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The Location and Environment of Knossos1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

Neil Roberts
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Extract

The site of Knossos was occupied more or less continuously from c. 6000 B.C. (earliest neolithic) until the Arab conquest in A.D. 828, a time-span which represents almost 70 per cent of the Holocene or post-glacial period. It therefore offers a rare opportunity for studying the longterm interaction between man and his environment at a single settlement site. At present there is insufficient data to allow comprehensive analysis of the evolution of settlement, economy, and environment at Knossos, and this paper is intended only as a preliminary step towards such a study. In part I aspects of the physical geography of the Knossos area are described, and in part II they are considered in terms of the site's resource base and location. The geomorphological history of the Kairatos valley is used to illustrate the changing relationships between man and environment during the last two millennia.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 74 , November 1979 , pp. 231 - 241
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1979

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References

2 See Mckenzie, D., ‘Can plate tectonics describe continental deformation?’ in Biju-Duval, B. and Montadert, L. (eds.) (Paris, 1977)Google ScholarInternational symposium on the structural history of the Mediterranean basins Figs, 1 and 2.

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13 It is of interest that today this pine provides the main source of timber and fuel on the island. Zohary and Orshan, op. cit. 42.

14 Information kindly provided by Sietse Bottema.

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19 Pine is especially favoured in carpentry and would almost certainly have been used if available.

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25 Forthcoming.

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33 Wartime air photographs of the Knossos area at scales of 1:50,000 and 1:13,000 (including stereo pairs) exist in the collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. Copies of these have been placed in the British School at Athens.

34 All colours taken on damp sediment using the Munsell Color Charts.

35 See Appendix.

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39 I am grateful to Susan Walker for information regarding the aqueduct systems of Knossos.

40 Earlier water systems (e.g. Minoan) seem to have obtained water from close to Knossos itself and been smaller in scale. PM ii. 462, etc.

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50 Identification and transcription were most kindly carried out by Dr. Helen Brown, Ashmolean Museum.

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