Minoan Chronology Reviewed

Abstract

The system of Minoan chronology proposed by the late Sir Arthur Evans remained almost unchallenged for many years. The first hint that it might not be equally valid for all sites in Crete was given by the excavations of Dr Joseph Hazzidakis at Tylisos where he found three archaeological strata, the first corresponding to Evans’ Early Minoan I, II and III and Middle Minoan Ia, the second to M.M. Ib, M.M. II, M.M. III and L.M. I and the third to Late Minoan III. On the basis of this M. L. Franchet proposed a new classification consisting of Early Neolithic (representing a site examined by Franchet himself), Late Neolithic, Bronze I, II, III and IV and Iron Age. This was tacitly ignored by most scholars, partly because the author was an authority on ceramics rather than on Aegean prehistory, partly because of the cavalier fashion in which this theory had been expressed. That Franchet’s opinions were not entirely without substance, however, was demonstrated later by L. Åberg in the far more serious and detailed criticism of Evans’ chronology expounded in his Bronze-zeitliche und Fruheisenzeitliche Chronologie, where he divided Evans’ Minoan periods into Pre-Palatial (E.M. I to M.M. Ia), Early Palatial (M.M. Ib to pre-earthquake M.M. IIIb) and Late Minoan or Late Palatial (including Evans’ post-earthquake M.M. IIIb). Within these three periods Åberg considered the various stylistic subdivisions to be contemporary. Åberg’s complaint that the earlier periods were not well stratified at Knosos was replied to by Pendlebury who in his Archaeology of Crete, published in 1939, tabulated significant and unmixed deposits at Knosos of E.M. I, II and III, M.M. ra, M.M. Ib, M.M. IIa, M.M. IIb, M.M. ma and M.M. IIIb pottery. So far Evans’ chronology had been shrewdly attacked but adequately defended so far as Knosos was concerned, though Pendlebury had admitted that certain categories were luxury wares and might be absent from other parts of the island.