¹ Sarpaki, A., The Palaeoethnobotany of the West House, Akrotiri. Thera: A Case Study (unpublished Ph.D. diss.: Sheffield, 1987)Google Scholar: weeding retened to on p. 200: ead. (in preparation), Η παλαιοεθνοβοτανιχή της Δυτιχής Οιχίας Αχρωτηρίου Θήρας: η μελέτη μιάς περίπτωσης (Athens: Archaeological Society). I should like to thank both Professor Ch. Doumas for providing the material for study, and Dr Jane Renfrew, who began to study it but then decided to give it to the author for her Ph.D. thesis. Moreover, I owe a great debt of gratitude to Dr G. Jones and Dr P. Halstead, with whom I had many conversations which were decisive in the formation of my ideas. Dr R. Jones also helped me enormously in making the text concise, and I thank him for his kindness. Dr D. Evely assisted in the printing of some of the Figures.

² Doumas, Ch., Thera: the Pompeii of the Ancient Aegean (London: Thames & Hudson, 1983).Google Scholar One hypothesis for the extent of the LBA settlement is that it extended and included Balos (Fouque, F., Santorin et ses éruptions; Paris: Masson. 1879)Google Scholar, Kamares, and extended up to the modern windmills on the outskirts of the modern village of Akrotiri. Another is that it might have been even greater and perhaps extended in the same area eastwards, while westwards it went beyond the windmills and up to Mavromati Quarries.

³ Jones, G., The Use of Ethnographic and Ecological Models in the Interpretation of Archaeological Plant Remains: Case Studies from Greece (Ph.D.: Cambridge, 1983).Google Scholar She conducted ethnographic work related to crop processing on the islands of Amorgos and Karpathos. For results of the same kind of work in Turkey see Hillman, G., ‘Interpretation of archaeological plant remains: the application of ethnographic models from Turkey’, in van Zeist, W. and Casparie, W. A. (eds.), Plants and Ancient Man: Studies in Palaeoethnobotany (Rotterdam, 1984), pp. 1–41.Google Scholar

⁴ Michailidou, A., ‘The settlement of Akrotiri, Thera: a theoretical approach to the function of the upper storey’ in Darque, P. and Treuil, R., L'Habitat égéen préhistorique (table ronde, Athènes, 1987 (in press).Google Scholar

⁵ Michailidou, A., ‘Το δωμάτιο με τον ϰίονα στο Μινωϊϰό σπίτι’, in ′Αμητος: Τιμητιϰός τόμος γιά τον Καθηγητή Μ. Ανδϱόνιϰο (Thessaloniki, 1986), 509–26Google Scholar; Lembesi, A., Arch. Eph. 1976. 40.Google Scholar

⁶ Doumas, and Palyvou, , in PAE 1983 [1986], 313Google Scholar, and in Ergon, 1983 [1984], 80, mention the probability of a second floor on the w side of the West House (over the main staircase).

⁷ Marinatos, S., Ἀνασϰαφαὶ Θήϱας, vi (1972) [1974] (Athens: Archaeological Society, publication no. 64). 20–1Google Scholar: esp. fig. 3, which depicts the sewer and the way in which it functioned as part of the West House. On p. 20 Marinatos claims that when the sewer was excavated ‘it was full of black soil, as black as charcoal, which means [there was] a slow decomposition of organic material’, Marinatos, N., Art and Religion in Thera: Reconstructing a Bronze Age Society (Athens, 1984)Google Scholar, and Koehl, R. B., ‘The rhyta from Akrotiri and some preliminary observations on their functions in selected contexts’, in Thera and the Aegean World, iii. 1. pp. 350–9Google Scholar, believe that room 4 a (sw corner of room 4) was related to the rituals held in the West House. Koehl states that room 4 a suggests several activities including ‘washing, anointing, drinking, and/or pouring libations’, and therefore refers to the ‘toilet’ as a ‘sink’.

⁸ Sarpaki, A. and Jones, G., ‘Ancient and modern cultivation of Lathyrus clymenum L. in the Greek islands’, BSA 85 (1990), 363–7.Google ScholarVickery, K. F., Food in Early Greece (Chicago, 1936: repr., Ares Publishers), 27Google Scholar, describes these as ‘a peculiar variety of peas still grown on the island’.

⁹ See Sarpaki and Jones (n. 8). 8.

¹⁰ Hansen, J., The Palaeoethnobotany of Franchthi Cave, Greece (unpublished Ph.D. diss.: Minnesota, 1980)Google Scholar; Renfrew, J., Palaeoethnobotany: The Prehistoric Food Plants of the Near East and Europe (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973).Google Scholar

¹¹ In Greece, olives are often prepared by being seasoned in one of several ways, after being crushed with a stone. In some parts of the country they are called ϰοπανιστές; these often have their stones crushed as well, making it fairly easy for someone to swallow fragments of the stone. Could we be seeing here, indirectly, the preparation of olives in this fashion?

¹² In contemporary Greece the term φάβα refers to several varieties of split pulses. It does not, therefore, denote a particular species of pulse, but rather the fact that it is split and the testa (seed coat) removed.

