Early Iron Age tombs at Knossos: (Knossos Survey 25)

Abstract

This group of tombs lies about 50 metres south-west of the main Knossos–Herakleion road, immediately opposite the new Sanatorium. Here in the autumn of 1953 Mr. David Smollett, then engaged in making the map for the Knossos Survey, noticed some large sherds which had been thrown into a rubbish pit on the edge of a small patch of ground newly ploughed for a vineyard (Plan, Fig. 1, a). The vineyard lay on the top of a slight knoll behind the café on the west side of the road. The knoll had until this time been occupied by a threshing floor, and was pointed out by the local inhabitants as the site of the ‘Tomb of Caiaphas’. But the great Roman concrete-built tomb traditionally known as the ‘Tomb of Caiaphas’, was really, it appears, on the main road some metres away to the north-west (Knossos Survey 23): it was destroyed about 1880 when the road was built. The sherds recovered by Mr. Smollett, some of them large and freshly broken from fine Geometric vases, made it seem likely that there was a disturbed tomb of that period in the area. Permission was therefore sought, and readily granted by Dr. N. Platon, Ephor of Antiquities for Crete, to explore the field before it was planted with vines. Trials led to the discovery of three small collapsed chamber tombs, all apparently Iron Age in date, cut in the soft kouskouras rock. The tombs clearly belong to the same complex as tombs L, Π, and TFT which have been published by Brock in Fortetsa (1957). They stood in a row with their entrances facing south towards Knossos. Two isolated burials (Plan, Fig. 1, b, c), extended on their backs with their heads to the west and feet to the east immediately below the surface of the field, may be Roman or later; there was a bent iron nail by the left hand of burial c. The knoll with the tombs lies near the western edge of the big Roman cemetery which covered the region now occupied by the new Sanatorium (Knossos Survey 35).

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