Abstract
This paper investigates plant remains at three ritual sites from Bronze Age Crete: Kophinas, Knossos Anetaki and Petras. To date, ritual contexts on the island have been little investigated from an archaeobotanical standpoint. Analysis of the plant material from these three sites provides new data for the use of plants in ritual activities in both mortuary and non-mortuary contexts. The results are discussed from a semiotic and emotive perspective, allowing for a better grasp of the potential plant-related rituals responsible for the creation of these archaeobotanical assemblages, including instances of plant sacrifice, symbolic plant sacrifice and the ritual deposition of intentionally charred plant remains. These findings are then integrated with previously published data from Crete and Mainland Greece in order to provide a broader picture of ritual plant use for the island, as well as the Aegean region. The recurrent evidence for the intentional charring of plant material and the presence of taxa commonly associated with everyday contexts indicates that fire was an important aspect of ritual activities involving plants and that the same suite of plant remains was engaged in the social activities of both the domestic and ritual spheres.
Highlights
In discussing prehistoric religions in the Aegean region, Renfrew (2011) notes that during this time period ritual contexts of the region are not as conspicuous as the monumental ‘temple’ structures of the Near East or of the later Classical and Archaic periods
The aim of this paper is to present new archaeobotanical results from the open-air sanctuary at Kophinas, the Fetish Shrine at Knossos Anetaki and the most recently studied funerary contexts at Petras (Figure 1)
Plant Remains from Kophinas, Knossos Anetaki and Petras
Summary
In discussing prehistoric religions in the Aegean region, Renfrew (2011) notes that during this time period ritual contexts of the region are not as conspicuous as the monumental ‘temple’ structures of the Near East or of the later Classical and Archaic periods His observation could explain why far more archaeobotanical studies exist for first-millennium ritual contexts in the Aegean (for a review, see Megaloudi 2005; Sarpaki 2019) than for prehistoric ones. As the discipline of archaeobotany has adopted new analytical methods and theoretical frameworks, investigations into human–plant interactions have gradually expanded beyond traditional lines of inquiry to include topics such as ritual and religion (Livarda and Madgwick 2018) The catalyst for this growth pertains primarily to the rise of concepts and techniques that allowed for the examination and conceptualization of the more dynamic ways in which plants served human communities.
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