Leanne Campbell, ‘Bronze Age Adyta’, Eras Edition 14, February 2013 Bronze Age Adyta: Exploring Lustral Basins as Representations of Natural Spaces and Places Leanne Michelle Campbell (The University of Melbourne, Australia) Abstract: The architectural feature known as a ‘lustral basin’ or ‘adyton’ is enigmatic and highly intriguing. This paper will explore the Aegean adyta and their associated archaeological artefacts and architectural features, including frescoes, pier-and-door partitions or polythyra, and moveable artefacts, and will then consider various interpretations of the evidence. Analysis and comparisons of adyta with other Bronze Age artefactual and architectural evidence will reach the conclusion of corresponding equivalence between adyta and underground natural spaces such as ‘peak sanctuaries’ and ‘sacred caves’. These observations of equivalence are evidenced by comparative analyses of architectural similarities as well as associated archaeological artefacts. The distinctive deep-set architectural spaces, found throughout the Aegean Minoan civilisation, were first described as ‘lustral basins’ by Sir Arthur Evans, the nineteenth and twentieth century British antiquarian, archaeologist and main excavator of Knossos and of the Mycenaean and Minoan cultures: Evans named the ‘lustral basins’ for the oil or perfume jars he found in their vicinity at Knossos, interpreting these as evidence of anointing rituals already known from later eras.1 More recently 1 Arthur John Evans, The Palace of Minos: A Comparative Account of the Successive Stages of the Early Cretan Civilization as Illustrated by the Discoveries at Knossos, IV: 2 (London: MacMillan, 1935), 905–9, 920–8; Nanno Marinatos, Minoan Religion: Ritual, Image, and Symbol (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993), 76–9; Martin P. Nilsson, The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion and its Survival in Greek Religion, Second Revised Edition (Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup, 1968), 93–4. 1 Leanne Campbell, ‘Bronze Age Adyta’, Eras Edition 14, February 2013 these ‘small, sunken rooms’ have been referred to as ‘adyta’ by Nanno Marinatos, and after Spyridon Marinatos, the great twentieth century Greek archaeologist and excavator of Akrotiri, who was also the first to describe these features as imitations of sacred caves built for chthonic purposes.2 The Greek word, ‘adyton’, literally means “untreadable”, a “place of separation”, or a “holy of holies”.3 The terminologies of both Marinatos and Evans infer and reference their underlying interpretive and religious analyses of the functions of these architectural spaces, drawn from classical and modern cultures, and are reflected in the language.4 Therefore, while tending to the terminology of ‘small sunken rooms’ for descriptive objectivity, this paper will preferably utilise the term ‘adyta’ after Marinatos, but will interchangeably use the terms ‘lustral basins’, ‘adyta’ and ‘small sunken rooms’ whilst investigating and drawing out the original propositions. Geographical Range and Overview We will begin by surveying these architectural features: these sunken chambers are found throughout the Minoan and Minoanised Cycladic civilisations, ranging geographically across Crete, and to Akrotiri on the island of Thera, modern-day Santorini. They have been excavated in buildings ranging from the ‘palaces’, also known as ‘cult centres’, through those buildings designated as less ‘palatial’ ‘villas’ and ‘houses’.5 The ‘Palace’ at Knossos contains three such unambiguous architectural spaces, one sited inside and opposite the main ‘Throne Room’, as well 2 Louise A. Hitchcock, Minoan Architecture: A Contextual Analysis (Jonsered: Paul Åströms Förlag, 2000), 161; Nanno Marinatos and Robin Hägg, ‘On the Ceremonial Function of the Minoan Polythyron’, in Opuscula Atheniensia 16, no. 6 (1986), 60; Spyridon Marinatos, Excavations at Thera, VI (Athens: Hē en Athēnais Archaiologikē Hetaireia, 1974), 129–136; Nilsson, The Minoan- Mycenaean Religion, 94; Donald Preziosi and Louise A. Hitchcock, Aegean Art and Architecture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 94, 100, 122. 3 Nanno Marinatos, Art and Religion in Thera: Reconstructing a Bronze Age Society (Athens: D. and I. Mathioulakis, 1984), 14; Marinatos, Minoan Religion: Ritual, Image, and Symbol, 81, 203. 4 Hitchcock, Minoan Architecture: A Contextual Analysis, 178. 