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A Note on the Identification of Fresco Material from the British Campaigns at Palaikastro, 1902–1906
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 September 2013
Extract
Among the trays of fresco-fragments from Sir Arthur Evans's excavations at Knossos, now stored in the Herakleion Museum, there are several only tentatively ascribed to that site. They fall into two groups according to Dr. Helga Reusch's reorganization of the material in 1961: trays HM 111–60 are labelled ‘Knossos’, but HM 161–9 and 239–40 are marked ‘Knossos?’. Of both groups Dr. Reusch has rightly noted: ‘Ohne nähere Angabe der Fundstelle’. In January 1975 the Director of the Herakleion Museum, Dr. Stylianos Alexiou, kindly permitted Mr. Cameron to re-examine the Knossian material and a brief review of the trays under discussion was conducted on that occasion. Their general ascription to Knossos seemed acceptable except for two trays of which the contents looked anomalous by Knossian norms.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1976
References
1 We wish to thank Dr. Alexiou for permission to study material in the Herakleion Museum, and his assistant, Miss A. Lembessis, for facilitating our work. We gratefully acknowledge our indebtedness to Dr. Helga Reusch, to whose Catalogue of Frescoes in HM we refer; the Greek letters and Roman numerals of the HM trays refer to Evans's system of shelving the material in storage in his time.
2 At Saktouria, west of Timbaki (Hood, Sinclair and Warren, Peter, BSA lxi (1966) 173Google Scholar).
3 Bosanquet, R. C. and Dawkins, R. M., The Unpublished Objects from the Palaikastro Excavations, 1902–1906, BSA Supplementary Paper no. 1, Part I (1923) 148Google Scholar and fig. 130. Hereafter abbreviated to Unpublished Objects.
4 BSA lx (1965) 252 and 256, n. 29.
5 Unpublished Objects, 148; BSA viii (1901–2) 313–15; BSA ix (1902–3) 288, 291–5; and BSA ix (1904–5) 278 f.
6 BSA ix (1902–3) 333 f., Houses C and D. The site is about a half hour's walk north of Roussolakkos (BSA lx (1965) pl. 64, plan).
7 In 1972 Mr. Bernd Kaiser kindly informed Cameron that he had located in a second-floor storeroom of HM the relief fragment of a near life-size figure's arm, bent at the elbow, which the early excavators had reported from Roussolakkos (Unpublished Objects, 148).
8 Such earth accretions would normally be removed entirely, in the course of more thorough initial cleaning of fresco pieces, as fortuitous additions belonging neither to the original fresco nor to any mud-plaster ‘backing’.
9 We are indebted to Mr. Sackett for providing us with this sample. The 1962–3 campaigns are reported in BSA lx (1965) 248–315 and BSA lxv (1970) 203–42.
10 Evans records the extraction of red earth at Knossos in EM times from a subterranean cave at the south-east angle of the palace, for use ‘in connection with the structure of houses and with the potter's craft’ (PM ii, 291–6, figs. 171–2, and 327 f., fig. 185). This site has long since been filled in. In ‘Minoan Architecture: Materials and Techniques’ (Ann. xlix, N.s. xxxiii (1971) 220, n. 1), J. W. Shaw has more closely defined the architectural uses of this earth, ‘in foundations for floors’, the interstices of wall blocks, and for the backing of cists in the Wing, West (PM, i 451Google Scholar, fig. 325) as well as for floors during the Neolithic period (op. cit., ii, 18). J. D. Evans found lumps of red and yellow ochre in Strata X, IX, V, IV, and III in his Neolithic excavations at Knossos below the Central Court of the palace (BSA lix (1964) 238), excavations which have confirmed the use of red ochre in paste form for Neolithic pottery decoration (BSA lxiii (1968) 271; cf. PM i, 36, mentioning ‘ferruginous red material’). The possible uses of red earth for personal cosmetic purposes in the Aegean Neolithic and Early Bronze Ages, or for ritual funerary purposes, should not be overlooked (see Tsountas, C., ‘Kykladika’, AE (1898) 185Google Scholar, pl. 10, nos. 11–12, 14–15; op. cit. (1899) 75, 100; E. Sapouna-Sakellarakis, Cycladic Civilization and the Cycladic Collection of the National Archaeological Museum of Athens (Apollo edition, undated), 16 and 22). That red earths or pigments were widely used for magical purposes from Upper