GOURNIA - 2010

Informations Générales

Numéro de la notice

1910

Année de l'opération

2010

Chronologie

Âge du Bronze - Bronze Ancien - Bronze Moyen - Bronze Récent

Mots-clés

Maison - Inscription - Outillage/armement - Peinture - Pierre - Habitat - Production/extraction

Nature de l'opération

Fouille - Programmée

Institution(s)

American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA) (École américaine d'études classiques à Athènes)

Localisation

Toponyme
Gournia

Notices et opérations liées

20102011 2013

Description

Gournia. L.V. Watrous (ASCSA/Buffalo) reports on the 2010 excavation season. Work focused in four areas (Fig. 1).

In Boyd’s dump west of the palace, previously discarded material was assessed. EMII to LMIIIB sherds included an LMI palace style jar, a Knossian LMIB piece and LMIIIB decorated pithoi. A loomweight, stone tools, a rock-crystal vase fragment, and building debris (painted wall-plaster and mudbrick) were also retrieved. North-east of House Ea, excavation focused on the remains of the MMIA North Trench Deposit (which helped to define EMIB-MMI). An associated MMIB rubble wall runs south east to a bedrock outcrop and then east: it may represent a circuit wall for the Protopalatial community (Fig. 2). As well as MMIA (handmade, White-on-Dark) and MMIB (mostly handmade, Dark-on-Light) wares, a Middle Cycladic jug from Melos was recovered, as were loomweights, stone tools, an obsidian core and bones. North west of House Ea, known early house remains were also investigated. 0.5m below the LMI house lay a paved court built and destroyed in MMIIB, leading to a house-door to the north (Fig. 3). Finds on the floor included pithoi, cups, a basin, loomweights, a water-channel, and stone tools; from an upper storey came domestic wares close to those from MMIIB destructions at Quartier Mu, Malia.

To the north of the town, an incline is maintained by heavy east west terrace walls: a fill of MMIIB date is spread a metre deep. One terrace is formed by a massive retaining wall of casement-like walls running east west. Abutting this terrace (south of the Pit House), lay a small, square, two-roomed structure, built and destroyed in LMIB (Fig. 4). A Triton shell was set next to a pile of ash with a bronze strip and a sheep/goat bone: perhaps a foundation deposit under the floor. On the ground floor were storage and working spaces into which debris from an upper storey (a possible terracotta chimney pipe, pithos and cups) had fallen. On the floor of the east room were a cup and a water-channel. The west room contained more material: an amphora, pithoi, two large stirrup jars, several large jars (one with a Linear A inscription), at least one cookpot, several conical and ogival cups, three stone querns (and two stone rubbers), many limpet shells, and a fine rhyton and tortoise-shell ripple cup. The larger of two pits was filled with architectural debris, sherds, bones and shell, as well as a mortar with a hole in its base. The smaller held only two conical cups. The overall assemblage suggests food production and storage, and the storage and dispensing of some liquid. The structure is distinctive: situated outside the town centre on the way to coastal vineyards and the harbour, it is smaller than town-houses proper, and was perhaps the establishment of an oil and perhaps wine producer/dealer.

Auteur de la notice

Don EVELY

Références bibliographiques

Unpublished field report, American School of Classical Studies at Athens