Crete (Iron Age to Hellenistic)

Abstract

This year, the newly-published material bookends nearly a decade of archaeological work on the island with ADelt covering work on Crete from 2001 to 2004 and the second volume of Archaiologiko Ergo Kritis showcasing work in the years immediately before 2010. Several of the more impressive discoveries from the beginning of the decade have been known to the wider archaeological community for some time, but their publication in ADelt allows us to discuss them in greater detail and in their broader context. Overall, this is an opportune time to look at how some of the fieldwork done between 2001 and 2010 might contribute to our view of post-Bronze Age Crete.The largest single contribution of the 2012–2013 reports to the Iron Age came in the form of the publication of the 2001–2004 seasons at the settlement site on Prophitis Elias hill near Smari (ID3655): an account that rounds out earlier notices for the 1999 and 2000 seasons (AR 53 [2006–2007] 107–08; ID1814). The site of Smari has entered the literature principally thanks to the megara with stone-lined hearths at their centre. The buildings have been interpreted as a ruler's dwelling, with some relationship to Cretan hearth temples, and as a locale for communal dining (Mazarakis-Ainian [1997] 220–21, 296; Prent [2007] 143; Sjogren [2007] 153; Wallace [2010] 112, 119). After a Middle Minoan occupation, the site's main period of use covers the whole of the Iron Age from Late Minoan IIIC through to the Orientalizing period, after which a small cult place remained in use through to the Classical period (fifth-to third-century BC figurines: Hatzi-Vallianou [2000]).