This volume represents another ambitious attempt in ceramic phasing at one of the most important sites of Bronze Age Greece: Knossos. It focuses on the much-debated Middle Minoan IIIA phase, the start of which is placed by the authors in the early seventeenth century BC. Giorgos Rethemiotakis and Peter Warren concentrate in particular on the division of the Middle Minoan IIIA into early and late phases, comparing their material with ceramic deposits from Knossos and other Minoan sites, in order to address key questions about historical events at Knossos. The authors make a significant contribution to the knowledge of the Middle Minoan IIIA phase and, in doing so, also corroborate recent work by others who have focused on this same period. Hence, Girella (Reference Girella, Felten, Gauß and Smetana2007) provided a stratigraphic basis for the chronological boundaries of the Middle Minoan IIIA based on the work by Carinci in the Casa a Sud della Rampa at Phaistos, while MacDonald (Reference MacDonald, MacDonald and Knappett2013) and Knappett et al. (2013) have presented deposits from Knossos that give stratigraphic and ceramic support for the division of the Middle Minoan IIIA into two phases.
The volume presents the results of excavations conducted by Giorgios Rethemiotakis and Eva Grammatikaki during 1993 and 1995 in a building plot, named Vlachakis, located in the western part of Knossos. The authors present the results of two of the five excavation trenches: trench A with baulk II in the southern part (west and east passages), and trench D with baulks V and VI in the northern part (north room). Below the remains of a Roman building, the excavations have revealed two parts of a Neopalatial building, which have provided stratified and well-defined ceramic assemblages dating from the Middle Minoan III to Late Minoan IB.
The volume is divided into five chapters: an introduction; a description of the archaeological contexts and occupational phases; a presentation of the ceramic assemblages with a detailed catalogue, accompanied by drawings and a useful visual summary (fig. 3.1) of the main vessel shapes (predominantly drinking cups); a brief description of non-ceramic material, including a Middle Minoan IIIA balance weight; and a synthetic discussion.
The two parts of the Neopalatial building are respectively named ‘wall & building’ (trench A/baulk II), which include the east and west passages, and the north room (trench D/baulk V). They each have different depositional histories. ‘Wall & building’ has two phases in the Middle Minoan IIIA (early and late), and also a later phase, which, in Warren's view, should be called the Middle Minoan IIIB/Late Minoan IA transition but which other scholars would prefer to label as the Middle Minoan IIIB; there is also unstratified Late Minoan IA material from this area. In contrast, the north room was occupied in what the authors call the pre-Middle Minoan IIIA early, that is, preceding the construction of ‘wall & building’. It was then abandoned until reoccupation in the Middle Minoan IIIB/Late Minoan I transition; this area also yielded a stratified Late Minoan IA phase with a clear destruction deposit containing sherds of the Late Minoan IB date above.
In ‘wall & building’, the east and west passages were filled by two stratified (but secondary) destruction deposits that facilitate the division of the Middle Minoan IIIA into two phases. The small size and nature of the deposits preclude a detailed debate on the social significance of the material, but, based on the variety of forms, they are interpreted as “ordinary domestic assemblages” (p. 87). The case for the division of the Middle Minoan IIIA into two phases is well argued and founded principally on differences in the numbers of small vessel forms and on the presence of white-spotted decoration (summarised in tabs 5.3 and 5.4). The same method is also used to distinguish between the levels dating respectively to the Middle Minoan IIIA late and to the Middle Minoan IIIB/Late Minoan IA transition.
The correlation of the ceramic material from the Vlachakis excavations with key deposits from elsewhere at Knossos, and from other Cretan sites (Archanes Anemospilia, Galatas, Phaistos, Kommos) is summarised in tab. 5.9, which lists the deposits respectively dated to the Middle Minoan IIIA early (group A) and to the Middle Minoan IIIA late (group B). The major difference to earlier publications is that the Knossos KV trial deposit is no longer placed in the Middle Minoan IIB, but in the Middle Minoan IIIA early; this modification further diminishes the evidence for Middle Minoan IIB deposits at Knossos, questioning the existence of a Middle Minoan IIB destruction of the town.
The authors argue that the Middle Minoan IIIA early destruction deposit from the Vlachakis excavations corresponds with a widespread event affecting much of Knossos, but that the Middle Minoan IIIA late destruction deposit corresponds with a more extensive and thorough destruction of the palace and other houses. This supports MacDonald's theory that the New Palace period at Knossos follows in the Middle Minoan IIIB (or the Middle Minoan IIIB/Late Minoan IA transition).
The only disappointing aspect of the volume is that the description of the ceramic deposits and the relative chronology of the occupational phases are not presented in the chapter devoted to the excavations (Chapter 2), but rather they are left for the final discussion (Chapter 5). A table illustrating the correspondence between the occupational phases and their relative chronology at the beginning of the book would have greatly improved comprehension of the stratigraphic and ceramic sequences. That said, the volume makes an important contribution to an understanding of Knossos, and Crete more generally, during the Middle Minoan III—a phase that the authors argue “was not an intermezzo, but rather a time of aumento, accrescimento, allargamento” (p. 89).
