside it the team found a semi-circular platform of stone, almost nine meters in diameter, which they believe is the remains of a tower or bastion. The other fortified promontory had a two meter thick wall, running east-west, “as if to close off access from the sea,” said Buell.
The other two promontories slope gently down to the shore, and would have provided easy access to the town. “It was on these two promontories”, said Professor Watrous, “that the Minoans built structures.”
The town consists of around 60 tightly-packed houses, a ship shed, and a small palace in the centre, and archaeologists have discovered evidence of wine making, bronze-working and stone-working at the site. “Gournia gives you, the visitor, a real feeling of what an Aegean town was actually like. Walking up the streets, past the houses, you feel like you’ve been transported into the past,” said Buell.
In addition to the beach fortifications, it also appears that the Minoans built a second line of defence further inland. Heading back from the beach, there were two walls, together running about 180 meters east to west. Backed by a tower, or bastion, the walls would have posed a formidable challenge to any invader trying to march into the town.
Defenders manning this system of fortification would have rained projectiles down on attackers, by using bows and slings. The walls had stone foundations and were made of mud brick, making them sturdy enough to stand on.
It’s an open question as to whether the people guarding the fortifications were part of a militia or something more organized. There was “definitely a body of men who would have had that duty but we don’t know exactly what they were like,” said Professor Watrous.
Tombs uncovered by Hawes and other excavators have shown people buried with swords. Watrous said that there was one particular tomb that produced an entire collection of daggers, swords and other items.
However, Gournia’s fortifications did not prevent the town’s demise. The town fell around 1450 BC, along with other Minoan settlements. A new group called the Mycenaean appeared on Crete at this time, taking over the island.
Watrous said that Mycenaeans probably avoided attacking the town by sea. “Many other settlements were destroyed at the same time. My guess is that they just came along the land; they didn’t have to come up from the sea”.
He cannot say for sure if the town defences were ever actually put to their intended use. Any evidence of a battle near these fortifications, such as weapons or bodies, would be underground, and excavation would have to be carried out to see if they exist.
One thing that excavators can say is that the people of Gournia had something worth fighting for. Many of the goods they made – such as the wine and the bronze implements – were for export, suggesting that the people had some level of wealth.
via Crete fortifications debunk myth of peaceful Minoan society | The Independent (Owen Jarus).
Can’t tell from the article whether the ‘debunking the peaceful Minoan’ thing is something Watrous and Buell are bringing up or whether it is the journalist. FWIW, this seems to be flying in the face of some unfortified evidence from the same basic period which we mentioned a couple of years ago. While more folks seem to be questioning the ‘hippy flower children’ view of the Minoans, the question of how ‘peace-loving’ they actually were still seems to be an incipient topic of research …
Protecting a Greek Shipwreck
Very interesting item buried in my email from last week:
The second century Greek trading vessel lies on the sea bed off the coast of Cavtat.
Little remains of the wooden ship but its cargo of earthenware amphora – ceramic vases – still remain stacked row upon row.
The vases, which originally contained olive oil and wine, are still tightly packed into the cargo hold as they were centuries ago.
Its cargo – one of the best preserved from an ancient wreck – has great historical significance and has an estimated value of £5m on the black market.
Croatian authorities are so concerned about looters plundering the valuable artefacts they have now protected the site – with a metal cage.
The heavy-duty cage features a large hinged door, which is kept locked with occasional access granted for divers under strict supervision.
Underwater photographer Neil Hope, of Torpoint in Cornwall, was among those given permission to dive the wreck.
He said: ”I’m an experienced diver and I’ve dived wrecks all over the world, but this was the most unique experience.
”I was taken down there by the man who discovered it. As soon as we were finished they closed the door and locked it up again.
”Obviously when you are inside you can’t touch any of the cargo as it is very valuable, so they don’t just let anyone inside the cage.
”You need excellent buoyancy skills so you’re not damaging these valuable things.”
He was working on an assignment for the British Sub-Aqua Club’s (BS-AC) DIVE magazine.
via Underwater ‘safe’ protects £5m shipwreck treasures | Telegraph.
Hmmm … very interesting. I can’t find that we’ve mentioned this shipwreck find before and it’s very interesting that we don’t seem to hear of any archaeologists in this report. FWIW, another shipwreck find in this general area seems to be under a cloak of secrecy: that Boka Kotorska wreck off Montenegro.
