It has happened to me, and I am sure it has happened to other archaeologists as well. You come across a destroyed site, the damage often the result of construction, and there are just a few artefacts left, often with no stratigraphical or locational contexts. What to do? I admit that I have walked away from such scenes, saddened by the destruction of possibly valuable information. Fortunately, the Ephorate of Antiquities of Lasithi and the staff of INSTAP at the East Crete Center did not. Recognising the destruction, they conducted a salvage excavation and published the few artefacts in a useful framework.
The site is Bramiana, an artificial lake that supplies water to the south-eastern Cretan city of Ierapetra. The site was discovered by Doug Faulmann, the chief artist at the East Crete Center, and represents the few remains of a second-millennium bce site, which was destroyed by a bulldozer at some point prior to 1980. The scant remains are a mere 291 catalogued items, of which the vast majority are ceramics, with a small presence of lithics, represented by six catalogued ground stone tools and four catalogued bits of building material.
The publication of the sample breaks down into 21 chapters. These include an introduction, a vital chapter on the petrographic analysis of pottery, eleven chapters on the ceramics, one on the ground stone tools, one on building materials, one on other finds, one on the Bramiana landscape, three that tie the analysis together and contextualise the results in an analysis of trade and economics, and one providing ‘Final Comments’.
With such a small non-contexted sample, the approach of the Ephorate and the Center was unique and has produced the most amount of possible information. Rather than study the ceramics by style or shape, the overarching framework for their analysis is ceramic petrography, an analysis that allows them to contextualise the site into the larger cultural orbit of eastern Crete. The goal of the analysis was to understand better the nature of intercommunal trade in east Crete, especially within the important isthmus connecting sites such as Gournia and Mochlos to the south coast, and to explore further the possibility of an important Minoan site at Ierapetra.
The analysis allowed the investigators to connect this site, and if it were a satellite community of a larger Minoan centre at Ierapetra, that centre as well, to three general geographic areas: East Crete, including Kavousi and Palaikastro, the area along the Gulf of Mirabello, including Gournia and Kato Chorio, and the Cretan South Coast, including sites within the Mesara.
The sample is small, but some observations prove useful. Vessels that were produced from South Coast fabric, presumably local, reveal different workshops. There appears to be little connection in the sample to the Mesara, only a few Kamares Ware cups. There is some connection to the region around Palaikastro and East Crete, as seen in imported cooking pots and jugs. Some bowls and jugs came from the region between the Gulf of Mirabello to Siteia. Storage vessels, cups, bowls and ritual vessels can be tied to material from the Mirabello region. The storage vessels, predominately pithoi containing agricultural goods, provide a rudimentary picture of the trade connections of the unknown urban centre at Ierapetra.
The analysis provides an important, albeit small, armature upon which to begin to build our understanding of trade connections in this important and still somewhat mysterious part of second-millennium Crete. The editors and contributors should be thanked for rescuing this information from a destroyed site and providing the greatest amount of useful information from a very small sample. My wish is for this approach to become common in rescuing un-contexted finds in the future, not only on Crete, but elsewhere as well.