2 Leanne Campbell, ‘Bronze Age Adyta’, Eras Edition 14, February 2013 as the ‘North Adyton’ (also known as the ‘North-West Lustral Basin’ after Evans) and the ‘South-East Adyton’ (or, ‘South-East Lustral Basin’) respectively (a fourth originally described by Evans as the ‘Queen’s Bath’ does not have the sunken floor or stairs to confirm it as an adyton).6 Throughout Crete there are also two adyta found in the ‘Palace’ at Phaistos, in Rooms 63d and 81; two adyta, the ‘North Adyton’ and the ‘West Adyton’, in the ‘Palace’ at Zakros; and one in the ‘Palace’ at Mallia, in ‘Quartier III.4’.7 Another adyton in Mallia’s Quartier Mu, inside Building A, was described by Jean-Claude Poursat as the earliest-built example of a lustral basin yet discovered.8 As well, two more adyta were excavated in Mallia in the buildings designated Houses Delta Alpha and Zeta Alpha; two adyta at Tylissos in Houses A and C respectively; and one at Palaikastro in House B.9 There is also one exceptional adyton found outside of Crete, in Akrotiri’s Xeste 3 building on the Cycladic island of Thera.10 5 Marinatos, Minoan Religion: Ritual, Image, and Symbol, 40, 76–8. 6 Evans, The Palace of Minos. II: 1 (London: MacMillan, 1928a), 378–381; Louise A. Hitchcock, ‘The Minoan Hall System: Writing the Present out of the Past’, in M. Locock (ed.), Meaningful Architecture: Social Interpretations of Buildings (Avebury: Worldwide Archaeology Series, 1994), 36–8. 7 Pierre Demargne and H. Gallet de Santerre, Fouilles Exécutées à Mallia: Exploration des Maisons et Quartiers d’Habitation I (1921 – 1948) (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1953), 43–8, 63– 100; Luigi Pernier, Il Palazzo Minoico di Festos II (Rome: Libreria Dello Stato, 1951), 163–191; Nicholas Platon, Zakros: The Discovery of a Lost Palace of Ancient Crete (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971), 127–130, 174–184. 8 John C. McEnroe, Architecture of Minoan Crete: Constructing Identity in the Aegean Bronze Age (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010), 64–5; Olivier Pelon, Jean-Claude Poursat, René Treuil, and Henri van Effenterre, “Mallia”, in J. Wilson Myers, Eleanor Emlen Myers, and Gerald Cadogan (eds), An Arial Atlas of Ancient Crete (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 175. 9 Demargne and de Santerre, Fouilles Exécutées à Mallia, 43–8, 63–100; Jan Driessen, ‘The Dismantling of a Minoan Hall at Palaikastro (Knossians Go Home?)’, in Philip Betancourt, Vassos Karageorghis, Robert Laffineur and Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier (eds), Meletemata: Studies in Aegean Archaeology Presented to Malcolm H. Wiener as He Enters his 65th Year, Aegaeum 20 (Austin: University of Texas at Austin, Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory, 1999), 230; Joseph Hazzidakis, Les Villas Minoennes de Tylissos (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner 1934), 8–25, 32–47. 10 Demargne and de Santerre, Fouilles Exécutées à Mallia, 43–8, 63–100; Christos Doumas, The Wall-Paintings of Thera, trans. Alex Doumas (Athens: The Thera Foundation – Petros M. Nomikos, 1992), 11–5; Driessen, ‘The Dismantling of a Minoan Hall, 230; Hazzidakis, Les Villas Minoennes de Tylissos, 8–25, 32–47; Marinatos and Hägg, ‘On the Ceremonial Function of the Minoan Polythyron’, 61–68; Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier, ‘Iconography and Context: The Thera Frescoes’, in Robert Laffineur and Janice L. Crowley (eds), Eikon: Aegean Bronze Age Iconography: Shaping a Methodology, Aegaeum 8, Proceedings of the 4th International Aegean Conference, University of Tasmania, 3 Leanne Campbell, ‘Bronze Age Adyta’, Eras Edition 14, February 2013 Adyta: Architectural Descriptions Architecturally, adyta are without exception small rectangular spaces which are sunken below the adjoining rooms’ floor levels with stairs descending down into them.11 To describe a famous example, the Knossos Throne Room’s adyton includes the typical half-metre thick, stone balustrade running between the sunken floor of the ‘basin’ and the Throne Room proper.12 The ‘Throne Room’ is named for its carved gypsum ‘throne’, which sits on a raised platform and is flanked by frescoes of griffins, and notably with the throne’s back sculpted to symbolise and represent a mountainto 13 The benches which encircle the perimeter of the Throne Room continue along the balustrade of the adyton; three columns are also set into the wide, stone balustrade which separates the room from the basin’s sunken floor, which is accessible from the Throne Room by an L-shaped series of stairs which descend down into the gypsum- lined basin.14 Some adyta, such as at Mallia, Phaistos, Zakros and Knossos, are formed either at the corner of, or on the edge of, a larger room with a balustrade surrounding the remaining sides of the adyton.15 These balustrades are usually Hobart, Australia, 6–9 April, 1992 (Liege: Université de Liege, 1992), 97; Clairy Palyvou, ‘Circulatory Patterns in Minoan Architecture’, in Robin Hägg and Nanno Marinatos (eds), The Function of Minoan Palaces (Stockholm: Svenska Institutet i Athen, 1987), 200; Pernier, Il Palazzo Minoico di Festos II, 163–191; Platon, Zakros: The Discovery of a Lost Palace of Ancient Crete, 127–130, 174–184. 11 Hitchcock, ‘The Minoan Hall System, 36–8; Louise A. Hitchcock, ‘Naturalizing