By 800, Cretans had, by and large, abandoned the upland “refuge settlements” that had been occupied from around 1300-1200 onwards. Not all Cretans had fled to the hills of course - the lowland site of Knossos had been occupied continuously from the end of the Bronze Age. But by 800 coastal sites are rarer than they had been in the Late Bronze Age. Defensible hilltops, situated some way inland but much closer to good arable terrain than the refuge settlements (on which see Nowicki 2000), are now the preferred locations. Not all such locations became the nuclei of later poleis: Ligourtino is one of several low hills above the Mesara plain occupied around 800, but for not much longer thereafter. Yet most were, and by the eighth century the acropoleis of Eleutherna, Phaistos, Gortyn, Prinias, Lyktos, Afrati, Dreros, and Praisos were well established.23 It is hard accurately to measure their size; indications from Praisos suggest a range between 10 and 16 hectares.
Until recently, we knew very little about the internal structure of these settlements. From Knossos we have mainly well deposits; from Phaistos there are some Geometric houses with streets preserved; the phases at Prinias are hard to define; and the only complete plans of archaic houses come from Onythe Goulediana (Platon 1954; 1955; 1956). These, though relatively large, are still simple two-room structures, with a series of single rooms opening straight onto an open area (not necessarily a court). There are no signs of any internal courtyard houses: one - and two-room structures remain the norm in classical and hellenistic Crete.24 Excavations at Azoria in the Kavousi area have changed this picture. Several archaic structures have been found. Such structures seem to have been built out of a “spine wall,” and otherwise arranged to follow the contours of the hill.25 One particularly large structure, with a destruction horizon dating to ca. 500, has been interpreted as an andreion (on which more below).
Major settlements were surrounded by their cemeteries. The cemeteries of the acropolis sites of Eleutherna, Prinias, and Afrati have been thoroughly investigated, but the clearest picture comes from Knossos. Here were extensive cemeteries of chamber tombs; the North Cemetery being the largest, with the smaller Fortetsa cemetery to the west. Scattered groups of tombs were also found to the south (Gypsades) and east (Coldstream 1984a; Coldstream and Huxley 1999). For adults, interment was, by 800, mainly a case of cremation in an urn, which was then placed in the chamber or dromos of the rock-cut chamber tomb.26 Urns, such as the straightsided pithos in figure 14.2, could be elaborately painted, but many were much more simply decorated. In the ninth and eighth centuries the simpler urns are “coarse” in fabric. By the seventh, the elaborate polychrome “Orientalizing” necked pithoi are balanced by those painted in a linear style. Such plain urns do not seem to have been poorer in grave goods than the more elaborately painted examples. In any case, few goods were actually placed inside the urn. This is not to say that the tombs were poorly furnished - often they are full of elaborate bronze and iron work, such that tombs can be “ranked” in a general hierarchy.27 But such offerings are not clearly associated with any individual - they seem to belong to the “group.”
What were these groups? The natural inference is that they are families, and there is indeed some (slight) support in the human osteology for this hypothesis (Musgrave 1996). If so, there appear to have been major changes to the kinship structure of Knossos between 850 and 630. Many tombs seem to have been established just before 800 and stayed in use until at least 700, a period of four or five generations. The number of interments in urns peaks in the Late Geometric period, and declines thereafter. In the seventh century, fewer tombs are in use, but some tombs have many more urns. Tomb P from Fortetsa, for example, has 27 Early Orientalizing and 36 Late Orientalizing interments, compared to an average of 4 for a “Proto-Geometric B/Early Geometric” tomb and 5 for a Late Geometric one (table 14.3).28 This picture suggests a move from a position where the basic kinship unit of Knossos was the “nuclear family,” to the establishment of “segmentary lineages” by 700 and larger clans by the end of the Orientalizing period. Of course, such a “plain reading” is full of pitfalls, but it is hard to avoid the inference that Knossian kinship structure changed considerably in this period.
After 630, the burial record of Knossos stops abruptly. Though some burials at Afrati can be dated after this, the same seems to be true of most of central Crete.
Though there are some late archaic (post-525) finds in one or two tombs, the burial record of Knossos does not really pick up again until the hellenistic period. It seems highly unlikely that Knossians simply stopped burying their dead. There are many ways of disposing of dead bodies that the archaeologist is unlikely to pick up, cremations in pits or plain pithoi being two possibilities.
World History
