Escaping the Labyrinth

The Cretan Neolithic in Context

Valasia Isaakidou, P. Tomkins, P. Tomkins

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781782974901
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

Beneath the Bronze Age 'Palace of Minos', Neolithic Knossos is one of the earliest known farming settlements in Europe and perhaps the longest-lived. For 3000 years, Neolithic Knossos was also perhaps one of very few settlements on Crete and, for much of this time, maintained a distinctive material culture. This volume radically enhances understanding of the important, but hitherto little known, Neolithic settlement and culture of Crete. Thirteen papers, from the tenth Sheffield Aegean Round Table in January 2006, explore two aspects of the Cretan Neolithic: the results of recent re-analysis of a range of bodies of material from J.D. Evans' excavations at EN-FN Knossos; and new insights into the Cretan Late and Final Neolithic and the contentious belated colonisation of the rest of the island, drawing on both new and old fieldwork. Papers in the first group examine the idiosyncratic Knossian ceramic chronology (P. Tomkins), human figurines from a gender perspective (M. Mina), funerary practices (S. Triantaphyllou), chipped stone technology (J. Conolly), land and-use and its social implications (V. Isaakidou). Those in the second group, present a re-evaluation of LN Katsambas (N. Galanidou and K. Mandeli), evidence for later Neolithic exploration of eastern Crete (T. Strasser), Ceremony and consumption at late Final Neolithic Phaistos (S. Todaro and S. Di Tonto), Final Neolithic settlement patterns (K. Nowicki), the transition to the Early Bronze Age at Kephala Petra (Y. Papadatos), and a critical appraisal of Final Neolithic 'marginal colonisation' (P. Halstead). In conclusion, C. Broodbank places the Cretan Neolithic within its wider Mediterranean context and J.D. Evans provides an autobiographical account of a lifetime of insular Neolithic exploration.

1

Introduction: Escaping the Labyrinth

Valasia Isaakidou and Peter D. Tomkins

A Brief History of Cretan Neolithic Studies

In 1900, Arthur Evans and Duncan Mackenzie first encountered Neolithic levels in deep soundings at Knossos. Study of pottery from these soundings resulted in publication of a tripartite phasing of the Knossos Neolithic sequence (Mackenzie 1903) and reports soon followed on excavations at Phaistos (Mosso 1908) and at the small upland site of Magasa (Dawkins 1905). The Cretan Neolithic was thus discovered only a few months after its Thessalian counterpart and initially aroused considerable scholarly interest (Evans 1901; 1928), but was thereafter overshadowed by research in northern Greece.

One reason for this neglect of the Neolithic of Crete was undoubtedly the extraordinary wealth of the Minoan Bronze Age that still dominates archaeological research on the island today. Prehistorians working in Thessaly have largely been free of such distractions and Tsountas was able to expose the Neolithic settlements of Sesklo and Dimini (Tsountas 1908) on a scale that was (and remains) impossible beneath the Cretan palaces. On the other hand, Neolithic pottery with distinctive styles of painted and incised decoration made Thessaly an attractive target for culture historians seeking to build intra- and inter-regional relative chronologies (e.g., Tsountas 1908; Wace and Thompson 1912; Grundmann 1934; Milojcic 1960). The abundance of highly visible tells in Thessaly also encouraged a long tradition of research on a regional scale (e.g., Tsountas 1908; Wace and Thompson 1912; Grundmann 1937; Theocharis 1973). By contrast, the Neolithic of Crete received little further attention–in the field or in print–until the 1950s, when Furness reworked the ceramic chronology of Mackenzie and Evans (Furness 1953), Levi resumed investigation of the Neolithic levels at Phaistos (Vagnetti 1973; Vagnetti and Belli 1978), and John Evans was invited to do the same at Knossos, as he describes below (Evans this volume).

