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Savakis's Bothros: A Minor Sounding at Knossos
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 September 2013
Extract
In October 1968 at the request of the Ephor of Crete and Director of the Herakleion Museum, Dr. Stylianos Alexiou, the author supervised an emergency excavation arising from plans to install a water sump or ‘bothros’ below a cement-paved patio in front of the property of N. Savakis at Knossos. The site lies immediately to the east of the main road to the village, at a point almost opposite the entrance leading to the School's ‘Taverna’ and the Villa Ariadne. It is of interest for its location towards the northern limits of the Minoan town; for evidence of habitation in the vicinity during the Middle Minoan to Late Minoan periods, if not perhaps earlier and later; for a destruction here by fire possibly in the LM IIIA 1 period; and for the finds which turned up—notably of several fragmentary or restorable LM II and LM III vases (nos. 1–7) and of a remarkable ‘miniature’ fresco fragment (Fig. 3a and Plate 3a–b). As only a passing mention has previously appeared, a more detailed account of this site follows.
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- Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1976
References
1 On the opposite roadside and directly north-east of no. 81 in M. S. F. Hood, Archaeological Survey of the Knossos Area (1969). Thanks are due to Dr. S. Alexiou for permission to publish these finds, and to the following for their suggestions: Dr. Bernard Bonario; Mrs. O. Cameron; Mr. M. R. Popham; Mr. L. H. Sackett; Mrs. M. Shaw; and Dr. P. Warren. A Canada Council award in 1975 permitted a review of this material in the course of further study of frescoes from recent British excavations at Knossos.
2 Archaeological Reports for 1968–69 (1969) 34: hereafter abbreviated to AR.
3 The School's foreman, A. Zidianakis, and the author supervised the excavation in its later stages when much of the sump had already been cleared. A trench for a metal water-pipe had at some earlier time disturbed the area above the west wall (FIG. I), as had the roots of a tree between that wall and the ‘pocket’ of loose earth a little to its east on the north side.
4 Messrs. Sackett and Popham kindly made many valuable suggestions on the generally scrappy sherd material from this site, the former emphasizing its pre dominantly MM-LM IIIA character. Mr. Popham supplied information on some of the LM sherds which might otherwise tease the non-specialist in that particular field.
5 e.g. the Royal Villa, the House of the High Priest, the Little Palace, and the recently excavated Unexplored Mansion, at least in regard to certain favoured vase shapes, decorative motifs, and chronological concentration within the period MM III to LM IIIB. For most recent reviews of the pottery from these houses see Popham, , SMA xii (1970) 16 ff.Google Scholar, 59 f. (South Front and South House), 62 f., 63 f., and AR No. 19 (1973) 50–61 with AR No. 20 (1974) 35, respectively, where further references may be found.
6 I am unable to suggest a close date for this sherd within EM I-LM I, it being a continuously popular kitchenware fabric in Minoan times, as Messrs. Popham and Warren kindly tell me.
7 Not closely stratified, but stylistically close to the vessel from the Upper Gypsades cemetery cited in the Inventory of Select Vases under no. 1, below.
8 See BSA lxv (1970) 232 f., fig. 22, nos. 4 (shape), 7, and 12 (decoration), from Palaikastro, for further discussion.
9 For discussion of this feature see PM iv, 366; Hood, , BSA liii–liv (1958–1959) 185Google Scholar with figs. 3 and 5 (1–2); Popham, , BSA lxiv (1969) 299 ff.Google Scholar
10 Popham, op. cit. 302, fig. 6.
11 Briefly mentioned in Shaw, AA (1972) 171 n. 1.
12 Cf. PM ii, 446 ff., Col. Pls. X–XI, and 455, 459, figs. 266b and 271; E. J. Forsdyke, Minoan Art (1929), Frontisplece (e, g, i-k); Kadmos vii (1968) 62, no. 22 and pl. VI (22A–B); BSA lxiii (1968) 11 f., 27 ff., nos. 4, 30–2, 38–40, Col. Pls. A3 and B2; Cameron, in Europa: Studien zür Geschichte und Epigraphik der frühen Aegaeis, Festschrift für Ernst Grumach (Berlin 1967, ed. Brice, W. C.), 50 and Pl. IIA (lower right)Google Scholar, for comparable croci and composition. For the use of pebble motifs in these compositions see PM ii, 451 ff., figs. 264, 275A, and Kadmos, loc. cit., no. 21, although the blobs on our present fragment may also be compared to decorative coloured accents on rockwork (e.g. PM ii, Col. Pls. X–XI and 479, fig. 286, centre left). Colour comparisons can only be appreciated satisfactorily from inspection of the original material, described by Evans as ‘the most vivid compositions that have come down to us from Minoan days’ (PM ii, 447).
