Late Minoan IIIC Pottery from the Kephala Tholos Tomb near Knossos

Abstract

The tholos tomb on the Kephala ridge near Knossos, which R. W. Hutchinson excavated in December 1938, contained in the fill several deposits of skeletal remains and of L.M. IIIC pottery. These belong to a period long after that of the construction and original use of the tomb, which Hutchinson dates to L.M. IA. In his report he describes the bone deposits and mentions and illustrates some of the pots. V. Desborough, who was one of Hutchinson's assistants in the excavation, has discussed briefly more of the L.M. IIIC pottery, but it has never been published in full. So, when Vronwy Hankey, Hutchinson's other assistant, recently produced her fieldnotes and Hutchinson's catalogue of the whole or nearly whole pots, M. Popham suggested that, with the excavator's permission, I should publish the pots listed in the catalogue—the publication of more L.M. IIIB and C pottery being an urgent need in Minoan archaeology.The original catalogue records seventeen pots, of which two are missing (5, a conical cup, and 7, a deep bowl); to these has been added 18, a coarse-ware bowl, restored but not hitherto catalogued. From the catalogue and from Vronwy Hankey's notes it has been possible to place most of the pots approximately in their find-spots and relate some with the various secondary burials in the tomb. The excavation report gives five L.M. IIIC deposits inside the chamber: three bone deposits at less than a metre's depth below the datum, with which no pots can be associated, although the stirrup-jar 1, which is typologically late, was found just below this level; lower still were the plain deep bowl 4 and the krateriskos 14, perhaps to be associated with the fourth deposit of two skulls close together in the area of shaft grave δ between 1·0 and 1·70 m. below the datum. At about the same depth the deep bowl 11 was found near the entrance.