Overseas Connections of Knossos and Crete in the Archaic and Classical periods: A Reassessment Based on Imports from the Unexplored Mansion A Thesis submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Classics of the College of Arts and Sciences by Eirini Paizi B.A. University of Heidelberg May 2016 Committee Chair: Kathleen M. Lynch, Ph.D. Committee Member: Antonios Kotsonas, Ph.D. ABSTRACT For Crete, the Early Iron Age (12th–7th centuries B.C.) was an era of great prosperity and intense contacts with the Aegean and the Near East. However, in the periods that follow, the 6th–5th centuries B.C., signs of overseas activity and even human occupation diminish sharply on the island. The abrupt change from the rich material culture of the Early Iron Age to the material indigence of the Archaic and Classical periods has attracted wide-ranging attention in the scholarship. According to scholarly consensus, Crete fell into material and cultural decline after the collapse of Phoenician trade networks around 600–575 B.C., which cut her off from her contacts with the outside world. Most discussions of this decline have focused on the major site of Knossos, which is taken to present an extreme manifestation of the phenomenon. Indeed, many scholars assume a complete absence of archaeological finds at the site between 600/ 590 B.C. and 525 B.C. and some argue for a decline of overseas connections at the city around 475–425 B.C., which they explain with a hypothesized Athenian interference in the trade networks of the Aegean. My thesis revisits these ideas in the light of previously unpublished imported pottery from the area of the Unexplored Mansion, a settlement site located northwest of the Minoan Palace of Knossos. I identify a number of imported fragments of sympotic, perfume, and cosmetic vessels from the Aegean (Attica, Corinth, Laconia) and the Eastern Mediterranean (Cyprus) which date from the purported chronological “lacunae” and indicate that latter may be more apparent than real. This thesis further discusses isolated finds from other sites within the Knossos valley which date to the periods in question. I suggest that important fragments have often remained unpublished and ii occasionally they have been assigned an incorrect date, which has helped establish and maintain the traditional idea that there are “gaps.” This situation has had a negative impact on our understanding of Crete in the Archaic and Classical periods, which can be remedied by new studies of old material and the questioning of old assumptions. iii © Copyright by Eirini Paizi 2019 iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am immensely thankful to my supervisors, Profs. Kathleen M. Lynch and Antonis Kotsonas, for introducing me into the study of ancient pottery and for mentoring my thesis. Furthermore, I would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Todd Whitelaw for facilitating access to primary material kept at the Stratigraphical Museum of Knossos to Prof. Kotsonas, who thus identified the promising body of material from which I selected the pottery discussed in the present thesis. I am indebted to Prof. Kotsonas for encouraging me to take up the study of this material and to both Prof. Whitelaw and Prof. Kotsonas for their valuable help with my application for a study permit. I would also like to express my very great appreciation to the curator of the Stratigraphical Museum of Knossos, Dr. Kostas Christakis, for allowing me to use the library, the museum, and all facilities of the British School at Athens in Knossos for the purposes of my thesis, as well as to all members of the British School at Athens who have contributed to granting me permission for the study of material from the Unexplored Mansion. Moreover, the completion of thesis would not have been possible without the extensive training I received on the classification, dating, and illustration of Attic pottery from the Athenian Agora by Prof. Susan I. Rotroff, Aspasia Efstathiou, and especially by Prof. Kathleen Lynch during the summer seasons 2018 and 2019. I am also particularly grateful to Fani Skalida for introducing me into the techniques of archaeological illustration and for her assistance with the drawings of the pottery presented below, to Prof. Lynch for her corrections on my drawings of the Attic pottery, to my mother Maria Papantelaki and my sister Despoina Paizi for their help with the inking of the drawings, and to both Prof. Lynch and John Wallrodt who trained me to digitize the drawings. I also thank very much v Dr. Giorgos Bourogiannis, Prof. Lynch, and Prof. Andrew Stewart for their response and advise – respectively – on the dating of the Cypriot pottery, the Attic pottery, and of the sculptural fragments mentioned in the text, as well as Prof. Giada Giudice for her useful comments on the distribution of