13 For recent restorations of the major compositions from the House of the Frescoes, see BSA lxiii (1968) 24 f.Google Scholar, figs. 12–13, of which the former has since been revised (Cameron, doctoral dissertation, A General Study of Minoan Frescoes, Newcastle upon Tyne 1975, Vol. iii, 205, no. 58).
14 e.g. BSA, op. cit., 8, Col. pl. B (2–3), and fig. Ic (no. 5), fig. 5a (no. 34), and fig. 8d (no. 50). See, too PM ii, Col. Pls. X–XI (colour accents on rockwork).
15 PM iii, 46 ff., Col. Pls. XVI–XVIII and figs. 28–36; Knossos Fresco Atlas (1967), pls. II–IIA (and III, Ashmolean Museum, Evans's copy only) and pl. B, fig. 1a–b.
16 Marinatos, S., Thera vi (1974) 34 ft.Google Scholar, Col. Pls. 7–9, with esp. Plans 3 and 5. No Cretan ‘miniature’ fresco has yet been found in situ.
17 Narrow friezes (mostly ‘miniatures’), in order of increasing heights:
(a) Cypress trees, 11·5, from Prasa (v. note 20 below and PLATE 3c);
(b) Landscape, between about 20·0 and 22·0, from Room 5, West House, Akroteri on Thera (Thera vi, 42, Col. Pl. 8);
(c) Flying Fish, narrow frieze, 22·4, from Phylakopi (Bosanquet, R. C., Excavations at Phylakopi in Melos, JHS Suppl. Paper no. 4, 1904, 70 ff.Google Scholar, and Col. Pl. III), as measured in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens;
(d) Spiral design, about 23·0, from Knossos palace (PM, 295, fig. 193);
(e) Festive scene, about 26·5 as restored, from Tylissos (AA (1972) 184, fig. 13, in colour);
(f) Flying Fish, broader frieze lacking lower black border stripe, 31·1, from Phylakopi (Nat. Mus., Athens, Cycladic Room no. 5844);
(g) Temple Fresco, about 38·0 (Evans: 42·0 max., as restored), Knossos palace (PM iii, 44, n. 4 and Col. PI. XVI); perhaps once nearer 50·0 cm. or more.
(h) Battle and Fleet scene, 40·0 to 43·0, from same room as (b) above (Thera vi, 42, Col. Pis. 7 and 9);
(i) Sacred Grove and Dance, 54·0 as restored (Evans: 49·0), Knossos palace (PM iii, loc. cit., and 66ff., with Col. PI. XVIII); originally nearer 60·0?
(j) Partridges and Hoopoes, 59·0 with all borders, pictorial zone alone 28·0, from the Caravanserai at Knossos (PM ii, Part I, Frontispiece, and 109ff.);
(k) Spiral relief frieze, height unstated but perhaps falling within the ranges of (g–j) above, from Room XXIX, Zakro palace (Platon, N., Zakro, 1971, 170–3Google Scholar). On exhibition in the Herakleion Museum, Crete.
Of these friezes, certainly b, h, and j–k once occupied the space between lintel-level and the ceiling of their rooms (cf. Thera iv, Col. Pl. D and Thera v, Col. PI. D). Approximate measurements of such spaces in restored town-houses at Knossos now follow:
(a) Caravanserai: (i) Pavilion, w. wall next to s. door, 37·0; (ii) Room of the Footbath, to cement ‘beam’ adjoining ceiling, 36·0–37·0; (iii) as previous entry but including cement ‘beam’, between 56·5 and 59·0;
(b) House of the Chancel Screen, room of the Stone Dais: (i) N. face of S. wall, 54·1; (ii) S. face of N. wall, 57·0;
(c) Royal Villa, inner room of Megaron on ground floor: (i) N. face of S. wall, 57·0; (ii) S. face of N. wall, 55·0; (iii) space above east doors, between lintel-level and restored ‘beam’ adjoining ceiling, 35·7.