¹³ Plin. xviii, pp. 68–9; 102–4.

¹⁴ This cereal becomes more common in the later part of the Bronze Age, and seems to compete with T. monococcum.

¹⁵ In the older excavations at Thera (see Fouque, (n. 2), 128) mention is made of coriander having been found, but no quantities are discussed. At Franchthi (Hansen (n. 9), 148) only four seeds were found, all from the Neolithic, which therefore do not amount to evidence of its cultivation.

¹⁶ It is reported to have been found ‘in quantities’ (Renfrew (n. 9), 171) in the EBA levels, and presumably may be considered to have been cultivated. At Akrotiri, 46 seeds of coriander were found in a crop of Lathyrus clymenum L., and while their presence is due to there being weeds of cultivation in that particular field, they could well have been cultivated independently elsewhere, or in that field, in previous cropping seasons.

¹⁷ Coriander is referred to in Linear B tablets as being cultivated, especially for the manufacture of perfumes; see Shelmerdine, C. W., The Perfume Industry of Mycenaean Pylos (Göteborg: P. Åströms Forlag, 1985).Google Scholar

¹⁸ Jones, G., ‘Cereal and pulse remains from Protogeometric and Geometric Iolkos, Thessaly’, Ἀνθϱωπολογιϰά, 3 (1982), 75–8.Google Scholar At Iolkos, on a Geometric floor (p. 75), an emmer crop was found stored in a half-threshed state, with the glumes still surrounding the grains: in other words, the final threshing was delayed until the food preparation stage. In this way the labour of partial threshing can be spread throughout the year and carried out as need arises; this guards the crop against spoiling during storage, since the crop is best kept and protected against weevil attack in the half-threshed state.

¹⁹ The Greek countryside, particularly in Cyclades, has houses away from the villages which mostly belong to the village population. These are generally near agricultural land, and are therefore used for seasonal habitation: which season they are used in depends on the species of crop cultivated on the nearby land. They are often called ϰατοίϰίες.

²⁰ Jones, G., ‘Interpretation of archaeological plant remains: ethnographic models from Greece’, in van Zeist, W. and Casparie, W. A. (eds.), Plants and Ancient Man, (Rotterdam: Balkema, 1984), 43–61.Google Scholar See also G. Hillman (n. 3), esp. table 1 on p. 10.

²¹ Jones (n. 20, n. 3).

²² Jones (n. 3).

²³ A. Agrafioti-Moundrea, pers. comm.: and ‘Akrotiri. the chipped-stone industry: reduction techniques and tools of the LC I phase’, in Thera and the Aegean World, iii. 1 (1990), 390–405.

²⁴ An exception is the work by Oberdorfer, E., ‘Über Unkrautgesellschaften der Balkanhalbinsel’, Vegetatio, 4 (1954), 379–411CrossRefGoogle Scholar: many more such studies need to be made.

²⁵ G. Jones and P. Halstead, pers. comm.: iid., ‘Agrarian ecology in the Greek islands: time stress, scale and risk’, JHS 109 (1989), 41–55.

²⁶ Davidson, D., ‘Soils on Santorini at c.1500 BC’, Nature, 272 (1978), 243–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see id., ‘Aegean soils during the second millennium BC with reference to Thera’, in Doumas, Ch. (ed.), Thera and the Aegean World, i (London, 1978).Google Scholar A further work is Davidson, D., ‘Erosion in Greece during the first and second millennia BC’, in Cullingford, R. A.et al. (eds.) Timescales in Geomorphology (Chichester: Wiley, 1980), 143–58.Google Scholar

²⁷ Limbrey, S., ‘Soil studies at Akrotiri’, in Thera and the Aegean World, iii. 2 (1990), 377–82.Google Scholar

²⁸ Davidson (n. 26 ter); Limbrey (n. 27).

²⁹ Sarpaki (n. 1 bis).

³⁰ Jones, G. et al. , ‘Crop storage at Assiros’, Scientific American, 254(3) (1986), 96–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³¹ Sarpaki, Ph.D. diss. (n. 1), 216.

³² Palyvou, C., ‘Architectural design at Late Cycladic Akrotiri’, in Thera and the Aegean World, iii. 1 (1990), 44–55Google Scholar; id., Akrotiri, Thera: Building Techniques and Morphology in Late Cycladic Architecture (in Greek) (Ph.D.: Athens Polytechnic; in press). See also Michailidou (n. 4).

³³ On the so-called ‘cupboard’ see PAE 1983 [1986], 312, pl. 203 a; Ergon 1984 [1985], 81.

³⁴ Sarpaki, Ph.D. diss. (n. 1).

³⁵ M. Marthari is currently completing her doctoral thesis on the LB I A pottery from Akrotiri.

³⁶ Allbaugh, L. G., Crete: A Case Study of an Underdeveloped Area (Princeton, NJ, 1953).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁷ Here in order to simplify calculations we assume that all litre contents weigh the same, and as 1 litre of water weighs 1 kg, we calculated all volumes of materials such as oil, wine, and other foodstuffs at 1 litre = 1 kg.

³⁸ Marinatos (n. 7). pls. 67–8.