Still no photos. Gotta figure out something with laptop's charger/hotel wifi.
We got to wake up at 7 again, which was great. We walked to
the Siteia museum, which was a convenient ten-minute stroll from the hotel. The
main attraction of the museum is the Palaikastro kouros, which is the first
known example of an extremely common sculptural type in the ancient world. In
general, the statues depict a boy with one foot forward and the other behind.
The hairstyles change over time as well. The hand positioning on this kouros is
abnormal, as it has its hands raised to the chest rather than straight down to
the sides. The statuette is made out of ivory, again showing indications of
trade off the island. The statue would have had gold leaf covering it, making
it an incredibly wealthy figurine. The rest of the museum was nice, if a little
bit undersigned for my taste. We hopped back on the bus and headed for the
palace at Kato Zakro.
The painstakingly reconstructed Palaikastro Kouros.
Kato Zakro is a small palace on the east end of the island. It’s
situated in a flat lie between three hills, on which the associated town
perched. The palace is the “economy model” of the palaces we’ve seen thus far.
There is no theatre area near the main court and the palace’s wings do not
follow the orientation we typically see in Minoan palaces. Talia, who gave the
site report, suggested that the non-standard orientation could have been due to
the harbor and the desire to put the administrative offices closer to the
shoreline.
There are apparently structures now submerged that could
possibly be ship sheds, although until proper excavations are done (read: not
soon) we will be unable to do more than just speculate. The palace was on a
trade route from North Africa and the East, which was indicated by the multiple
elephant tusks found in several locations there. There was also an incredible
rock crystal vase with amethyst beads (read the previous post for more on
amethyst) that was found in more than 300 fragments and took 3 years to put
back together. Both some of the tusks and the rock crystal vase are on display
in the Herakleion Archaeological Museum, so I’ll dig my pictures out from that
visit.
The rock crystal rhyton. Pieced together out of hundreds of fragments.
Elephant tusk from Kato Zakro. Restored from a fragmentary state.
We also saw turtles! Lots and lots of turtles. As we moved
across the site towards the actual archaeological stuff, we passed by the huge
cistern on the southeast side of the palace. The cistern, which is fed by a
natural spring and is also speculated to have been a swimming pool, had tons of
turtles in it! We ooh’ed and ahhh’ed at them for some time before Talia got us
moving again. As we were leaving the site, I saw a mother take her young daughter
over to the cistern to gaze in the same way that 19 undergraduate and higher
students had just been doing. Props to Talia for such a kickass site report, it
was extremely thorough and she had obviously really familiarized herself with
the publications about the site. We moved back to the bus quickly and headed
for Palaikastro, to see another site.
The turtle well at Kato Zakro.
Palaikastro is a little bizarre. For 150 years,
archaeologists have been poking around to try to find a palace, and it either
doesn’t exist or has eluded the best efforts to find it. Palaikastro was
actually what seems to have been a very large town. Large main streets divide
“blocks” of houses that seem to have been similar sizes. Dr. Catherine Pratt,
the co-director of the excavation, showed us the site and we started off
talking about the kouros from the Siteia museum.
The kouros was found in fragments, in two different general
areas. The statue was smashed up pretty badly and took a long time to put back
together. As near as archaeologists can tell, the statue was smashed, one half
was thrown back into the house whence it came. Then that part of the house was
burned. The fire was so hot that the base of the statue is scorched almost
black, while the top of the statue is the more normal color. We walked back
among the excavations to the new buildings that were recently excavated. They
were located using Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), which is a relatively new
technology that scans below the surface of the soil. It’s noninvasive and less
labor intensive than digging a bunch of exploratory trenches. When the GPR
uncovered what seemed to be two large buildings. This of course signaled,
according to Dr. Pratt, “We found the palace!” but she followed up with “Then
it…wasn’t,” to laughs. The complex they had uncovered was an interesting
amalgamation of periods. One of the most salient features were the 9 meter deep
wells placed directly in the center of the ruins of the old buildings. Dr.
Pratt suggested that the wells could have been dug in a time of crisis, when a
new water supply was needed.
Palaikastro also has an unexplored peak sanctuary at the top
of a nearby hill. But Linear A fragments have been found up there near the
altar! Luke and I were astonished at this news. Summer 2k17? We concluded our
tour of the new excavation and walked to the beach. The swimming was
incredible. The water was a little chilly, but the beach, sandy bottom, and
picturesque view more than compensated for that. We swam and ate for almost an
hour and a half before heading back to the bus and heading to Itanos.
Itanos is also a confusing site, but we were guided through
it by the expert knowledge of Marie de Wit, a graduate student at the
University of Belgium. She took us to the necropolis, which shows evidence of
graves almost continuously between 1000 BCE and 100 BCE. An early Roman grave
she showed us contained several enclosures, probably each for a family. Across
the street from it was a building that appears to have acted as a feasting
space associated with the burials. However, there is also evidence for
sacrificial rituals and manufacturing, oddly enough, so the building may have
been multi-purpose.
The graves are marked with white stones, which to me is an elegant way to show where they were.
Finally, we went to the apotiki, or office, of the site. One
of Marie’s colleagues was also there and we were allowed to look at and handle
some ancient pottery. One that we saw but did not pick up was a large pot whose
lip around the mouth had been deliberately removed for some reason. The pot was
filled with ash, so it may have been some sort of funerary practice.
Finally, all tuckered out, we got back in the bus and to
Siteia. Tomorrow is our last day in Crete, but the sites we’re visiting are
certainly not just places were hoping to duck in and duck out of. One place
we’re going is the Institute for Aegean Prehistory, which runs scientific
operations for many archaeological sites on Crete and elsewhere. I’m sad that
my time on Crete is coming to an end, but I also don’t have many clean clothes
left in my suitcase, so I guess it’s for the best.
Thanks for reading.
Note: I won’t be posting the 6/30 post until 7/1 because I
won’t have WiFi on the boat. I may also do it when we land in the morning on
7/1 but I may be a little too zonked out for that.
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