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Some Ancient Sites in South-West Crete

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 October 2013

Extract

With the idea of drawing attention to the fact that the whole of Crete including the most westerly parts had been occupied during every phase of the Minoan Bronze Age, if not earlier in Neolithic times, I recently listed sites of those periods known to me or reported by others in the province of Khania. Between 27 and 30 April 1966, my wife and I visited two areas on the south-west coast of the island (Fig. 1) where no Bronze Age sites appear to have been noted. These were (A) west of Palaiokhora (Fig. 2), and (B) between Sfakia and Frangokastelli (Fig. 3). Two small Minoan settlements were identified near the sea in area (A), and scattered traces of Minoan occupation in (B). The pottery seemed to reflect occupation during the flourishing period of the Minoan civilization between Middle Minoan I and Late Minoan I rather than earlier or later. The most westerly site visited (A. 7) might yield to excavation an interesting picture of what a small Minoan settlement in a remote area was like. In addition to the Minoan, a number of later, Greek and Roman, sites were observed. The most important of the Roman sites is B. 7 in the middle of the plain by Frangokastelli with substantial remains of an early Christian basilica church.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1967

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References

Acknowledgement:

I am deeply grateful to Mr. John Hayes for giving me his opinion on the character and date of the Roman sherds.

List of abbreviations other than those ordinarily in use in the Annual:

AC = Pendlebury, J. D. S., The Archaeology of Crete (1939).Google Scholar

Ant. = Waage, F. O., Antioch iv (1948).Google Scholar

GIC = Guarducci, M., Inscriptiones Creticae i–iv (19351950).Google Scholar

Hesp. = Waage, F. O., ‘The Roman and Byzantine Pottery’, Hesperia ii (1933), 279328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Spratt = Spratt, T. A. B., Travels and Researches in Crete i–ii (1865).Google Scholar

Ancient names are in capital italics, as LISSOS. Field names and place-names, but not those of villages and churches, are put in inverted commas.

1 BSA lx (1965) 99–113.

2 Spratt ii. 237 f. Cf. GIC ii. 238 and map at end.

3 BSA liii–liv (1958–9) 265 f.; lx (1965) 101. Spratt ii. 230 f., 237 f. and passim. This part of the coast between Selino (modern Palaiokhora) and LISSOS suffered the maximum upheaval amounting to as much as 26 feet according to Spratt ii. 241.

4 GIC ii. 83 and map at end.

5 As Bursian, , Geogr. ii. 549Google Scholar, n. 2, long ago noted.

6 Spratt ii. 237.

7 RE xi. 1807–8, s.v. Kreta.

8 Müller, , Geogr. Gr. Min. i 509.Google Scholar

9 MA xi (1901) 387. This does not seem to be the ‘Loutra’ in the region of Azoires where Faure has noted an ancient settlement (BCH lxxxiv (1960) 217 f.).

10 MA xi (1901) 387f. Cf. Bursian, , Geogr. ii. 549.Google Scholar Pashley ii. 119 f.

11 MA xi (1901) 467. Cf. Pendlebury, , AC 370 under Palaiokhora.Google Scholar

12 BSA lxi (1966) 166. Cf. lix (1964) 52.

13 BSA lx (1965) 312, nos. 76–85. From contexts of all periods between E.M. III and the end of L.M. III.

14 Gerola, , Monumenti Veneti nell'isola di Creta (1905) i. 250–5, esp. 251.Google Scholar