Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-fwgfc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-13T16:09:42.908Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Late Minoan Tomb on Lower Gypsadhes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

Mervyn Popham
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

At the request of the Ephorate, a suspected tomb on Gypsadhes was investigated in September 1979 by the author. Deep ploughing had broken through what appeared to be the roof of a chamber tomb. While other cemeteries are known on Gypsadhes hill, no tomb had so far been recorded in this particular location.

The field in question is located immediately south of Knossos village: a slight depression, or gully, on the north slope, it lies some 150m west of the dirt track which gives access to the hill, Fig. 1. In the higher, NE corner of this field, cross-hatched on the sketch plan at Fig. 2, the kouskouras had been cut into by the plough, and it was here that the LM III tomb (for such it turned out to be) was located.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 75 , November 1980 , pp. 169 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1980

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The Director and Managing Committee of the school have kindly given the author permission to publish this excavation, the Foreman of which was Antonis Zidhiannakis. The field is the property of Maria Kallathakis of Knossos.

I am grateful to David Smyth, Helen Wilkins and Emma Faull for assistance in the plotting of the tomb and the drawings of the objects.

2 The orientation of the tomb, roughly E-W. is clearly due to the configuration of the kouskouras rock in this region.

3 Dimensions of the doorway, H. 1.10; W. 0.65m. The hole above the blocking wall, visible on Plate 16 (a), happened during excavation, the rock wall being very eroded and friable at this point.

4 For this tomb type being a Mycenaean feature and for disturbance around 1400 B.C. see BSA lxix (1974) 254·7.

5 On the use of carnelian see Higgins, Greek and Roman Jewellery 37 and 39; ours is of the red variety. For shapes, see op. cit. 73–4.

Carnelian scaraboids, of much later date and with engraved designs, are usually ascribed to Etruria, for which see Coldstream, The Sanctuary of Demeter 163, no. 261 (not illustrated) with references.

6 On amber in the Aegean, see Harding, and Hughes-Brock, , BSA lxix (1974) 145 fol.Google Scholar