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Was There a Guarded Southern Entrance Way to the First Palace at Mallia?1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

Y. Spence
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Abstract

The oldest domestic structures at Mallia are three houses lying at the southern border of the later palace. Among them is a building which clearly was not domestic, but may have been a tower. Certain indications in the architecture of Houses A and B suggest that there was a broad road flanked by a tower which crossed the southern limit of the later palace at a slight angle in the direction, but east of, the western block of palace magazines where traces of much older structures have been found. This paper tries to show the reasons for this assumption.

Type
Articles
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 85 , November 1990 , pp. 369 - 374
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1990

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References

2 RAPP IV 13–17. The houses were filled in after excavation.

3 The ratio of room depth to wall thickness is a useful tool in the analysis of early architecture and is described and applied in my forthcoming thesis ‘Problems of Origin and Design in Minoan Domestic Architecture’.

4 RAPP I 18–19 and PM I 136ff, plan opposite 203. – It seems inconceivable that the massive walls of the Donjon at Mallia were built to hold nothing more than common pottery; there was surely a change of function. This is supported by the blocked door found in the south wall. Did the sideropetra threshold under the blockage belong to a predecessor? (PAL V 98–99).

5 RAPP IV 16–17.

6 The wall running north from the round corner in fig. 2 was added later.

7 Only the orthostates forming a rounded line are preserved. The wall above was of rubble masonry. It lay at the entrance to a corridor leading to the West Magazines. (PM I, 148, where another round corner in the same wall and the foundations of the Early Keep are also mentioned).

8 Discussed in the thesis mentioned in n.3.

9 PMCM 268 n.30.

10 AR 1960–1, 23; PMCM 218. See also Pelon, BCH 90 (1966), 1008–1011.

11 BCH 52 (Paris 1928) 585 and MAIS I, 4ff. Best plan in PMCM 439.

12 MAIS I, 4 n.2.

13 Alexiou 1980, 16, discusses the insecurity during the first palace period. Whether this was an external threat or signifies strife in the island cannot be discussed here, but even in the latter case the seaways might have been used.

14 The northern face of the north wall of 6 seems to have been left off the plan.

15 If the round corner in A was an integral part of that house, then A was enlarged at some stage; if it belonged to an earlier structure, House A in toto was built later than House B. There is not enough information to decide the matter. – It is not clear whether the NE corner of A contained another room or was a massive masonry structure.

16 Van Effenterre mentions the sloping terrain in that area when discussing the north entrance of House A. (PMCM 162).

17 They recall the eastern peripheral of Quartier Gamma West called a ‘street’ in the excavation report, but in fact a thick wall built against the slope, probably as similar protection against rainwater (MAIS I, 23–6 and plan LXI). Cf the MM IB House Theta, thought to have collapsed through water running down the slope behind it (MAIS IV, passim and personal discussion with M. van Effenterre).

18 PMCM 168.

19 Walls on the original plan built against room 14 and the east wall of the tower belong to a later structure and are not reproduced here.

20 BCH 85 (1961) 940ff, figs. 6 and 7; PMCM 197–200, fig. 273.

21 SOND 37–45; 161–3 and plan I. – According to the plan in RAPP IV, the excavator seems to have thought that the silos were contemporary with the South Houses. Van Effenterre (Guide 8–9) dates them to the ‘end of the first period’ (MM IIB?).

22 It is interesting that at the beginning of the second palace period it was still thought necessary to have such a tower. No doubt it fell out of use when the threat of invasion from the sea no longer existed. Faure 1973, 271, speaks of ‘relative peace’ in Crete around 1500 BC. For the predecessor of the Donjon see n.4. Pendlebury, AoC 102 and n.4 suggested a ‘Viglia’ on Edhikte near Mokhos.