The major site of Knossos in North-Central Crete is a focus of attention owing to its gradual expansion in settlement size over the many millennia of Neolithic occupation (Evans 1971, Katsianis 2004, Tomkins 2004). By the Final Neolithic it was perhaps 3—5 ha, as was the settlement underlying another later palace, that of Phaistos in South-Central Crete (Watrous 1994). If these areas were fully settled, on most formulas calculating population from domestic space they would form potential proto-urban “corporate communities” able to exist largely on endogamy (intra-community marriage). If our somewhat speculative scenario is correct, a process of internal development in Neolithic Crete witnessed the emergence of a small number of these focal settlements of unusual population size and internal political structure, which elsewhere and in other periods can be associated with the rise of “city-states” (Bintliff 1999). Since current theory favors a city-state model for the various regional palace centers of the Middle to Late Bronze Age on Crete, the Neolithic background could conceivably provide a key to the rise ofEurope’s first civilization, that of Minoan Crete. Our previously presented model would predict for such a society a necessary horizontal or vertical political coordination. Sadly too little is known till the mature EM period of the architecture of the intriguing settlement beneath the Knossos palace, apart from houses which shared with the Mainland a trend toward greater “privatization” (Tomkins 2004).
It is striking that Crete, after its initial farming settlement, remains largely isolated in material culture from other cultures of the Aegean and from the Near East, till the Late Neolithic. Then, and during the EBA, considerable raw materials were imported (metals, obsidian, and marble) alongside cultural tastes from the wider Aegean (metals, obsidian, and marble) and limited artifacts from the Early Cycladic culture (EC).
Settlement
Very few EN-MN settlements are known, then site numbers rise dramatically in LN-FN, followed by further population growth in EM1-2 (Watrous 1994). Earlier Neolithic settlement is implausibly thin, and one suspects a “hidden landscape” of small (and perhaps several larger) sites awaiting ultra-intensive survey. Ceramic imports provenanced scientifically to siteless regions confirm this (Tomkins 2004). Nonetheless, the later Neolithic site proliferation probably reflects a relative explosion across the island (Branigan 1999). Despite earlier scholarly tendencies to explain significant changes in Minoan culture through migrations into the island, after the initial colonization there is little and disputed evidence until
Late Minoan 2 for any widespread immigration. The FN-EM2 population takeoff probably represents instead the local impact of the Secondary Products and Plough revolutions. Nonetheless, a good case exists for a small Cycladic colony on the north coast of Crete in EM times at Aghia Photia, whilst Cretans themselves colonized Kythera island, off the south coast of the Mainland, in EM2.
By EM1 Cretan settlement is extensive enough to clearly show that it includes numerous small rural sites and hamlets, alongside a class of large, town-like communities (developing from those few known by LN). To call this a settlement hierarchy implies a pyramid of regional control more surely evidenced for subsequent palatial Crete. It is too simple merely to equate larger versus smaller settlements, with dominant and subordinate communities. Nonetheless it is plausible that Knossos, Phaistos, and other extra-large settlements exercised strong influence on their districts, if not further afield, even by the Final Neolithic, possessing unparalleled economic surpluses, unusual population resources, and exchange potential compared to all other settlements. I have suggested that their probable “corporate” community structure represents incipient city-states.
In discussions of the several excavated EM2 hamlets, the search for progressive social evolution has encouraged scholars to find intermediate steps between the typical largely autonomous and egalitarian villages of the Greek Neolithic, and the hierarchical palace civilizations of the Middle to Late Bronze Age: elite residences evidencing a chieftain stage would suit the prediction very nicely. For “linear progress” in social evolution to operate in the Aegean, the flame of High Culture should survive on EM Crete, since the promising Corridor Houses of the EH Mainland disappear a long time before the MH societies which follow them locally show any signs of emergent civilization. This is the context for older claims that some EM2 hamlets were chieftains’ residences, or specialist villages in an elaborate economy.
