Eur asian Pre his tory, 8 (1–2): 67–87. LITHIC IN DUS TRY FROM THE ACERAMIC LEVELS AT KNOSSOS (CRETE, GREECE): AN ALTER NA TIVE AP PROACH Ma³gorzata Kaczanowska and Janusz K. Koz³owski In sti tute of Ar chae ol ogy, Jagiellonian Uni ver sity, Go³êbia 11, 31-007 Kraków, Po land; [email protected] Ab stract The pa per deals with lithic artefacts from aceramic levels exca vated by J.Ev ans at Knossos (layer X) and offers an al- terna tive inter pre ta tion to that proposed by J. Conolly (2008). A se ries of 376 artefacts from the collec tion of the British School in Athens (Stratigraphic Museum in Knossos) has been an a lyzed in terms of raw mate ri als, technol ogy (no tably: reduc tion sequences and their stages carried out on-site and off-site), also morpho logi cal structure of retouched tools. The as semblage from layer X at Knossos is com pared with Mesolithic in dustries and the Initial Neolithi c in the Peloponese (espe cially phase X in Franchthi Cave), with the Mesolithic of the Aegean is lands and with the Pre-Neo lithic flake indus tries from Cyprus. Moreover, the rela tion of the Aceramic assem blage (Initial Neolithi c) to the chipped stone indus try from Early Neo lithic I from Knossos has been ex amined and a number of common features of tech nology and tool mor phology are pointed out. Key words: Aceramic Neolithi c, Initial Neolithi c, Early Neo lithic, East ern Medi ter ra nean, Aegean Mesolithic. Evans thought that the site from the Aceramic IN TRO DUC TION Phase was the re mains of a short-term camp. Sub - The in vesti gati ons by J. Evans at Knossos re- sequentl y, however, rem ains were discov ered of a vealed that be low the Ce ramic Neolithic layers struc ture from clay, stones and sundried bricks, there were Aceramic layers which yielded a se ries which com pelled J. Ev ans to revise his opin ion. of lithic artefacts. In the works of J. Ev ans (1964, The aceramic settle m ent is situ ated on the cul mi- 1968, 1971) these artefacts were curso ril y men- nati on of the hill, and in subse quent ceram ic pha- tioned, whereas J. Conolly (2008) publi shed a ses are spread to the north ern slope of the hill. monographic study of chipped stone artefacts from the Aceramic (Ini tial Neo lithic) lay ers. In the present work we would like to re-apprai se RAW MA TE RI ALS STRUC TURE these mate ri als kindly placed at our disposal by J. In the inven tory from layer X – 376 artefacts Evans and the Brit ish School of Athens, however have been exam ined. The most im por tant raw ma- our meth od olog i cal pre mises are some what dif- teria l is Melian obsid ian (262 – 69.7%), sili ceous ferent than those of J. Conolly. rocks are next (114 – 30.3%) (Fig. 1). Anal ysis of The chipped stone artefacts in the ce ramic trace ele m ents shows that obsid ian from the island layers come from the trenches in the Cen tral of Melos in the collec tion from J. Evans’s inves ti - Court of the Pal ace namely: trenches AC, X and ga tions co mes from de posit ar eas near Adamas ZE. The thick ness of the aceramic level is differ - (Cann and Renfrew, 1965). Recent anal ysis of the ent in the var i ous trenches: in trench AC it is very few artefacts from the aceramic layer at Knossos, thin, while in trench X it is very thick. At first, J. from the in vesti gati ons by N. Efstratiou et al. 68 M. Kaczanowska & J. K. Koz³owski sed im ents; to the east and west there are Meso zoic limestone s where one might expect to find radio- larites or other si li ceous rocks. THE STRUC TURE OF MA JOR TECH NO LOG I CAL GROUPS The struc ture of ma jor tech no log i cal groups is given in Fig. 2. The small frequency of cores is char ac ter is tic. To gether with the rel a tively low in - Fig. 1. Knossos. Raw ma terial structure in aceramic dex of flakes 29.0% (calcu lat ed without chips; layer X and Early Neolithic I flakes and splin ters taken togethe r – 46.8%) it in - di cates limited on-site pro duc tion. It is un cer tain whether splinter s were inten ti onal blanks or merely waste from utiliz ing