ACCESS TO UPPER FLOORS AND AN EARLY LIGHT WELL AT EM II VASILIKI

Abstract

Discussing Early Minoan (EM) architecture in Crete, it is difficult for one to bypass the site of Vasiliki, located on the Isthmus of Ierapetra. Vasiliki was occupied during a number of prehistoric periods. Its EM IIB houses are among the best preserved, incorporating architectural features that reveal how the inhabitants managed the transition between single- and two-storied buildings, and how they, usually, reached their upper levels, probably without the use of stairways. This paper singles out three separate houses from among the group of rooms originally called the ‘Red House’ by its discoverer, Richard Seager; it presents their sequencing, the order in which they were probably built, and how their first floors and roofs were reached. Additionally, a detailed study of House C suggests that one of the large ‘rooms’ was actually open to the sky, and had served partly as an interior court, which may well have been the predecessor of the later interior courts (or light wells) characterising the elite architectural style, typical of the later Middle and Late Minoan periods.