Myrtos-Fournou Korifi (Warren 1972) on the south coast of Crete possessed an outer wall and tower, and its village inhabitants were originally claimed to have produced textiles on an industrial scale (Warren 1968). Reanalysis by Whitelaw (1983) downscaled the community to 5—6 households with a broad economy: a prosperous, largely self-sufficient hamlet. The individual household units were also autonomous economically. However Tenwolde’s (1992) reanalysis of the ceramic assemblage showed that the “household” room clusters differed in economic tasks: storage, cooking, lithic stores, textile production, pot production, were in separate sectors of the hamlet. A cooperative society of 50—75 people was reconstructed. This division of labor may indicate incipient role specialization in Myrtos, anticipating the subsequent organization of space in palace sites, where activities are also localized. The abundance of vessels for processing, storage, and consumption of liquids seems excessive for self-sufficiency, and taken with the evidence for wine and olive production, and wool specialization, supports an interpretation that the community was marketing or otherwise supplying surpluses to other communities or even proto-palaces (see below). Myrtos also evidences early use of sealings, probably symptomatic of a more elaborate economy than egalitarian household production. Since up to half of Myrtos’ pottery was also imported, the economic complexity of such small rural sites cannot be underestimated (Watrous 1994, Schoep and Knappett 2004).
Reinterpretation of the village site of Vasiliki in East-Central Crete focuses on an EM2 architectural complex, the “House on the Hill.” Traditionally seen as a Chieftain’s Residence, re-excavation has deconstructed this into several houses within a rural hamlet (Zois 1976). These, like at Myrtos nearby, were built up piecemeal as conjoined structures, maybe for related families. The hamlet of Trypiti in the same region, with neat house plans lining a central street, also does not diverge from the communal planning typical for Mainland Neolithic villages. But once again, even in such a minor community as Vasiliki, there have been observed some anticipations of settlement design typical of the later palaces (Preziosi and Hitchcock 1999): an evolving integrated plan and a paved western court associated with careful construction of the west face of one part of the complex. Taken with the inferences from Myrtos for supra-household complexity, it seems that patterns of social, economic, and ritual behavior at the hamlet level may be small-scale parallels for the grander designs of contemporary emergent and future palatial “central places.” In the same way, as we shall see later, claims for
Early Minoan peak sanctuaries may provide a religious geography onto which a grander series of shrines in palatial times could have arisen.
Till recently, the small towns at Knossos and Phaistos and other settlements at later palatial sites were considered to lack signs in EM of architectural elaboration. Nothing like a Mainland Corridor House was known: instead, fragments of modest houses. However there was virtual ignorance of the layout of both sites, since only little windows could be explored beneath the overlying palaces, whilst the construction of the great palaces had dug away most of the immediately preceding levels.
All this has radically altered over the last two decades (Driessen 2007, Schoep 2007). Firstly we should note that in his classic work on the Minoan palaces, Graham (1962) had emphasized their distinctiveness from Near Eastern models, being composed of blocks arranged around a large open, central rectangular court. The traditional date for the construction of the First Palaces is early Middle Bronze Age, Middle Minoan 1B (ca. 1900 Bc). However a French team led by Pelon has restudied the development of the Malia palace, in northeast coastal Crete, and not only backdated the First Palace to the EM3-MM1A period, but beneath this has reconstructed a major building of EM2 date associated with open spaces and a seal impression. They argue that this could form a simplified earlier version of a “palace” block bordered already by the familiar west and central courts (see Figure 5.7). Although the Malia EM2 complex is built of foundations of small stones below a mudbrick superstructure and possesses small internal rooms, it remains a more monumental structure than contemporary houses. At EM Knossos likewise it is now suggested that there was a similar monumental complex beneath parts of the later palace, with sealings which might indicate early administrative activity, whilst there are similar hints for Phaistos and the far eastern Cretan palace-site of Zakro of an EM early “courtyard complex.” The associated argument now current, that the First Palaces of MM times were also less elaborate than the Second Palaces, allows us to see a long stepwise evolution of the palace plan, which has usually been taken to reflect their final form from the first.
Malia always challenged prevailing views on the Minoan palaces and their relations with surrounding towns, since the district called “Quartier Mu” in the settlement surrounding the palace revealed impressive MM mansions associated with “palatial” activities: major craft production, administration, and public foci. It now seems likely that such elaborate private town houses also commence earlier than formerly believed, judging by EM monumental buildings now identified in the towns of Palaikastro, Tylissos, and Mochlos, where true palaces will not arise later (Schoep and Knappett 2004). It has also been shown that elaborate features that are first found in the palace architecture of the mature Minoan palaces, make their first appearance not in the earliest true palaces, but in such town mansions during the early palatial period. All this alerts us to the existence of a long evolution of monumental architecture on Minoan Crete, in which major buildings lying outside the palaces as well as in non-palatial settlements are as important as the new evidence of the EM proto-palaces or “court-complexes” under the palaces.