splintered pieces as tools. Splint ered pieces (19.1%) are more num er- ous than cores. The frequency of blades, both ob - sidian (8.0%) and from sili ceous rocks (7.9%), is rel a tively low. If we con sider the pres ence of fairly large blade tools, we can as sume that blades were produced off-site or that blade tools were brought to the site from elsewhere. The struc ture of ma jor tech no log i cal groups depart s from stan dard of on-site pro ducti on. This im plies that ei ther ac cess to raw ma teri als was dif - ficult (the acqui si ti on of obsid ian from Melos was un sys tem atic, while the knowl edge of lo cal sources of si li ceous rocks was poor) or – fi nally – that spe cific ac tiv i ties at the site re quired the use of small splintered pieces and splinter s. One may presum e that the group of settl ers ar rived at the site with completed tools and a small store of obsid ian; only a small num ber of Fig. 2. Knossos. Ma jor tech no log i cal group struc ture non-stan dardize d tools was produced at the site, in aceramic layer X and splint ered pieces functioned as tools. It should be em phasiz ed that there are no ma- jor dif fer ences in the scatter pat tern in re lation to (2004) has in dicat ed that some obsid ians may also the fre quency of the types of artefacts in the dif - come from the depos its near Demenegaki. fer ent zones of the Aceramic settle m ent. Only ob - Among the sili ceous rocks there are vari ous sidian in trench X and sili ceous rocks in trench types of radiolarite (red, yellow, greenish, grey), AC, show a slightly higher propor ti on. weakly trans par ent, blu ish chal ce dony, black menilithic shales, quartz and quartz ite, and single Cor ing tech niques items of flints: brownish and yel low-brownish. In the Aceramic layers at Knossos a small The obsid ian is obvi ously extralocal, but we were num ber of cores was regis ter ed: in trench X – 4 un able to identi fy the loca ti on of deposit areas of spec im ens and one mod ifie d into a splint ered piece sili ceous rocks. Some rocks such as quartzes and (all of obsid ian) , in trench ZE – 2 speci m ens (from radiolarites come from al lu vial de pos its, most radiolarite), and in trench AC – 2 spec im ens (one proba bly in the vicin it y of the site. It should be from chal cedony and one from obsidian). We can stressed, that the site it self is sit u ated on Eocene assum e that most blanks were produced off-site, Lithic indus try from the aceramic levels at Knossos 69 whereas debitage prod ucts made on-site were the niques. In order to produce blanks on-site splint - result of the splintered technique which was ered technique was the prevail ing method. Cores broadly ap plied in the Aceramic Neoli thic. on flakes and the use of splint ered technique in The pres ence of macroblade tech nique has the fi nal phase of re duc tion are char ac ter is tic. been con firmed by, in fact, only one fragm ent of an obsid ian core transform ed into a one-sided bi - Splint ered pieces po lar splintered piece. On the op po site side of the The Aceramic Phase lay ers con tained 72 spec im en there are the prox im al parts of two large splintered pieces which is 19.2% of the inven tory . blade scars (2.0–2.2 cm broad) with the axis per- Most splint ered pieces are ob sid ian spec im ens pendic u lar to the axis of the splintered piece (Pl. (56). The propor tion of obsid ian in this inven tory I.1). In his study J. Conolly (2008: fig. 5.3a) in ter - group is somewhat higher (77.7%) than the aver - preted this spec im en as a simple splint ered piece age for the whole as sem blage (70%). Splint ered miss ing the core stage of its re ducti on. pieces were pro duced from blades (6 spec im ens – A chunk of grey chal cedony with two long Pl. I.9), flakes (15 speci m ens – Pl. II.1), from core scars with blade propor ti ons is an ini tial form of a fragm ents or cores in the fi nal phase of re ducti on core whose fur ther re duc tion was prac tically im - (two speci m ens); however, becaus e most splint- possi ble.