Neither of these lists is exhaustive.
18 So PM ii, 446, and Cameron in Europa. 61 (contra PM ii, 46 ff., fig. 272 and PM iii, Col. Pl. XXII. opp. 254 claiming the presence of an artificial fountain in these scenes).
19 Bosanquet, op. cit., 73 f., fig. 61, from a composition which may originally have been some H. 60·0 or more, from Phylakopi: birds (?), with griffin-like wings and crests, flying over undulating rockwork (FIG. 3b here). From Katsamba, hoopoes and Plants among rockwork above a worn band and severely abraded dotted-scale skirt design (Alexiou, S., Praktika (1959) 318Google Scholar, fig. 2): perhaps from a female figure representation at or near life size (FIG. 3c here). Crocuses: see PM i, 506, fig. 364a, b and d, from the Temple Repositories, Knossos palace (FIG. 3d–f here). Evans thought that such Plctorial motifs in the ornamentation of the skirts of women, to which he added another ‘miniature’ series of a more religious character from the palace (PM iii, 40–2, fig. 25), might have adorned the robes of ‘the Minoan Goddess and her votaries’ (ibid., 42). Such figures were evidently popular subjects in mural paintings in Minoan town-houses and villas (e.g. Room 14 at Triada, Hagia, MA xiii (1903) 55–60Google Scholar, Col. Pl. X; on Pseira (Seager, R. B., Excavations on the Island of Pseira, Crete, Penn. Anth. Publ, iii, no. 1 (1910) 11Google Scholar, 15 and Pl. V, showing parts of two life-sized women); and at Palaikastro (BSA Suppl. Paper no. 1 (1923) 148, recently identified by Bernd Kaiser in the Herakleion Museum). It is conceivable that the Savakis's Bothros fragment, and that from Katsamba, may have belonged to this class of figured fresco.
20 Excavated by Professor N. Platon, who has kindly permitted this publication of the Plece. From House A, Room Beta, in a LM IA context (Kretika Chronika ( 1954) 449; op. cit. ( 1955) 562 f.; and Praktika (1951) 246–50). HM Fresco Catalogue, no. 98 (HM tray Epsilon IX (N), 2). H. ii·5×L. 13·8×D. 2·9 cm.; Plctorial zone, H. 5·7. Horizontal upper (worn) and lower border impressions suggest a very narrow frieze, probably once at or just above convenient eye-level of a standing onlooker. Seven trees and parts of two others in ruddy-brown to light fawn on unpainted bright ground, below black and dull medium-blue upper border bands. All executed on a slip (about 1·0 mm.) with light surface polish. The Plctorial zone is raised in low relief, about 3 mm. higher than the striped bands. Plaster: fairly hard, medium-grained, off-white; lower impressed border-edge very distinct. Remarkable for a Minoan attempt at true ‘chiaroscuro’ in colour handling. The tree trunks were evidently first painted, the foliage built up with small massed brushstrokes—denser at leaftips and moving downwards and inwards towards the tree trunks (cf. PM iii, Col. Pl. XVIII, olive-trees). Fine string-impressed lines divide the striped bands, the fugitive black overlying the blue. Physical character, technical execution, style, and brushwork suggest attribution to a Knossian atelier, among which by far the likeliest candidate is that which painted the House of the Frescoes, of much the same date. It is unlikely that the small Minoan community at Prasa, some 15 km. distant from Knossos, could Supply so skilled an artist in the specialist disciPline of fresco painting, or would desire to do so when the chief centre of this art in the Aegean Bronze Age was only 2–3 hrs. walk away.