What are the implications for social change? Pelon considered the proto-palace at EM2 Malia to have housed an early ruler, whilst members of the royal family or an associated elite class might have occupied the town mansions. Other scholars, however, offer a radical deconstruction of the traditional concept of the Minoan palace in both its new proto-form of EM2 and its First Palace form in MM1-2 (or EM3 on for Malia) (Driessen 2007, Schoep 2007). For these authors, based on a reanalysis of the excavation data, the key element in the Minoan “palace” was the Central Court, a place of communal ceremony for surrounding populations. Initially only parts of its rim were taken up with monumental blocks of rooms, allowing easy public access to the court. The associated buildings, rather than being storehouses and accommodation for a residential regional elite, were primarily for caching ceramics and foodstuffs required for ceremonial feasting and associated rituals. An external West Court served for other formal communal activities. There was competition for control over these “court-complexes” between a number of leading families in the large surrounding town. This model would predict that non-palatial towns might also possess at an early stage the residences of leading families. In fact, such monumental buildings from EM2 onwards have been interpreted in this way.
Day and Wilson (2002), expanding on a theory of Arthur Evans, offer an additional source of “social power.” By Early Minoan times, the 7 meter high tell mound of Neolithic Knossos might have possessed sacred associations from its mythical founder-status as one of the first settlements in Crete, stimulating its development as a regional “ceremonial center.” Special EM dump deposits in and around the later palace represent communal feasting, distinct from the domestic assemblages recognized elsewhere at EM Knossos. These festival clearance-deposits are composed of large numbers of pots for serving and consuming food and drink. Similar deposits have been recorded at Malia (Driessen 2007).
However, Day and Wilson’s assumption that emerging elites at Knossos were organizing these ritual banquets runs ahead of the evidence, and one might question their conclusion that “whether the nature of the ceremonies described are labelled as religious, or not, matters little.” If we are correct in seeing later Neolithic Knossos, and Phaistos, as proto-city state corporate communities with a need for integrated socialization events, then communal feasts would be likely outcomes of such ceremonies. At Phaistos, the FN settlement is already notable for its rich ceramic assemblages in which drinking vessels are unusually prominent, leading Relaki (2004) to hypothesize that such large sites acted as foci for surrounding smaller settlements to participate in ceremonial feasting. EM Phaistos possesses similar assemblages. Purely religious interpretations, or a pronounced elite basis, do not follow automatically from this background. We saw in Chapter 3 that communal food stores at Knossos date back to the earlier Neolithic community. Although Driessen (2007) links the later EM development of courts at villages such asVasiliki, and outside the communal EM stone “tholos” tombs, to the appearance of the first court-complexes at later palatial sites, this also warns us that we are observing a far broader phenomenon than elite emergence, indicating increasingly formal community socialization events.
The economy
The Kavousi survey in Eastern Crete (Haggis 2002) shows an expansion of the settlement system from Early Minoan into the “First Palace” (MM1-2) period, both in areas exploited and site density, although there is no obvious regional palace in this area till later, in Late Minoan times, at Gournia. Till then, the centralized control of large regions from palaces is probably not relevant to many areas such as Kavousi, remote from an early Middle Minoan, or even “pre-palatial” Early Minoan, power center. A major reorganization of the Kavousi landscape occurs in Second Palace, LM times, suggesting pressure for commercial or tax-driven surplus production, arguably from a controlling palace. However, I am not so persuaded that the less dramatic landscape infill over the EM-MM eras, based on intensification of traditional agriculture, is “auto-consumption” (consumed by the producers alone) without reference to exchange and regional interactions. Traditional Greek farming has also rested on a similar broad-spectrum mix of crops and animals to that suggested now for Kavousi. This ensured that peasants grew most of their needs but also produced sufficient marketable surpluses to purchase necessary items as well as minor luxuries in regional market centers, and pay taxes when required.