John Evans’ two campaigns at Knossos (1957–60, 1969–70) set new standards in stratigraphical and contextual excavation, in the application of radiocarbon dating and in the recovery of bioarchaeological as well as artefactual remains (Evans 1964; 1968; 1971; Jarman and Jarman 1968). Perhaps the most dramatic result of renewed excavation was the exposure of an initial aceramic layer at the base of the Knossos mound. The radiocarbon dates had two principal consequences. First, they demonstrated that the established tripartite periodisation of the Cretan Neolithic was considerably out of step with that for mainland Greece (Tomkins this volume, table 3.1). This reinforced the impression, created by the relative paucity of distinctively decorated ceramics and of systematic research, that the Neolithic culture of the island had developed in isolation from the rest of the Aegean. Secondly, as elsewhere, radiocarbon dating and subsequent calibration stretched the chronology of the Cretan Neolithic so that it began as early as the beginning of the seventh millennium BC. Bioarchaeological research, in collaboration with the British Academy-funded ‘Early History of Agriculture’ project, involved pioneering attempts at systematic retrieval (using dry-sieving and flotation) of faunal and botanical remains and showed that domestic animals and crops were present from the earliest aceramic phase of occupation. The early date of this Initial Neolithic phase, coupled with the bioarchaeological results and the insular location of Knossos, earned the site a prominent place in discussions of the origins of agriculture and neolithisation of Europe (e.g., Higgs and Jarman 1969). Also influential on subsequent research was John Evans’ model (based on a series of sondages cut for this purpose in his second excavation campaign) of the steady expansion of the Knossos settlement through the Neolithic (Evans 1971; 1994).

From the 1970s onwards, Neolithic studies in mainland Greece, and especially Thessaly, increasingly shifted away from chronological and culture historical problems to explore settlement patterns, demography, subsistence practices, social change and the dynamics of production and consumption of material culture (e.g., Theocharis 1973; Hourmouziadis 1979; Halstead 1981; 1989; Kotsakis 1983; 1992; Washburn 1983; Cullen 1984; Vitelli 1989; Perlès 1992). In a similar vein, Broodbank and Strasser (1991) interpreted the initial Neolithic colonisation of Crete in terms of a planned transfer of people and domesticates, Lax and Strasser (1992) proposed that early colonists played a role in the extinction of the island’s endemic fauna, and Broodbank (1992) related the growth of Neolithic Knossos to changes in material culture and to a suggested increase in the proportion of cattle. These studies were based on preliminary reports from John Evans’ excavations and the empirical basis of Broodbank’s paper was rapidly questioned (Whitelaw 1992).

From the late 1990s, a series of independent projects tackled re-analysis and publication of Neolithic material from Crete, principally from Knossos with encouragement from John Evans, but also from Phaistos and other sites. Some new excavation also took place at Knossos (Efstratiou et al. 2004), but the focus of fieldwork in recent years has shifted away from Knossos to recognition in surface surveys (and in some cases excavations) of numerous short-lived sites from the last stages of the Neolithic in other parts of the island (e.g., Vasilakis 1987; 1989/ 90; Vagnetti et al. 1989; Manteli 1992; 1993; Vagnetti 1996; Branigan 1999; Nowicki 2002). This new fieldwork finally offered the opportunity to place the long occupation sequence at Knossos in a regional context, although excavation of short-lived FN sites had by and large failed to provide the stratigraphic evidence needed to resolve significant outstanding problems of relative and absolute dating.