UPDATE: (a couple of weeks later) … an item from ABC suggests this really isn’t a ‘protection’ project, but the focus is actually dive-tourism (not a bad thing, but a different sort of impression than the original provides):
The Oracle at Rantidi!
I always like when really ‘obscure’ stuff shows up in the news … here’s the incipit of an item in the Pacific Northwest Inlander:
There’s a rock off the southwestern tip of Cyprus that juts out of the sea. You can get there on the B6, a windy coastal road hewn out of rock in the age of dynamite and tourism.
Before the B6, though, at the dawn of myth — back when the gods of the Greek pantheon had just barely started sleeping together and stabbing each other in the back — the goddess whom Greeks would call Aphrodite was birthed out of the sea at that rock.
It’s the scene you see in Sandro Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” (another of Aphrodite’s many names): the Paltrow-esque beauty, nude, rising from a clamshell.
Just a few kilometers north — back across the road, past Aphrodite Hills (a mega-resort named “Best Spa in Europe” in 2008) and up the rocky, asp-infested tumble of Rantidi Forest — sits the oracular sanctuary of Aphrodite’s young lover, Adonis.
Ancient accounts of the Oracle at Rantidi put its importance on a par with the Oracle at Delphi — the oracle that predicted the destruction of Lydia and sent Socrates on his quest for knowledge.
Rantidi was a big deal to the ancients, but it was lost to the modern world until 1910, when it was discovered and partially excavated, then lost again.
The next person to find it was EWU’s Georgia Bonnie Bazemore.
via The Oracle at Cheney.
The item goes on to talk about the talk, which focussed more on efforts by EWU to establish a campus in Cyprus. Whatever the case, the oracle at Rantidi is probably unknown to a lot of the learned readers of this blog, so I decided to see what I could find on the Interwebs and I was plenty surprised to find a link to a pdf from the New York Times of February 12, 1911 reporting on “The God’s Clubhouse Has Been Found in Cyprus” (if that link doesn’t work, try starting from here), which tells of the various shrines which had been found there at the beginning of the previous century. Other than that, though, I wasn’t too surprised to find that most of what’s on the web (that seems reliable) about Rantidi comes from the efforts of the aforementioned Professor Bazemore at the Rantidi Forest page of the Ancient Cyprus Web, which links to other pages documenting EWU’s efforts there.
Boudicca at Calleva Atrebatum?
Calleva seems to be an awfully interesting dig … last time we heard about it, it was about the ‘puppy skin’ trade. Now we hear of Boudicca’s possible involvement there:
Professor Michael Fulford said that 13 years of excavations at Calleva had revealed evidence of the first gridded Iron Age town in Britain.
The site also bears the scars of possible early Roman military occupation, and evidence of later, widespread burning and destruction.
This suggests the site could have been destroyed at the hands of Boudicca.
Queen Boudicca waged war against the Romans in Britain from 60 AD after the Romans decided to rule the Iceni directly and confiscated the property of the leading tribesmen.
Boudicca’s warriors successfully defeated the Roman Ninth Legion and destroyed the capital of Roman Britain, then at Colchester. They went on to destroy London and Verulamium (St Albans).
Thousands were killed. Finally, Boudicca was defeated by a Roman army led by Paulinus. Many Britons were killed and Boudicca is thought to have poisoned herself to avoid capture.
The site of the battle, and of Boudicca’s death, are unknown.Professor Fulford said that in excavations at Silchester they had found evidence of a major military occupation at Calleva (now called Silchester) in 40 AD, then destruction between 60 and 80 AD, including wells that were filled in at this time and burned buildings.
“The settlement is completely wiped out somewhere between 60 AD and 80 AD, and it starts again in 70 AD,” he said.
Although Calleva is not mentioned in historical sources concerning Boudicca, it is known that she waged war at St Albans and London, just 50 mile away.
“Winchester became an important military location for the Romans and so was Silchester,” said Professor Fulford, urging more people interested in Roman history to learn about the site.
“There’s more to see at Silchester than there is at Winchester.”
The University of Reading’s Department of Archaeology has been excavating and researching a central area of Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester) since 1997.
via BBC – Excavations near Reading show evidence of Boudicca.
FWIW, one of the proposed sites (which has been in the news) for Boudicca’s final battle is Rugby …
More previous coverage:
- Rethinking Calleva Atrebatum (October, 2007)
rogueclassicism 