We earlier mentioned EM Crete imports of metal and hard stone. Although Cretan copper was formerly considered a potential early source, analyses now demonstrate that the sources used were those dominating the Southern Mainland and the Cyclades: Lavrion in Attica and several Cycladic islands for copper as well as precious metal (Davis 1992, Rutter 1993). Also striking are recent analyses of ceramic production. Large regions of EM Crete share stylistic similarities in pottery shapes and decoration, considered as cultural borrowing. However Wilson et al. (1999) have demonstrated that EM Knossos in North-Central Crete was receiving pottery from the Mesara region in Southern Crete in quantity, whilst the Mesara obtained pottery from Eastern Crete. The social and economic framework for these exchanges remains unclear, and they need not imply incipient civilization, if we recall the ceramic exchange already shown for Neolithic Knossos and the remarkable Aegean-wide Neolithic exchange systems for stone-tools.
The site of Poros, on the closest coastline to Knossos (Wilson and Day 2000, Day and Wilson 2002, Day et al. in Horizon), is a port community with more extensive Cycladic links at this period than inland Knossos, which it might be thought to have served. Here large-scale working of imported island obsidian may be a key source for already prepared lithics exported to the rest of Crete. Likewise metalworking here from imported ores and a wide range of ceramic imports all indicate a “gateway community” which is as much concerned with consuming its own privileged access products from abroad as exporting them elsewhere within Crete. In Eastern Crete, the coastal settlement at Mochlos, with notable Aegean trade evidence and local production of stone vases and gold jewelry, may play a similar role. Here tomb variation in architectural complexity and gift-wealth, and similar contrasts between houses in the domestic area, have been interpreted as indicating a class of status families (Fitton 2002; Soles 1978, 1992). More dramatic claims are made for the Eastern Crete coastal site of Aghia Photia (Betancourt in Horizon) with a large EBA cemetery. Here the ceramics are 90 percent Cycladic alongside rare EM vessels, and it is widely agreed that this is a genuine Cycladic colony acting as a “gateway community” through which there diffused through Crete items such as figurines, copper ore and metal prototypes, obsidian, and ceramics. The stimulus role all these coastal “gateways” played in the increasing elaboration of EM society is currently being stressed.
As for external trade with the contemporary Eastern Mediterranean kingdoms and small city-states, current opinion sees this occurring on a regular basis, but probably in a “down-the-line” mode, in which Eastern merchant ships followed an anti-clockwise route from Egypt round to the Aegean, with many ports of call in between. Local elites acquired exotica for display purposes, such as Egyptian stone vases (Bevan 2004). Nonetheless we should not underestimate the range of powerful stimuli given to EM society, and to a lesser extent to EH and EC communities, by these persistent low-level contacts to a wider and more developed world. The development of property-marking and administration using seal-stones and sealings, as well as increasing skills in monumental architecture and craft production, clearly show Near Eastern influence. When in final EM, merchant sailboats are adopted in the Eastern Mediterranean and their technology diffuses to the Aegean to replace the local rowed longboats, Greece’s peripheral position to the “core” advanced societies to its east becomes far more integrated into international economic and political relations. This is a phenomenon which plays a vital role in the construction of the true First Palaces and the local adoption of other innovations such as written archives and wheel-made ceramics (Schoep 2007).
Many authors rightly stress the significance for social and economic evolution of the use of seals and sealings. From EM2 onwards there is clear evidence for the widespread marking of containers, either directly with seals or through attached seal-stamped “nodules,” and not only in the “proto-palace” courtyard complexes, but also in private houses (Schoep and Knappett 2004). Since this practice was adopted from Near Eastern state-societies, and is of little value in a village of egalitarian farmers, one should infer a generalized involvement of large numbers of EM Cretans in formal transactions of surplus agricultural products and manufactured or mined objects beyond the household economy. These could have been circulating in purely commercial networks, or to support religious or social networks. Confirmation comes through the widespread exchange of ceramics and clear evidence for craft specialization in the production of sealstones, bronze-work, and stone vases.
Burial and society
The mortuary sphere has been a major focus for our understanding of Early Minoan society, particularly since one tradition has a monumentality which stimulated early distribution maps and excavations. The stone beehive (tholos) tomb, essentially South Cretan, begins in EM, continues into MM, and still sees occasional use in LM. Xanthoudides produced an excellent study of these above-ground stone communal tombs of the Mesara Plain and surrounding hill-country as early as 1924. Excavations have continued ever since, whilst research on their location, demography, ritual, and social context have made them one of our best understood prehistoric Aegean monuments. Branigan’s work since the 1970s is an outstanding contribution (Branigan 1993).