The Round Table

With post-excavation study at Knossos well advanced and with increasing fieldwork and study projects in other parts of the island, it seemed that research into the Neolithic of Crete had finally achieved the critical mass that might enable significant advances in the field to be made. To this end it was decided to devote one of the informal annual Round Tables of the Sheffield Centre for Aegean Archaeology to the theme of ‘Rethinking the Cretan Neolithic’. The aims of the meeting were to present some of the diversity of current research into the Cretan Neolithic, to explore ways of reconnecting it with Neolithic scholarship in the rest of the Aegean and to re-examine how the Cretan Neolithic is conceptualised. The Round Table, held on 27–29 January 2006, brought together the group of scholars engaged in post-excavation work on Neolithic Knossos (Evans, Conolly, Isaakidou, Mina, Strasser, Tomkins, Triantaphyllou and Whitelaw) and colleagues engaged in similar study and fieldwork elsewhere in the island (D’Annibale, Di Tonto and Todaro, Galanidou and Manteli, Nowicki, Papadatos). To counter the isolation of Cretan Neolithic studies, we also invited papers from colleagues active in Neolithic research elsewhere in the Aegean or Mediterranean (Broodbank, Halstead, Kotsakis, A. and S. Sherratt). In addition, Adonis Vasilakis presented a poster on his own important excavations (published elsewhere) and, together with Keith Branigan and Peter Warren, helped to guide discussion. The result was a series of diverse and highly stimulating papers and a lively and enriching exchange of views that bodes well for the future health of Neolithic research in Crete. Of those who presented papers to the Round Table, only Todd Whitelaw was unfortunately unable to contribute to this resulting volume.

The volume begins with a series of papers whose point of departure is Neolithic material from Knossos. That so much that is new can be done with this material is testimony to the excellence of the excavations directed by John Evans. In the first of the Knossos papers, he recounts the journey that brought him to Crete and recalls the environment within which the excavations took place. Peter Tomkins then explores the temporal and spatial frameworks within which the Cretan Neolithic has been conceptualised and argues that recent improvements in chronological resolution transform our understanding of developments both at Knossos and in the wider Cretan Neolithic landscape. At Knossos, refinement in the phasing of deposits underpins a radically different picture of the changing extent of the settlement, in which long periods of minimal growth (IN–MN and FN) are punctuated by short periods of rapid expansion coupled with significant social and material transformation (LN and EM I–II). The modest size and slow expansion of the early settlement underlines the demographic dependence of Knossos on connections with other communities within or beyond Crete and challenges previous notions of isolation and uniqueness. At a regional level, sharper definition of ceramic phases within the Final Neolithic makes clear that most of the expansion in the number of known settlements across Crete took place very rapidly towards the end of this period. Finally, a revised chronological nomenclature is proposed that realigns the Cretan Neolithic with other regions of Greece, bringing to an end the intellectual isolation of Cretan Neolithic studies and highlighting the existence of interaction (and potentially of analogous patterns of regional development) between Crete and other parts of the Aegean. Most contributors to this volume have adopted this revised chronology (Tomkins 2007) and, where they do not, the correspondence between traditional and new terms (Tomkins this volume, table 3.1) is indicated.

Issues of scale are also taken up by Kostas Kotsakis, with reference to the neolithisation of Crete and the Aegean. While arguing that the Aegean Sea is as much a connecting as isolating medium for its island populations, he stresses the empirical and theoretical problems that attend current attempts to recognise human migration in the archaeological record. He concludes that appeals to diffusionist/migrationist and indigenist models alike obscure rather than illuminate complex and fluid processes of neolithisation that are ultimately shaped by human agency and practice. Material evidence for connections with or parallels to other parts of Crete and the Aegean are a recurring theme in the ‘Knossian’ papers. James Conolly, examining knapped stone (mainly obsidian) technology in the earliest Neolithic levels at Knossos, draws attention to intensive use of raw material suggestive of ‘resource stress’ and so perhaps of limited contact with off-island sources of obsidian. On the other hand, technological similarities (as well as contrasts) with the Initial Neolithic assemblage from mainland Franchthi Cave and continued use of obsidian at Knossos during the EN argue against isolation. Maria Mina and Sevi Triantaphyllou discuss the role of anthropomorphic figurines and human remains respectively in the construction of social identity during the Neolithic on Crete. Figurines from Knossos and elsewhere on Crete are differentiated–as elsewhere in the Aegean–by a range of (mostly female) anatomical features, posture and decoration, although they lack decoration suggestive of distinctions in clothing or jewellery such as is seen in LN northern G...