KARTEROS - Agia Photeini - 2004

Karteros, Agia Photeini (Kanakis plot). S. Mandilaki (ΚΓ’ ΕΠΚΑ) reports the excavation in 2004 of an unrobbed LM IIIA2/B chamber tomb in the region of the hill of Palaiochora and the cave of Eileithuia. On the same hill and the sea-shore plain is an extensive Minoan, Palatial period settlement (the eastern port of Knossos). Another unrobbed chamber tomb of comparable date in the nearby Mapheze area was previously excavated by S. Marinatos.

The tomb is cut into the kouskouras bedrock. The chamber is 2.23 x 1.57m, oriented east-west, and 1.53–1.96m high. Its dromos is 3m long and very wide at 1.7m; the entrance, which had its stone blocking intact, tapers from 0.72m at the base to 0.64 at the top. Few sherds were recovered in the dromos fill. Within the chamber, roof fall had badly damaged two of the five larnakes, and the skeletons and finds associated. Four larnakes each held a single burial, while the fifth contained three, including a child. No skeletons were on the floor. The larnakes, of a pale-firing clay, had prominent frames with recessed panels: one was entirely painted dark brown-black, with added white linear decoration.

Offerings were placed within the larnakes and on the floor. One female burial had 14 pomegranate-shaped beads and a pin, all of blue glass-paste, and a bone comb, spatula and three pins. The larnax with the three bodies contained two bronze bowls (one inside the other) with traces of cloth, a conical stone object (perhaps a gaming piece), and sea-shells in one bowl. From a smashed larnax came a cup, a double feeding-bottle with linear motifs, and two amphoroid kraters (one decorated with birds, vegetation, Horns of Consecration and double axes; the other with a spiral pattern).

A pile of pottery on the floor at the northeast, below the larnakes contained two whole braziers with part of a third, a shallow tripod cooking dish with carbon inside, a conical bowl with wavy-line decoration, and two conical cups. Also found were a bronze spouted jug with spherical body, a small bronze cup inside the jug, a bronze tub, two bronze knives, and a stone Bird’s Nest Bowl and a lid. On the floor was a hollow rhyton in the form of a shoe with upturned (and pierced) tip.

In view of similarities in date, burial manner and grave goods between this tomb and that at Mapheze, it concluded that both belonged to the LM IIIA2–B cemetery associated with the settlement at Amnisos.