GALATAS - 2008

Galatas. G. Rethemiotakis (Herakleion Museum) reports on the 2008 excavation season at the M palace and town of Galatas, focused on buildings 6 and 7 S of the palace and building 1, some 100m E.
Building 6 is a large, 300m² building, most of which was excavated in 2007. The M hall and the adjacent lustral basin, as well as the building’s location close to the W wing of the palace and the court with the baetyl, indicate its importance in the settlement. Some walls and a paved area at its SW corner are annexes to the enclosed space with the altar excavated in 2007. This area provided sound evidence for religious activity, the most spectacular object being a unique shrine model with a seated goddess figure inside.
Building 7 is another large building of slightly smaller dimensions, badly preserved due to cultivation and erosion. Its walls are parallel to those of building 6, suggesting that both belonged to a unified building programme. The same orientation is repeated in other buildings which can be traced on the surface of the hilltop. According to the excavator, these represent a planned layout which involves large urban blocks arranged along a probable N-S artery, with narrow alleys between. As documented by test pits along the exterior walls, the structures were constructed in MMIIIA, which means that the palace and the major urban buildings around it were erected as parts of a uniform building programme. To this period belong the contents of a room at the NW side of building 7 which contained many vases, domestic and finewares as well as a pithos, the inner walls of which were coated with lime. The floor make-up in the other rooms included sherds of EMI−IIA and MMIB. Small collections of Prepalatial pottery recovered from crevices in the bedrock mostly come from open shapes, namely thick-walled vases with incised concentric semicircles and herringbone patterns. Associated with the sherds, obsidian blades and flakes indicate craft activities on the spot.
Building 1 is where the excavation started in 1992 (initial results are summarized in J. Driessen, I. Schoep and R. Laffineur [eds], Monuments of Minos: Rethinking the Minoan Palaces [Liège, Université de Liège 2002], 60−61). Excavation was resumed in this important and well-preserved building to obtain more evidence for its function and date. The area excavated, ca. 40m², is only a small part of this large, well-constructed and well-preserved urban house. Parts of 2 joining exterior walls at the NW corner and a partition wall were revealed. The latter wall is 1.7m h. with a marked inclination E, apparently the result of the earthquake which destroyed the building. The lower courses of the exterior walls used large boulders, but for the upper parts, fine ashlar blocks were employed, consistent with palatial standards. The associated pottery, which came from the upper floor, dates the destruction of the building to LMIA. The vessels comprise jars, amphorae, pithoid jars, jugs and many cups, all evidence of drinking on a large scale. Some fragments of stone libation tables and a vat-model, an exact copy in miniature of the spouted vat of a wine press, may relate to some kind of religious activity. Evidence for the earlier use of the building is provided by the contents of the corridor between the W exterior and the partition wall. In this narrow space, no more than 5m², were hundreds of densely packed MMIIIA vases, intact and broken. The vases had been discarded during a major reconstruction of the building which followed a catastrophic event at the very end of this period. After that, the doorway was blocked and the area remained out of use to the end of the building’s life, providing an uncontaminated deposit. The consequences of the same event are attested in the palace: this is a major and uniform destruction horizon involving building debris mixed with abundant MMIIIA pottery. After the destruction this material was reused as a fill underlying MMIIIB floors. Many types of vases are amply documented, involving finewares and coarsewares: shallow cups with out-turned rims, semi-globular and cylindrical cups (some with ribbed or grooved walls), basins, kalathoi, many tripod cooking pots, jugs, amphorae, miniature cups, chalices and kantharoi, some with crinkled rims, and a bird’s nest cup-rhyton. More than 20 footed, circular, portable hearths, a type known from an MMII Phaistian cultic assemblage, testify to substantial religious activity inside the building. Many fragments of wall-plaster were discarded alongside the pottery in the same space. They come from pictorial wall-paintings with subjects similar to those previously reported, i.e. twigs with leaves in blue and a red ‘net’. These fragments, along with those found in 1992 which belong to the same composition, date to MMIIIA. They are contemporary with the fragment of wall-painting excavated in the palace. Coming from uncontaminated deposits, these are the earliest well-dated fragments of pictorial wall-painting from Crete.
In all likelihood MMIIIA was the great era of Galatas. Not only was a palace created out of nothing, but also splendid urban buildings were erected, luxuriously decorated with wall- paintings probably by painters trained at Knossos.