The tholos (Figure 4.5) is a circular burial chamber with thick stone foundations and lower courses, often possessing rectangular antechambers. Roofs were stone slabs in some, but perhaps not all, cases. Burial was the primary function, and body-counts run to hundreds of individuals. Tholoi are usually isolated, but a significant minority appear in small clusters. The social group represented was originally envisaged as a rural village, with all community members being deposited. The Western Mesara Survey’s discovery of a flat cemetery however warns us that tholoi were not the only burial locale (Relaki 2004). A major breakthrough for tholos studies came from the Agiofarango Survey (see Box).
Locational analysis of Minoan tholoi shows that they are rarely placed in eye-catching positions, but all were probably associated with a nearby settlement (Branigan 1998). The Agiofarango Survey indicates that these range from farms or hamlets to true village sites. An east-facing tomb door predominates (facing the life-giving sun?), but so is an avoidance of intervisibility to the domestic site (the living can see the house of the dead but the dead are prevented from “looking back”). Significantly, a minority of burials were loaded with stones or other obstacles as if to prevent a ghostly mobility, whilst even when one looks into tomb entrances there is usually a blocking wall from the main burial chamber preventing a direct sightline from outside.
The basic tholos burial rites created in EM still dominate through into their continued use and new constructions in the Palace eras (Murphy 1998): at first the dead were placed as inhumations carefully in the reopenable main chamber or the antechambers, with gifts and ceramics for death rituals. At a later point, perhaps when new burials were brought, the previous inhumation was pushed aside to join the disarticulated bone piles of the ancestors, whilst some body parts were removed, and sometimes skulls were left. Ethnoarchaeology (using anthropological accounts to suggest interpretations of archaeological data), including traditional Greek rural practices, suggests that the first stage of care treats the newly deceased as in a “liminal” (borderline) relationship between the living and the dead, still an individual, followed by a second stage in which he/she is merged into an undifferentiated ancestral “body.”
Three kinds of additional ritual activity are associated with tholoi. Firstly, at a burial, mourners
Restored view and plan of the tomb at Apesokari, overlooking the Mesara plain
WSi Retaining walls Burials
20 FT.
Figure 4.5 A Mesara communal tomb or tholos, Early and Middle Minoan. Whether the stone roof was a corbelled dome, or flat, is still disputed.
S. Hood, The Minoans. Crete in the Bronze Age. London 1971, Figure 127. Reconstruction drawn by Martin E. Weaver. Plan drawn by Patricia Clarke.
0
Apparently poured libations and consumed liquids within the tomb confines, and subsequently revisited the tomb for similar “feasts of the dead,” to judge by broken libation-vessels and cups outside the tholos. At a later stage such rituals became elaborate enough to cause the common construction of paved forecourts. Scholars speculate that these were “theaters” for more general ritual performances in which the cycle of death and birth of families, but also of the natural world, could be the subject. Were ritual dances a major component? A circular “dance floor” at the Palace of Knossos has been identified and linked to Greek
Myths connecting Cretan dancing with such religious beliefs (Warren 1984).
Debate continues on the evidence for social divisions in the EM tholoi. They are better built than private domestic buildings, and clusters are seen by some as places of greater importance. But I have suggested (see Text Box) that multiple tholoi probably reflect the size of the associated settlement rather than political rank. More promising for social inferences are the gifts deposited. Especially from EM2 onwards, sealstones and metal daggers are common, and these are not everyday objects. Seals seem to mark
The Agiofarango Survey
This pioneer total fieldwalking survey of a 7 km long valley between limestone ridges (Blackman and Branigan 1977) aimed to uncover the Minoan countryside in unprecedented detail. My own contribution was to analyze prehistoric land use and social structure (Bintliff 1977a, Bintliff in Blackman and Branigan 1977).
