MOCHLOS - 2010

Mochlos. J. Soles (ASCSA/North Carolina) and C. Davaras (Athens) report on the 2010 excavation season, focused on locating the Protopalatial settlement below the main Neopalatial town. Work at the north east of the LMIB site and on a Hellenistic building was completed.

EMIIB deposits are widely scattered across the site (Areas 3 and 4): the size of the settlement is estimated at 6000m². An EMI, IIA and B building complex (the oldest yet excavated) was located at the east edge of the Prepalatial cemetery. Initially this was a dwelling with an obsidian workshop (Fig. 1). The nearby Building N, excavated in 1989 and then also identified as an obsidian workshop, is speculatively considered as a waste depot for it. Several rooms were later closed and terrace walls erected to accommodate feasting; a small cist grave was inserted, and the space to the south east was redesigned to accept offerings. Removal of the LMIB terrace at the south face of the Neopalatial ceremonial Building B2 in Area 1 revealed four closed pottery deposits of MMII, MMIIIA and IIIB, and LMIA: all were associated with cooking, having hearths with much organic matter.

Work in the Neopalatial settlement (Fig. 2) concentrated in two locations. In Area 2 (between Blocks C and D), the northern part of the north-south street, found at the south in 1989, was traced. A large, LMIB stone-vase workshop produced vessels of notable size and quality (an unfinished one was of gypsum, imported from the Knossos region). The destruction of the house was accompanied by deliberate violence (e.g. to the lamp, Fig. 3). In Area 3 (between blocks B and C), the main east-west street of the town was revealed, its surface (cobbled or bedrock) worn smooth. It apparently led to a small cave on the east side of the island, where a freshwater spring (now 2m below sea level) may have served the community. Work begun in 2009 on a house at the east side of the street continued. Built at the start of MMIIIA, it was occupied and remodelled throughout the Neopalatial period. The main street runs along its west façade, turns east along the north side and continues beyond to the northeast.

Work in the Hellenistic House (Area 4) had earlier revealed a coin of P. Canidius Crassus (34-32 BC). Little remains of the kitchen and dining area in the east part of this likely public dining facility. Below it was a collapsed LMIB wall, inside which lay a rectangular pyxis with sides and lid of elephant ivory and a wooden base (Figs 4 and 5), fallen from an upper room. The side panels carried a low relief seascape, and the lid an epiphany of a goddess (a well-known scene on many contemporary gold signet rings). It also resembles the fresco of crocus gatherers from Xeste 3 at Akrotiri in that the scene is set on a stage supported by incurved altars. The goddess sits enthroned beneath a tree shrine on the left with a lily in her left hand, and a procession of two men and two women approaches her from the right. The upper part of these figures was lost during the building’s destruction, but the scene is reconstructed as follows: the first male figure, who is larger than the others, presents a male-female couple to the goddess, while a female attendant stands at the rear. The partly burnt box contained two necklaces of amethyst beads (80 in total): traces of string identify strands of different sizes. With them were a silver bull’s head pendant, and an assortment of more beads of carnelian (one a figure-of-eight shield), lapis and glass-paste (one a lily). The remains of nine ivory crook-head pins were located alongside it.