This volume chronicles a rescue excavation undertaken in 1997 in the Central Court of the Minoan Palace at Knossos. Over just 5 weeks, a single 3 × 2m trench was dug down to bedrock at a depth of 8m (the trench was reduced to 1.5 × 1.5m below 4.5m depth). That such a significant and high-quality volume stems from such a small excavation bears testimony to the seriousness and commitment with which Nikos Efstratiou and his team approached this work and their realisation of its importance for our understanding of Neolithic Knossos and the Neolithic in the Aegean more widely.
Knossos is most famous as the site of the largest and most impressive of the Minoan palaces. Its Neolithic occupation, dating back to 7000 BC, is much less well known, not least because of the difficulties in excavating the levels below the Bronze Age palace. The British School at Athens carried out excavations between 1956 and 1971 in the Great Court, under the direction of J.D. Evans, uncovering a long Neolithic sequence. This revealed Knossos to be not just the earliest Neolithic settlement on Crete but one of the earliest in south-eastern Europe. The 1997 excavation, though small in scale, offered the opportunity to apply a suite of modern techniques with a strong palaeoenvironmental emphasis.
The volume starts with a detailed description of the excavation by Efstratiou, Karetsou and Banou, covering the stratigraphy and architectural features. A complete Neolithic sequence was uncovered, consisting of 39 levels, extending from the Late Neolithic back to the Aceramic Neolithic. In Chapter 2, Efstratiou summarises the various finds and categories of archaeological evidence from each cultural phase. The subsequent chapters present all of these results in greater detail.
Dimitriadis demonstrates the diversity of ceramic fabrics and suggests the possible existence of non-Cretan ones; his work thus supports the growing appreciation of the complexity of production and exchange networks on Early Neolithic Crete. The sedimentological study, conducted by Fumanal García and completed by Carmona González, indicates that the frequency of organic matter fluctuated significantly across the sequence, suggesting changes in the intensity of human occupation.
The archaeobotanical report by Sarpaki makes clear that the very first Neolithic inhabitants at Knossos were fully fledged farmers; the presence of naked wheat (Triticum turgidum/aestivum) in the Aceramic levels suggests an Anatolian or Levantine origin for the earliest inhabitants. The absence of olives throughout the Neolithic sequence is noted both by Sarpaki and by Badal and Ntinou in their study of the wood charcoal assemblage. Placing these latter data in the context of the Cretan pollen evidence, it is possible to see fluctuations in the frequency of deciduous and evergreen tree species within an overall homogeneity, suggesting typically Mediterranean vegetation around Knossos and its exploitation for firewood. The phytolith assemblage indicates variation in the frequency of cereals and wild plants, which Madella argues could represent differences both in subsistence strategies and in the use of space.
Pérez Ripoll presents a detailed study of the faunal assemblage. Unfortunately, no animal bone was recovered from the Aceramic levels from the 1997 excavation, but the fauna from the Early Neolithic suggest that the full package of domestic animals had been introduced by that date; the age profiles for sheep, goat, cattle and pig all support a meat-focused exploitation strategy.
Horwitz places the faunal assemblage in the wider Near Eastern domestication context and discusses possible source regions. Her assessment of the main species indicates fully domesticated sheep alongside proto-domestic—and/or possibly wild—goat, pig and cattle; she argues for an Anatolian origin for the Knossos fauna. This is an engrossing study that should be widely read.
The chapter on radiocarbon dating by Facorellis and Maniatis combines dates from Evans’ excavations with new samples from the 1997 work. A fascinating pattern emerges: the Aceramic Neolithic dates to c. 7000 cal BC, whereas the rest of the sequence (Early to Late Neolithic, 5m of deposit) yields dates that are almost contemporary (e.g. 5300–5000 cal BC, OxA-9216, depth 7.4m; and 5470–4850 cal BC, DEM-638, depth 2m). The authors explain this pattern through a change in the rate of sedimentary deposition and thus in the inten-sity of human occupation. A more critical assessment of these data would have been welcome. How can the chronological variability identified by all the contributors be reconciled with the short time span represented? And what does the overlap in the dates, if they are to be accepted, mean in terms of stratigraphic integrity? Efstratiou closes the volume with an overview of the beginnings of the Neolithic in Greece and the Aegean.
A few additions would have further strengthened this significant volume. It would have benefited from stronger contextualisation of the 1997 excavation in relation to Evans’s work. Similarly, it could have made more use of the recent work; in 2013, when the volume appeared, Neolithic Knossos was much better known than in 1997, when the excavation took place, due to renewed studies on Evans’s material undertaken in the intervening years (see Isaakidou & Tomkins Reference Isaakidou and Tomkins2008). Although referenced throughout, these studies could have been more fully integrated. The addition of the cultural data would also have made for a more balanced volume. Efstratiou notes that the ceramic study is still in progress and will appear in a separate volume. Given the 15 years separating the excavation and publication dates, however, one would have hoped that there had been time to rectify this omission.
These issues notwithstanding, this is a thorough and well-presented volume that demonstrates how a limited excavation—albeit of a very important site—can yield significant results. It makes an important contribution towards understanding the Neolithic settlement of Knossos specifically and the origins of the Neolithic in Greece and the Aegean islands more generally. Its strong palaeoenvironmental emphasis is a particularly useful addition to the limited—though increasing—corpus of such data from Crete and the wider region.