The Minoan landscape consisted of settlements, tholos tombs, and putative peak sanctuaries
(Figure 4.6). Domestic sites were small-scale, each denoting a farm or two; the one exception in the center of the valley was probably a hamlet or small village. Surface finds indicated that the dispersed farms and the nucleated site were largely contemporary, a pattern similar to that we have postulated for the Neolithic-EH of Southern Mainland Greece. The tholoi were surprisingly numerous for such a small district, and whilst two were on the edge of the hamlet, the rest were scattered regularly down the narrow valley. The peak sanctuaries were
Figure 4.6 The Agiofarango Valley in Minoan times.
J. L. Bintliff, Natural Environment and Human Settlement in Prehistoric Greece. Oxford British Archaeological Reports 1977, Chapter 8, Figure 9.
A controversial identification, especially as some started in EM, since the site type was considered to commence from early palatial (MM) times. However, recent evidence elsewhere confirms such sanctuaries from EM2 times onwards, including perhaps what later became a major “state” peak shrine for the Knossos palace at Mount Iuktas (Day and Wilson 2002, Fitton 2002). Also novel was the discovery that the Agiofarango examples were on small rocky eminences rising out of the valley floor, whereas peak sanctuaries had previously been identified on prominent hill or mountain tops. Nonetheless, their unusual finds, and the physical unsuitability as occupation sites, together with the absence of tomb structures, made Blackman and Branigan’s interpretation the most likely.
Although in the 1970s farming had virtually ceased in the surveyed sector of the valley, I was able to map a series of discontinuous blocks of land suitable for cultivation (Figure 4.6, and see Bintliff 1977b), revealing that the dispersed Minoan farms and tholoi marked associated scattered landholdings belonging to discrete social groups who mostly lived and buried by these fertile patches. The limited areas of land, and the closeness of these dispersed locations, indicated small units of people, probably one to a few families. The double tholoi at the hamlet was appropriate for a larger social group. To test this hypothesis independently, I examined estimates for body counts amongst the dug Mesara region tholoi, and taking the length of tomb use into account, confirmed that the typical tomb-using group was just a few families.
If the mini-peak sanctuaries are correctly identified, the Minoan population of the valley inhabited a small nucleation and a series of satellite farms, distributed following the patches of cultivable land, and accompanied by similarly dispersed small (family?) shrines. Including the upper valley not surveyed at that time, the total Minoan population was probably well within the scale of a face-to-face community (less than 200 people) and would necessarily have practiced exogamous marriages with nearby social groups at the same demographic scale. The Agiofarango settlement pattern does not evidence elite groups, although the burial finds from the Mesara regional tholoi when taken as a whole may suggest that a minority of the dead with richer gifts possessed higher status in their associated rural communities. However, heads of small kin groups or families more successful in their crop and animal production (“Big Men”), could have received more valuable burial-gifts, without this implying a local elite class.
Personal identity and perhaps private property rights, whilst metal was imported and weapon display could be as much for social power as everyday function. Careful excavations of tholoi have been rare, prob-lematizing comparison of gifts to the number of dead. Whitelaw (1983), assuming that daggers marked male family heads, was led to argue that tholoi were for single families. However, comparing body numbers to how long the tomb was in use indicates that rarely one, but more commonly several, families were responsible (Bintliff 1977a). Branigan (1993) reanalyzed the occurrence of gifts and concluded that two to three and rarely one family was typical for the burying group. The frequency of daggers then marks just selected males in a social group larger than the head of each nuclear family. Karytinos (1998) and Maggidis (1998) suggest that in well-excavated tomb contexts seals also occur too rarely for individual family use, and rather seem to be used by a minority, arguably higher-status group.
Branigan (1993), Murphy (1998), and Karytinos (1998) feel that in the final stages of the pre-Palatial era (EM3-MM1A) tholos and other built tombs elsewhere in Crete were being used by a rising social elite to legitimate their power, providing a platform for the following emergence of palace-states. Some multiple-tomb sites (e. g., Arkhanes) became theaters of kin-group competition and display in tomb dimensions and gifts, whilst single tomb locations remained in the previous mode of egalitarian rurality. Likewise, Sbonias (1999) used late EM and pre-Palatial MM1A sealstone types and distributions to identify a small
Figure 4.7 Selected Early Minoan wares, emphasizing the significance of drinking sets.
K. Branigan (ed.), Cemetery and Society in the Aegean Bronze Age. Sheffield 1998, Figures 1.5 and 8.1. Reproduced by permission of Continuum International Publishing Group.
