DISCUSSION

The factors that led to the rapid construction oF the city of Galatas - including its monumental urban core - remain undetermined, but it is important to note that the construction of this city corresponds to a period of reconstruction at the city of Knossos in Middle Minoan IIIA througH IIIB (cf. McDonald 2002). Indeed, the city of Knossos appears to have grown to such a size in the Neopalatial period that the land needed to sustain its population encroached upon Galatas's territory (e. g., Christakis 2008:134; Hood 1958; Hood and Smyth 1981:10; Panagiotakis 2004; Warren 2004; Whitelaw 2004:hgurei0.6). At the same time, a new architectural form (i. e., palatial architecture), one that employed specific elements of Knossian design and materials (e. g., gypsum) from the area of Knossos, appeared rather suddenly on the Galatas Kephala in an area with little previous evidence for the sort of political organization that would have been required to build a city ex nihilo (cf. Bevan 2010). These data should be viewed comparatively with those from the survey of Galatas and its hinterlands. One oF the most important of these is the evidence for the growth and development oF the city of Galatas and the corresponding increase in population within its local environs. There is an undeniable correlation between this massive rise in population and the adaptation of specific aspects of Knossian material culture as represented by the change in local potting traditions. Given such evidence, slight as it is, it may be proposed that Galatas and its territory came to be populated by individuals from the area of Knossos in the early part of the Neopalatial period. If this is the case, it may be that Knossos built the city of Galatas and populated it as a means of drawing the resource-rich Upper Pediada into its state system (cf. Warren 2004; Wiener 2007). This falls in line with several studies suggesting that the process of urbanization may, in some cases, be connected to the development and growth of state systems (Blanton 1976; Cowgill 2004; Marcus 1983; A. Smith 2003). If we accept this, then the city of Galatas could be viewed as a second-tier site in a

Much larger regional-settlement system, one that was centered on Knossos.

THE rise of a

Minoan city

Although this is somewhat speculative, we are, given the arguments presented in this paper, still left with two strong conclusions. First, I have argued that the city of Galatas was well planned, presumably by some central authority, perhaps at the initiative of Knossos itself. This is revealed through the employment of Smith's (2007) approach to analyzing urban planning, which highlights the concepts of a coordination of space between buildings, formality, and monumentaLity, and standardization between cities. Such planning is particularly noted in the city's monumental urban core, an area that was charged with symbolic meaning. Through consideration of these planning schemes, it can be seen that the builders of the city were specifically concerned with creating, enforcing, and legitimizing unequal social relationships. At the same time, these rulers were also concerned with promoting messages associated with the establishment of group identity, probably for the purposes of creating social cohesion. Given the fact that the city was rapidly constructed in an area that did not possess an earlier urban center, this strategy would have been essential for maintaining political and economic control of the territory around the city. In this way, the city itself became an active player in the daily lives of its inhabitants and those living in its hinterlands. Secondly, I discussed how the landscape outside of the confines of the city also changed dramatically with the founding of the city. It is my belief that Galatas's ruraL hinterlands were restructured in order to meet the demands imposed by the new political order situated on the Galatas Kephala. As such, the city became functionally interconnected with the hinterland. Its reorganization, therefore, serves as evidence for top-down planning initiated by elites at Galatas (possibly at the behest of Knossos), resulting in the formation of a new urban landscape in The Neopalatial period.