21 Such ‘impressions’ have sometimes been misunderstood, e.g. by Bosanquet (op. cit. 71), who thought they signified wooden Plcture-frames, as though for the later exportation of frescoes; but the essence of fresco painting is that it is a mural technique, with the painting an integrai part of its wall. Chrysoula Kardera overlooks the original physical limit of the upper border of the ‘Miniature Temple Fresco’ from Knossos in her restoration, by extending the ‘banner-poles’ there (Alexiou, S., Kretika Chronika xvii (1963) 339–51Google Scholar) beyond the impressed upper border edge (AE (1966) 176, fig. 26); the tops of her banner-poles would thus pass on to a lintel or ceiling-beam and so would need—unless the beam were separately stuccoed—to be painted in tempera, not buon fresco. It is simpler to believe they were curtailed according to the widespread Minoan device of ‘artistic abbreviation’ (see Nilsson, M. P., The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion 2 (1968) 255Google Scholar; and Furumark, A., Opuscula Atheniensia vi (1960) 94Google Scholar on the principle of pars pro toto).
22 For a summary of Evans's use of the term see Knossos Fresco Atlas (KFA), Catalogue of Plates, 16. Different again is the series of ‘miniatures’ from Room 1 of the House of the Oil Merchant at Mycenae, (The Mycenae Tablets it, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society xlviii (1958)Google Scholar, figs. 42–3).
23 PM iii, 46 fr., esp. 48, with Col. Pls. XVI–XVIII; KFA Col. Pls. II–IIA and Catalogue, 11, 28; and for recent additions, Cameron in Europa, 65–7, and 73 f., fig. 8, with nos. 15–17, probably all once belonging to the ‘sacred Dance and Grove’ fresco.
24 PM iii, 48.
25 Ibid., loc. cit.
26 But as all the frescoes seem executed in the same buon fresco technique, and because the ‘artistic shorthand’ applies only to certain frescoes (chiefly ‘miniatures’), it seems there may be particular stylistic or other considerations underlying its employment rather than the general technical reasons to which Evans refers. It must have been boring work to delineate hundreds of heads of figures of secondary importance in the scene, the details of the outlines of which could not in any case stand out strongly on dark red and sky-blue grounds. Nor do we know how much time the Minoan painters had in which to execute their work, because their Plasters were not only chemically different from those of fresco painters of other cultures but were also often applied more thickly to the walls. Standard works of reference suggest a painting period of four to six hours or slightly longer; but then these describe Renaissance or modern practice and procedures, not Minoan, about which we know in fact almost nothing.
27 e.g. to the ‘miniatures’ from Prasa and the nature scene from Thera (see note 31 below).
28 PM iii, Col. Pl. XVIII, opp. 67; only the foliage of the left-hand tree is well preserved, that of the two other trees being restored. For references to recent additions to this fresco see note 23 above.
29 Cf. PM ii, Co). Pl. X; 455, fig. 266b (BSA lxiii (1968) 8, Col. Pl. B2, no. 30; 459, fig. 271; Forsdyke, Minoan Art (1929), Frontis Place, g, i, and k; BSA loc. cit., 3, Col. Pl. A3, no. 4 and 12, fig. 6c–e, nos. 38–40, for red and Plnk crocus flowers with light olive-green or light rusty-brown leaves and stems.
30 BSA loc. cit., 13, fig. 7a–e, nos. 41–5 with Pl. 7, 1–4.
31 See Plate 3c here (note 20) and Thera vi, Col. Pl. 8, particularly the Plants behind the duck (FIG. 3h here) and the griffin's back legs in the upper scene, and those in the upper right half of the lower restored section.
32 Kadmos vii (1968) 50–8 and BSA loc. cit., 3; contra, Heaton, Noel, JRIBA xviii (1911) 709Google Scholar on the absence of ‘intonaco’ in Minoan frescoes. See, too, Swindler, Mary, Ancient Painting (1929) 74.Google Scholar It is interesting to note, too, how far the ‘private styles’ of master Renaissance fresco painters differed in their sinopie to their more formal and public styles of representation in their comPleted works (e.g. Frescoes from Florence, Catalogue to the Hayward Gallery exhibition, 1969, no. 1, pp. 46–9; no. 3, pp. 52–5; nos. 42–3, pp. 150–3).
33 Hazzidakis, J., AE (1912) 224 f.Google Scholar, Pls. 18–20; Les villas minoennes de Tylissos (Éludes Cretoises iii (1934)) 23; Tylissos à l'époque minoenne (1921), Pl. IX.