Number of larger settlements with an emergent elite, amidst an undifferentiated sea of villages and farms lacking social classes.
The non-tholos rectangular tombs of Central and Eastern Crete are relevant to this debate. Here, communal tombs are also characteristic for EM, although these are square or rectangular complexes of one to three rooms. Gifts and practices seem nonetheless comparable to the tholoi of South-Central Crete. Yet at Mochlos and Gournia the more modest tombs were placed in less prominent locations in the cemetery, and are poorer in finds. The more prominent and monumental house-tombs are associated with gifts of silver and gold cups and other precious finds, whilst such tombs have built terraces, shrines, and elaborate paved piazzas (Soles 1978, 1992; Whitelaw 2004).
As in EN-MN Greece, there is striking use of elaborately formed and decorated ceramics suitable for social dining and drinking in EM Crete (Figure 4.7). Apart from ceremonial deposits around and inside communal tombs, sets of appropriate wares also occur in clusters in settlement sites, especially the large “town-like” centers which will transform into “palaces” across or at the end of this period. These special deposits are taken by some to signify large-scale community feasting, perhaps reflecting the emergence of controlling families in the larger sites, coordinating ritual ceremonies and the display and consumption of surplus agricultural products (Driessen 2007).
Nonetheless, some scholars remain skeptical about the complexity of EM society. Watrous (1994) found no convincing evidence for a ranked society on Crete before the appearance of the First Palaces in MM1B, rejecting the emergent elite thesis of Branigan, Soles, and subsequently Driessen and Schoep. This creates difficulties in accounting for the implied scenario of an immediately-subsequent, rapid, and widespread rise of palace-states. Moreover most authorities reject older theories of the arrival of new peoples or an elite at the end of EM, or a wave of civilizational “knowhow” from Egypt or the Levant, which would set up these palaces from nothing. What is decisive for me is the likelihood that by the end of the Neolithic some later palace locations were large, even town-like communities, arguably complex corporate communities comparable to emergent city-states. On both these grounds, and the accumulating stratigraphic evidence from Driessen and Schoep, I prefer the view that during EM some larger settlements were theaters of political evolution (“court-complexes”), where leading families dominated large nucleated populations, whilst these centers already played a controlling role over surrounding rural communities. Following Sbonias, sealstones may have been an important part of status rivalry through the manipulation of food and craft surpluses. The fact that EM tombs do not clearly reflect all this need not surprise us when we learn that even during the First and Second Palace periods only one or two tombs can be claimed as symbolizing elite status.
Further symbolic culture in EM Crete
One of the most intriguing objects from the village of Fournoi Korifi is a vessel in the form of a woman, nicknamed the “Goddess of Myrtos.” Its location was in the main room of a house, near a bench interpreted as an altar, suggesting a shrine. An adjacent storeroom contained a large collection of small fine ware vases and capacious storage jars. The presence of the female image in this context could confirm the association already suggested for Neolithic female figurines, between the home, fertility, and the nourishing and protection of human, animal, and crop reproduction (Preziosi and Hitchcock 1999).
The Early Minoan 3 crisis
Another, startling, fact in the puzzle of palatial origins is the apparent disasters of EM3 across the island (Watrous 1994). Surveys show a general pattern of the desertion of numerous settlements after EM2, then an MM1 resettlement of the landscape. This is supported from excavations, where the end of EM2 sees destruction and abandonment of many sites. At the major settlement of Knossos, where EM3 has been identified, it cannot be securely tied to a phase of human occupation. AtVasiliki, after fire-destruction at the end of EM2, just a small area contains meager EM3 finds.
We have reviewed the evidence for, and explanations of, a similar catastrophe on the late EH Mainland. Also on Crete a combination of warfare and ecological stress might be invoked. The evidence, unusual for Bronze Age Crete, for defended sites or defenses at otherwise open settlements in the period EM3-MM1 (Aghia Photia, Malia, Gournia) (Fitton 2002), surely marks unparalleled threats to Minoan society. Watrous (pers. comm.) believes that the practice of frequently merging EM3-MM1 ceramics to a single period may conceal greater discontinuities, and hypothesizes that a wave of new settlement locations in Eastern Crete might represent additional colonizers fTom the Cyclades.
World History
