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Knossos: ‘Geometric’ tombs excavated by D. G. Hogarth, 19001
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 September 2013
Abstract
The six ‘Geometric’ tombs excavated by D. G. Hogarth at Knossos in April 1900 are hitherto known only from his brief report in BSA 6 (1899–1900), 82–5, with massed photographs of pottery from two rich tombs. This article offers a full publication of the fifty vases from these tombs, stored in the reserves of the Herakleion Museum. Although excavation records do not survive, all the extant pottery can be assigned with reasonable certainty to individual tombs by collating various sources, including Hogarth's own personal diary. By today's terminology, only tomb 3 contains truly Geometric material, all the others date from the Subminoan and Protogeometric periods. The tombs lie along a well-known ‘Via Appia’ of Minoan times, where Early Greek families, of at least moderate wealth, made much reuse of Minoan chamber tombs. With some evidence of continuity from the latest Minoan burials in this cemetery area, Hogarth's tombs seem to form a small nucleus with origins quite independent of the main North Cemetery under the Medical Faculty site.
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References
2 Hogarth, , BSA 6 (1899–1900), 70, 81–2Google Scholar.
3 Marked with well over a hundred crosses on Hogarth's plan, (n. 2), pl. 12. In more recent excavations, workmen accidentally encountering his trial trenches have become accustomed to referring to them as ‘Kokartiko’, as a distinct chronological phase.
4 Ibid., 70–8: KS 2 no. 297.
5 I use this term to cover the entire time-span of the collective tombs in F and KNC, from Submycenaean to Late Orientalizing. For the earlier phases, the term ‘Dark Age“ is ill suited to Knossos, always and outward-looking place, and never isolated from other Aegean centres and the Near East (KNC 715–16, 721).
6 Distinct, of course, from the Kephala hillock on which the Palace was built.
7 Payne, H., BSA 29 (1927–1928), 231Google Scholar.
8 e.g. KS 2 no. 41: KNC 714, n. 1612.
9 Evans, , PM ii (1928)Google Scholar, opposite p. 547. This was also the view of Payne, who in 1929 excavated in this area an undisturbed Minoan tomb and two more Early Greek tombs: (n. 7), 226, nn. 2–3. For further details of the two Early Greek tombs: sec below n. 29.
10 Under the heading of Hogarth's tombs the Museum inventory also lists eight large closed vessels: three ‘two handled stamnoid amphorae’ (nos. 2342, 2344, 2346) and five ‘amphorae’ (nos. 2392–6). Their heights ran from 35 cm (no. 2394) to 55 cm. (no. 2344). In Hogarth's report the only possible reference to them is to ‘two large Geometric amphorae’ in tomb 5; but since none of these large vessels is placed on the shelves with Hogarth's finds, it is possible that there may have been some initial misunderstanding of their provenance when they were inventoried in 1901, later corrected when the pottery was arranged in the apotheke.
11 KNC 412–14.
12 The rosette is a common motif on LM III relief beads in gold and glass: see Higgins, R. A., Greek and Roman Jewellery 2nd edn. (London, 1980), 77–80Google Scholar, fig. 13.1.
13 KNC 121.1, fig. 117.
14 Cf. KNC 211, fig. 47, the three stone stands (marked A-C) for very large vessels in tomb 219.
15 Lamb, W., Greek Bronzes (London, 1929), 33, no. 4Google Scholar; Riis, P.J., Acta Archaeologica, Copenhagen 10 (1939), 6, no. 11Google Scholar; Benson, J., GRBS 3 (1962), 11, no. 9Google Scholar: Catling, H. W., Cypriot Bronzework in the Mycenaean World (Oxford, 1964), 198Google Scholar, no. 18, pl. 30 e; Schweitzer, B., Greek Geometric Art (London, 1971), 166–7Google Scholar.
16 Catling (n. 15).
17 Id., RDAC 1984, 88–91 and in KNC 596.
18 e.g. in the Teke tholos, BSA 49 (1954), 225Google Scholar, nos. 39–48, pl. 23; F nos. 674–9, pl. 46, from Tomb TFT; KNC 132.15–23, pl. 172.
19 D. Evely, KNC 626 7 n. 1392, gives a full list of the occurrences of stamped clay beads in Crete. Sec also Boardman, J., BSA 55 (1960) 146–8Google Scholar, fig. 10.
20 KNC 302, 331–2. Our FIG. 4 is KNC 200.4, fig. 128.
21 BSA 63 (1968), 205–12Google Scholar, fig. 2.
22 Hutchinson, R. W., BSA 49 (1954), 215–24Google Scholar, pl. 19
23 As Mr Hood has pointed out to me, Hogarth may have used the term ‘tholus’ indiscriminately, to describe any vaulted tomb with a circular floor, with or without masonry. Hogarth's mention of the ‘crown of the vault’ implies that he found it intact; if so, it might seem surprising that no trace of any masonry in this tomb is visible today. One might also wonder whether a stone vault only 5 ft. 8 in. (1.73 m) high could have held above a floor diameter up to 10 ft. (3.05 m). On the other hand, Hogarth also excavated a ‘tholus tomb built with small stones’ in a distant north-eastern quarter of the cemetery area near the modern hamlet of Sellopoulo (Hogarth, 81; KS 2 no. 27); there, too, although Hogarth mentions masonry, no trace of it is visible today.
24 Fno. 336, pl. 21; Higgins (n. 12), 108.
25 PG symposium sets are well preserved in the bell-kraters F nos. 221 and 428, and KNC 285.82.
26 KS 2 12, fig. 3.
27 Cadogan, G., BSA 62 (1967), 257–65Google Scholar.
28 KCN 714–15.
29 However, 7th-c. sherds are illustrated by Hartley, M., BSA 31 (1930–1931); 98–102Google Scholar, figs. 28–30, pls. 20–21, apparently from two more Early Greek tombs excavated by Payne in 1929 in the area of Hogarth's plot; see also under KS 2 no. 39. Furthermore, slightly to the south, between KS 3 nos. 39 and 40, a plundered tomb cleared in 1957 produced abundant sherds of the seventh century, many being from badly worn polychrome pithoi: Coldstream, J. N., BSA 58 (1963): 42–3Google Scholar. Pl.14.