34 Shaw, Maria C., AA (1972) 171–88Google Scholar, esp. 187.
35 BSA loc. cit., 26.
36 PM ii, 431 ff., esp. 466 f.
37 Ibid., 376, with frescoes discussed and illustrated at 378 f., fig. 211.
38 Ibid., 466.
39 R. B. Seager appears to hint at the attribution of the relief female figures from the Minoan town on Pseira to a Knossian artist, but without suggesting a particular atelier there (Excavations on the Island of Pseira, Crete, Pub. Univ. Pa. Museum iii, no. 1(1910)11,15, with Pl. V—misrestored). Similarly Evans thought the Fish and Ladies paintings from phylakopi on Melos were executed by Knossian artists (PM i, 544 and iii, 40, 42); but in this case, technical and detailed stylistic considerations weigh against such an attribution. The phylakopi frescoes seem definitely regional in style and execution, as the discovery of further frescoes from the site in 1975 by Dr. Colin Renfrew additionally suggests.
40 This article precedes a two-part study of the frescoes from the Minoan town at Knossos, under preparation for publication: Part I will present unpublished frescoes from recent excavations of the British School, and Part II (in collaboration with Mrs. Maria C. Shaw) a review of the material, published and unpublished, from Sir Arthur Evans's excavations in the town.
41 Cf. PM ii, 444 f.
42 No. 66 of a scientific study of fresco samples from Knossos, under preparation by Drs. Richard Jones (BSA) and S. E. Philippakis (‘Demokritos’ Nuclear Research Institute, Attica) in collaboration with the present writer.
43 For Minoan use of comPlementary or near-complementary colours see, for example, red and green Plants in PM ii, 458, fig. 270 and Europa, 64, fig. 6; orange and blue in rocky landscapes, e.g. PM ii, Col. Pls. X–XI, and BSA loc. cit., Col. Pl. B2. Further on the artistic effects of such colour-combinations see Johannes Itten, The Art of Color (1961), and The Elements of Color (1970) 49 ff.
44 Kadmos vii (1968) 56–8.
45 PM ii, 435–7; PM Index, 52; BSA loc. cit., 26. Cf. now the nature scenes from LM IA Thera, especially the monkey frieze (Thera v, Col. Pl D), the ‘spring Fresco’ (Thera iv, Col. Pls. A–C) and the ‘Miniature Landscape’ (Thera vi, Col. Pl 8). To the same date belong the Prasa and Katsamba ‘miniatures’ (note 20 here; and Alexiou, S., Praktika (1955) 317f.Google Scholar). The faience figurines from the Temple Repositories at Knossos, cited above for their decoration with crocuses, are of MM IIIB date (PM i, 495 ff. and 464 ff., fig. 333 with pottery). The phylakopi frescoes here mentioned, from the Second City, were assigned by their excavators and Evans to MM III (Duncan Mackenzie, DB 23–5, May 1898 and 17 April 1899; Phylakopi, 17, 20, and 70–7; PM i, 544, 547, and iii, 40–2); but the date of the Second City is under review by Renfrew and M. S. F. Hood, who kindly inform this writer it could be lower (LM/LCI).
46 The problem is this: BSA loc. cit., no. 1 (p. 26) shows that the pictorial scenes in the House of the Frescoes belonged to a second stage of mural painting in that house (ibid., Col. Pl Ai with fig. 1a): this was taken to indicate a later rather than earlier date for the bird and monkey scenes in the MM IIIB/LM IA transitional period. New research on the monkey frieze from Thera has shown that it, too, along with the Oryx fresco, overlies an earlier painted Plaster layer (Thera v, 37; and Thera iv, 33 for the Oryx: cf. BSA loc. cit., fig. 12 with Pl. 4 (5), no. 27). These Thera frescoes must also be dated sometime within MM IIIB/LM IA or LM IA. But are they, or the Knossos frescoes under discussion, the earlier? If the provincial frescoes from Thera were inspired by frescoes from Knossos, as one might suppose from the fact that Knossos was the most ancient, most continuous, and most important centre of this essentially palatial industry of wall painting—among other reasons, then the paintings from the House of the Frescoes should perhaps be assigned once again to an earlier date in the MM IIIB/LM IA period where Evans originally Placed them (contra, BSA, loc. cit., 26); say, about 1580—1550 B.c. A detailed review of the problem is, however, outside the scope of this article.