Sisi, Kephali tou Ag. Antoniou - 2015

Sisi, Kephali tou Agiou Antoniou. Jan Driessen (Université Catholique de Louvain/Belgian School) reports on the first season of a new 5-year program of excavations on the Buffo at Sissi on the north coast of Crete.

Apart from a series of tests in the Postpalatial building CD, under investigation since 2007, which yielded important LM IB fire destruction deposits as well as earlier (especially Middle Minoan I-II) remains, excavations concentrated on the exploration of a Late Bronze Age (16th c. BC) complex during the 2011 campaign tentatively identified as a court-centered building (Fig. 1). Rather than showing an expected rectangular court with right-angled wings surrounding it, a 250 m² large trapezoidal court made of a fine white plaster was partly revealed, with three wings (E, N, W), each with a somewhat diverging orientation. The monumental façade facing this court to the west consists of a bottom course of large limestone blocks on which a second course of sandstone ashlar blocks is partly preserved (Fig. 2). A fine paved room with plastered floors, walls, bench and basin as well as a monumental stepped platform were constructed in the northwest corner of the court against an Early Bronze Age (c. 2500 BC) terrace wall behind which especially EM IIB deposits are quite well preserved. Neopalatial plastered rooms were cleared both in the west and north wings. The latter are badly preserved but remains include a possible double staircase, an originally paved long corridor and a room with column base and terracotta-tile floor. This evidence, together with that found in 2011 (an east wing with long west-facing façade, a kernos located next to an entrance from the court; a bench along the N side of the court with artificial hollows with a deposit of animal figurines nearby) allows the identification of the entire complex as a court-centered building of c. 900 m², abandoned early in Late Minoan IA (16th c. BC). The odd plan of the complex is explained by the excavators as a result of the deliberate incorporation of Early Bronze Age structures and rising bedrock within the later building. A small monumental structure, perhaps water-related, in which large quantities of ashlar blocks had fallen, was also explored to the SW of the complex.