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The early keep Knossos: a reappraisal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

Keith Branigan
Keith Branigan
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
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Abstract

This paper reviews the chronology and purpose of the ‘Early Keep’ N of the Central Court at Knossos. Examination of all the surviving pottery in the Stratigraphic Museum suggests that the Keep was constructed no earlier than MM I B and was not therefore a monumental contemporary of either the Hypogeum or the North-West Platform. Its function remains uncertain, but the deep ‘cells’ must have served a specific purpose, and it is suggested that the Keep may have served as a secure granary for the palace. It was probably decommissioned and built over at the beginning of MM III.

Type
Articles
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 87 , November 1992 , pp. 153 - 163
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1992

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References

1 I am grateful to the Visitors of the Ashmolean Museum for allowing me to study Evans's diaries and photos, and to Ann Brown for helpful advice on the diaries. Thanks are also due to the Managing Committee of the British School at Athens for permission to study the Evans material in the Stratigraphic Museum, Knossos. I have benefited greatly from discussions with Sinclair Hood and Alan Peatfield concerning the excavations on the North-West Platform, and I am grateful to Peter Warren for having read and commented on a draft of this text.

2 See Hood, M. S. F. and Taylour, W., The Bronze Age Palace at Knossos (1981), 2–4, 18Google Scholar, entry 139, for a full bibliography. Mackenzie notebook 1903, v. 2. 81–2.

3 Not 20 m × 15 m as recorded by Evans in PM i, 138; see measured plan of palace in Hood and Taylour (n. 2), and PM i, fig. 101.

4 PM i. 136.

5 BSA 7 (1900–1), 36.

6 BSA 9 (1902–3), 23; Mackenzie notebook v. 2. 81–2.

7 PM iii. 15.

8 BSA 9 (1902–3), 23–5.

9 PM i. 127, 139.

10 PM i. 136 n. 3.

11 PM iii. 15.

12 BSA 9 (1902–3), figs. 13, 14.

13 PM i. 142.

14 PM iii. 17.

15 PM iii. 6.

16 PM i. 236; BSA 9 (1902–3), 22.

17 PM i. 236, 450.

18 Pendlebury, J. D. S., The Archaeology of Crete (1939), 97Google Scholar; Hutchinson, R. W., Prehistoric Crete (1962), 164.Google Scholar

19 Hood, M. S. F., The Minoans (1971), 85Google Scholar; Cadogan, , The Palaces of Minoan Crete (1976), 59Google Scholar; Davaras, , The Palace of Knossos (n.d.), 26.Google Scholar

20 Graham, J. W., The Palaces of Crete (1969), 147.Google Scholar

21 PM i. 136.

22 Pendlebury, J. D. S., Guide to the Stratigraphical Museum, Knossos (1937), 6, III. 9; III. 10.Google Scholar

23 Warren, P. M., Myrtos: An Early Bronze Age Settlement in Crete (1972).Google Scholar

24 Blackman, D. and Branigan, K.. ‘The excavation of an Early Minoan tholos tomb at Ayia Kyriaki’, BSA 77 (1982), 1–57.Google Scholar

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26 Betancourt, P., The History of Minoan Pottery (1985), fig. 65.Google Scholar

27 Hood (n.19). fig. 14. MM I B, right.

28 Betancourt (n. 26), 75, 77.

29 Hood (n. 19), 39; Betancourt (n. 26), 78.

30 PM iii. 6.

31 Branigan, K., ‘Some observations on state formation in Crete’, in French, E. B. and Wardle, K. A. (eds.), Problems in Greek Prehistory (1988), 63–72Google Scholar; Branigan, K., ‘Social security and the state in MBA Crete’, Aegaeum. 2 (1988), 11–16.Google Scholar

32 PM iii. 15.

33 BSA 7 (1900–1), 36.

34 Graham (n. 20), 147.