Palaeolithic times onwards is well known (Huyghe, René, Larousse Encyclopedia of Prehistoric and Ancient Art (1970) 16 and 28).Google Scholar In this connection, Sir Arthur Evans found ‘unfixed pigment of a brilliant red, a ritual feature’ in LM IA conical cups ‘of the usual offertory class’ in a pit at the south-west angle of the palace at Knossos, (PM iv, 3 with fig. 1).Google Scholar Sir Flinders Pétrie claimed the Late Neolithic Cretans exported a brilliant red ochre to First Egypt, Dynasty (Abydos ii (1903) 38 f.Google Scholar and pl. XLII, nos. 20–36): but Evans discounted that suggestion (PM i, 534, n. 2). Red-painted walls become common in EM II Crete (Cameron, Appendix IV, ‘The Plasters’, in Peter Warren, Myrtos: An Early Bronze Age Settlement in Crete (1972) 305–14, with fig. 125, 310). But these may first have appeared earlier at Neolithic Phaistos (so Renfrew, Colin, The Emergence of Civilisation (1972) 436)Google Scholar or in EM I (?) at that site (Keith Branigan, The Foundations of Palatial Crete (1970) 41, citing Levi, D., ‘L'archivo di cretule a Festos’ Ann. (1958) 167ff.).Google Scholar Clearly, there was exploitation of local natural deposits of red earths and ochres at Knossos and generally on Crete from earliest Neolithic times onwards, for an increasing number of different reasons: cosmetic or magical, ceramic, architectural, mural, and no doubt for painting furniture (e.g. the gypsum throne of the Throne Room at Knossos: PM iv, 917 f.).
The specimen of vivid red earth from Mt. Juktas, included here as Sample no. 3, was determined by Dr. Jones as a red ochre. Two hues of red, however, came to be known to the Aegean prehistoric peoples: a lighter red from calcined earths or clays, and a darker red basically determinable as haematite (Heaton, Noel, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts lviii (1910) 209 f.Google Scholar and Tiryns ii, 215; PM i 534). The present writers, in association with Dr. Sophocles Philippakis, hope in the near future to produce more definitive results on the nature of pigments, including reds, used in mural painting at Knossos.
11 PM ii, 154 ff. with figs. 112–14 (plan), assigned to MM I-III. See, too, Rutkowski, Bogdan, Cult Places in the Aegean World (Warsaw, 1972) 155–63.Google Scholar This site was re opened in 1974 by MrsKaretsou, I. (Ergon (1974) 112–14).Google Scholar A brief summary appears in AR for 1974–5 (1975) 27, no. 21.
12 Sample no. 3 is KF 114 of a scientific study of Minoan plasters, pigments, and local earth and rock specimens from the Knossos district, under preparation for publication by the writers with Dr. S. E. Philippakis.
13 Catling, H. W. and Millett, A., Archaeometry 11 (1969) 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14 Mural fragments from the House of the Frescoes at Knossos have been located in fresco trays ascribed to the palace (BSA (1968) 26 ff., n. 15), and vice versa; and fresco pieces from the Caravanserai were misplaced sometime before 1961 in trays labelled House of the Frescoes (HM 177, 192, 194, 195 on the north side of the store, and HM 192, 193 Epsilon XXII–XXIII on the east side). The miniature ‘crowd’ fragment from Tylissos, considered apparently lost (Shaw, M., AA (1972) 172Google Scholar, no. 1, with fig. 1; cf. PM iii, 36, fig. 18, more faithfully reproduced), was located by Cameron in 1975 in HM Rho XI (north side of store) whose Greek and Roman shelf code recurs on other trays containing exclusively Knossian frescoes. Similar confusions of the provenience of material from Amnisos, now corrected, could be cited. The 1926 earthquake and the difficult times of World War II are probably responsible for other problems of the provenience of frescoes in the collection which have been noted.
15 BSA ix (1902–3) 333 f.
16 See n. 5 for references.
17 Unpublished Objects, 148.
18 Elements of the ‘new’ relief pieces which could be thought to show (?) undraped parts of a human representation are unpainted, which would indicate the female sex. The reported arm fragment also appears to have lacked paint (information by courtesy of Bernd Kaiser). The ‘upraised arm’ as a characteristic of Minoan goddess representations is well known, and has been discussed in detail by Alexiou, S. in Krelika Chronika xii (1958) 178 ff.Google Scholar