Corinthian pottery of the 6th and 5th century B.C. in Sicily and South Italy. In addition, I am deeply thankful to Profs. Eleni Hatzaki and Steven J. R. Ellis for vital theoretical insights they have shared with me, especially into processes of site formation, and again to Prof. Hatzaki for her immense help with formalities as a graduate supervisor. I also thank Prof. James G. Schryver for proofreading parts of my thesis. Finally, I would like to offer my special thanks to the Marion and Dorothy Rawson Memorial Fellowship for the additional financial aid it has provided to me for travelling to Knossos for the purposes of my M.A. research and to the Department of Classics at the University of Cincinnati for supporting me in every possible way in the course of this project. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures viii Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1 Chapter 2 KNOSSOS AND THE UNEXPLORED MANSION IN 27 THE 6TH AND 5TH CENTURIES B.C. Chapter 3 SELECTED ARCHAIC AND CLASSICAL POTTERY 59 FROM THE UNEXPLORED MANSION Chapter 4 SYNTHESIS 110 Chapter 5 CONCLUSIONS 126 Catalogue 132 Abbreviations 159 References 160 Figures 182 vii LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 1: Map of Crete with major archaeological sites of the Archaic and Classical periods. From: Erickson 2010a, fig. 1.1. Fig. 2: Azoria. Block Plan. From: Haggis et al. 2017, fig. 1. Fig. 3: Map of the Knossos area. Section from: Hood and Smyth 1981, folded map. Fig. 4: Part of the northwestern outskirts of Knossos: the area between Ayios Ioannis (N), Tekke (S) and the Venizeleion (E). Section from: Hood and Smyth 1981, folded map. Fig. 5: Block plan of the Minoan Unexplored Mansion. From: Popham 1984, vol. 2, pl. 1 (b). Fig. 6: Site plan showing the sections and trenches of the strata above the Minoan Unexplored Mansion. From: Sackett and Jones 1992, pl. 1. Fig. 7: Pits and wells with post-Bronze Age material at the site of the Unexplored Mansion. From: Sackett and Jones 1992, pl. 5 Fig. 8: Section E through Trench XV. From: Sackett and Jones 1992, pl. 10. Fig. 9: Section F across the Roman street (Trenches V-VIII). From: Sackett and Jones 1992, pl. 12 (a). Fig. 10: Section C across the Trenches VII-IX-VIII. From: Sackett and Jones 1992, pl. 8. Fig. 11: Kouros head from the Little Palace North excavations. From: Erickson 2014, p. 83, fig. 7. viii Fig. 12: Marble metope with Herakles and Eurystheus from Knossos. Frrom: Benton 1937, pl. III upper. ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The relative dearth of archaeological evidence for Archaic and Classical Crete has been partly shaped by disciplinary traditions. From the early 20th century until the 1990s, archaeological research on Crete was mainly focused on the excavation and the study of the Bronze Age remains of the island.1 However, the last 20 years are characterized by a burst of works dealing with the archaeology of Early Iron Age,2 Archaic, and Classical Crete.3 This development provides an ideal context for revisiting traditional assumptions about Crete of the historical period. The present study reassesses new and old evidence regarding ceramic imports from overseas to the major Cretan city of Knossos between 600 and 400 B.C. According to the current scholarly consensus, Knossos of the 6th century B.C. – the so-called “Archaic” period4 – features as an economically, culturally and socio- politically collapsed community. Excavated cemeteries, sanctuaries and settlements of this era offer so little information about human activity that the city is occasionally thought to have been abandoned and resettled in the course of the 6th century B.C.5 1 Haggis et al. 2004, p. 345 with n. 15; Erickson 2010a, p. 67. 2 Important monographs are the following, for instance: Prent 2005; Tsipopoulou 2005; Kotsonas 2008. 3 Indicatively, books and conferences devoted to this period include: Sjörgen 2003; Sjörgen 2008; Erickson 2010a; Wallace 2010; Pilz and Seelentag 2014. 4 The period from ca. 600 to 525/500 B.C. is characterized here as the “Archaic” period. In some cases, I have to refer to the final quarter of the 6th century B.C. and the first quarter of the 5th century B.C. separately as the “Late Archaic” period, because the material remains of this time span are often distinctive both in quantity and in nature from those of the preceding and following phases. A similar division of Cretan history in chronological sections that occasionally deviate from the periodization of the mainland has also been suggested by other scholars (cf. Erickson 2010a, pp. vii–viii). Since these periods are inventions of modern historians and archaeologists, their limits need to be regarded as fluid, approximate, and conventional. 5 For a survey of the problem and the scholarship, see: Coldstream 1991; Huxley 1994; Coldstream and Huxley 1999, pp.