This volume is the second in an INSTAP Academic Press series of final publications of the Minoan site of Petras in east Crete. The site is located east of the modern city of Siteia and sits atop a hill with a commanding view of Siteia Bay. In 1985 work began on the excavation of what turned out to be a palatial structure and urban settlement, and excavation has continued at the site to reveal several different areas spread out over the landscape, including a Late Minoan III fortification wall, a Neolithic and Early Minoan I settlement, and a Pre- and Protopalatial cemetery. This volume presents the Late Minoan pottery from two houses in Sector I of the urban settlement to the northeast of the palatial structure: Houses I.1 and I.2. The rest of the material from these houses was published in Volume 1 of the series (Tsipopoulou 2016), but the Late Minoan pottery, because of its enormous quantity, was saved for this separate and later volume.
This volume is organized into five chapters that introduce the architectural remains (Ch. 1), cover the Neopalatial pottery (Ch. 2) and the Late Minoan II-III pottery (Ch. 3), provide a petrographic analysis (Ch. 4), and offer conclusions (Ch. 5). Two short appendices contain extra information about the cooking wares and about pottery fabrics that predate Neopalatial occupation. Three concordances link the volume’s catalog numbers with numbers used in the field and the Siteia Museum, with specific site context and pot shape, and finally provide the page or page numbers where the objects are mentioned in Volume I of the series. An index and the illustrations follow, including various tables and the very important drawings and photographs of the pottery, as well as the petrographic thin sections. All in all, these supplementary materials, from appendices to the final plate, take up more than half the volume. This is as it should be, since such a field report derives much of its value from the quality and quantity of its illustrations as well as its ease of use.
Chapter 1 introduces the architectural remains and briefly describes the rooms and areas in which the pottery was found. While two “houses” are mentioned — House I.1 and I.2 — the volume is dominated by material from House I.1, which provides the bulk of the architectural and artifactual remains. Locating the described rooms and areas on the site plans was a challenge. The idiosyncratic order in which the variously named rooms, corridors, areas, courtyards, etc. are presented is indicated at the outset but does not follow alphabetical order (A, M, E, Λ, etc.) and jumps between types (“areas,” “courtyards,” “pits,” “staircases,” etc.). At times the descriptions of room locations could have been clearer. Aside from these minor quibbles, the descriptions of contexts and architectural plans are quite readable, once one has done the work of familiarizing oneself with the layout of the site and the nomenclature. Ultimately, this chapter proves very useful for orienting oneself to the site and for providing context for the pottery in the following chapters.
Chapter 2 covers the Neopalatial pottery and makes up the bulk of the text. The organization of this section is key to the success of the volume. After a brief introduction to the chapter, the pottery fabrics are introduced both via petrography (elaborated in Ch. 4) and macroscopic analysis. The macroscopic fabric study, based in part on petrographic fabric categories and with its accompanying table and various charts, is particularly effective at conveying the scale and distribution of local and imported pottery and associated shape types. The pottery recording and cataloging system is outlined next, and then the long catalog begins. The catalog is organized by a total of 30 different shape types, and within each broad category (e.g. pithoi) a number of sub-types are described. Catalog entries are grouped within each shape category by their contexts, and individual numbers provided for each catalog entry (e.g. P2, P34, etc.) are not sequential throughout the entire chapter (or book), but do proceed from low to high within each shape category. Catalog entries include information about preservation, dimensions, shape, fabric, and any surface finish or decoration. In addition, each entry references the Siteia Museum number, stratigraphic layer, and any illustrations.
Discussion of Neopalatial chronology is largely absent from this chapter and saved for the concluding remarks in Chapter 5. As a result, it is mostly unclear from Chapter 2 which Neopalatial phases are present in the Petras material. No relative dates are provided for individual pots, and discussion of relative chronology is limited to its mention in association with comparanda for each shape type. This is an understandable analytical choice — after all, ancient pots do not come with relative chronology “labels” and are only given such with reference to comparanda. Nevertheless, the absence of more specific chronological analysis in this chapter makes some of the chronological conclusions in Chapter 5 less transparent.
Chapter 3 covers the Late Minoan II–III pottery in much the same way. There is much less pottery from this later phase of occupation, but Tsipopoulou is careful to note that “the LM II and LM III habitation, despite the scarcity and the poor state of the preserved architectural remains, was not a seasonal, insignificant one” (117). With reference to the chronology of the LM II–III pottery, Tsipopoulou lets us know that the majority of this pottery dates to LM IIIA, with some LM IIIC and very little LM II or LM IIIB (117). This is the sort of chronological specificity that is missing from Chapter 2’s coverage of the Neopalatial pottery. Unlike in the Neopalatial pottery chapter, the descriptions of each shape type do include assignations of some individual pots to specific periods.
Chapter 4 is the petrographic analysis by Eleni Nodarou. She identifies 15 different fabric groups in three broad categories: coarse metamorphic fabrics, other coarse fabrics, and fine fabrics. Coarse metamorphic fabrics are the most common and varied, with eight different fabric groups including the most common fabrics (Groups 1 and 2) comprising the majority of Neopalatial coarse wares. After descriptions of each of these fabric groups, supplemented by color photographs and with attempts to place them both regionally and chronologically, Nodarou offers a summary discussion of pottery consumption in House I.1. She concludes that most pottery in House I.1 was locally produced, with imports coming most importantly from Palaikastro, but also from Zakros, southeastern Crete, the Mochlos-Chamaizi area, and as far west as Malia. A single sample also constitutes evidence of off-island contacts; fittingly, it came from an amphora. Since many of these petrographic samples fall outside of the Neopalatial and Postpalatial focus of this volume, Nodarou includes a diachronic perspective on pottery fabrics at Petras and how the evidence from House I.1 contributes. Finally, she provides technical petrographic descriptions of each fabric group.
Chapter 5 offers concluding remarks and focuses on the relative chronology; the distribution, function, and decoration of Neopalatial pottery in House I.1; and the use of space in House I.1. For the relative chronology, two Neopalatial phases can be recognized: MM IIIB seems to be the date of the house’s construction and LM IA was found in its final phase, after which it was abandoned until the LM II–III phase. In the LM II–III period, occupation of this area shifted to the northern part of House I.1. Significantly, there is evidence for LM II pottery — a rarity in eastern Crete — although Tsipopoulou suggests it was in use at the same time as the more numerous LM IIIA1 pottery (154). The most abundant evidence for this Postpalatial phase of occupation is in LM IIIA2, with some addition material dated to early LM IIIC. The evidence from this area is part of a larger pattern of Postpalatial activity at Petras, which Tsipopoulou believes to have been a significant reoccupation that continued without a gap from the LM IB destruction (152).
Tsipopoulou also offers conclusions on the distribution of pottery shapes and the types of decorations found in House I.1. Distribution charts divide the pottery into functional categories, but in every case the majority of vessels were found in two areas: Room Λ, interpreted as a second story dining area, and the nearby Pit Θ, interpreted as a refuse area. While most of the pottery was undecorated, decorated pottery was present, with a majority being dark-on-light and monochrome painted. Of the motifs present, ripple patterns, spirals, and floral patterns each make up significant proportions. The lack of elaborately decorated vases, Tsipopoulou concludes, suggests that House I.1 was not an elite residence (153).
Finally, Tsipopoulou offers her most substantial conclusions with regard to the use of space in House I.1. This analysis goes well beyond the pottery that is the focus of this volume and incorporates earlier studies of Petras material to conclude that House I.1 was in fact a structure used for a variety of activities — wine making, textile manufacture, communal dining, and habitation — by corporate groups living in and around the area of Petras. She suggests that it was the “economic seat” of the head of one of these corporate groups, and that this head could have acted as an intermediary between the palace and the people who lived peripherally cultivating crops and tending flocks (155–156). Tsipopoulou’s interpretations here are substantial and important, offering a compelling explanation for the function of House I.1 and others like it that are found within the orbit of Neopalatial Minoan palaces.
Two appendices cover Cooking Wares (Appendix A) and Early and Middle Minoan I–II Fabrics (Appendix B). These are summaries of comprehensive studies previously published by Alberti (2016) and Relaki (2016), although some new information and interpretation is also offered. Three concordances list the pottery in this volume by its catalog number, as well as the Pre- and Protopalatial pottery and the cooking wares not included in this volume.
I suspect that the majority of people using this volume will begin by flipping through the plentiful and excellent illustrations. While the technical drawings are presented by shape type, the photographs divide the material by context. This is an interesting and useful choice, allowing the reader to understand the assemblage both in terms of the variety of forms a specific shape type can take at Petras and the variety of pottery associated with each context. My one complaint here is that the volume’s organization does not make it particularly easy to go from an illustration to the relevant catalog entry — it would have been useful if Concordance A, which lists the pottery by catalog number and references relevant page numbers in Volume I of the Petras series (Tsipopoulou 2016), had also included the relevant page number or numbers in the current volume.
Figuring out how to use a volume like this inevitably involves a certain amount of puzzle-solving. What do all these numbers and abbreviations mean? How is the catalog arranged? How can I figure out where to find the catalog entry for a particular illustration? Perhaps someday an agreement will be reached about how best to publish the complexities of an archaeological site. In the meantime, Tsipopoulou is to be congratulated for arranging the presentation of the evidence in a logical and intuitive manner, including the necessary explanations and references to previous publications of the material, and providing very helpful concordances and tables so that anyone wishing to really dig into the material has a roadmap to do so. This makes it easier to engage with the material from this very important Minoan site and allows us to look forward to future volumes in its ongoing publication.
References
Alberti, M.E. 2016. “Cooking Wares,” in Tsipopoulou 2016, pp. 61–92.
Relaki, M. 2016. “Early and Middle Minoan Pottery,” in Tsipopoulou 2016, pp. 93–124.
Tsipopoulou, M. 2016. Petras, Siteia I. A Minoan Palatial Settlement in Eastern Crete: Excavation of Houses I.1 and I.2. Prehistory Monographs 53, Philadelphia: INSTAP Academic Press.