Date:April 8
Partners for the day: Katherine (text) Ben (images)
Site(s): Ayia Photia, Trypitos, Petras, Karphi
Museum(s): Siteia Archaeological Museum
Principal Buildings/Monuments:
Time Spent on Each Site: Ayia Photia; from ca. 8:30 to ca. 9:30 [ __1__ hour], Trypitos; from ca. 9:40 to ca. 9:55 [ _.25___ hours], Petras; from ca. 10:00 to ca.10:30 [ __.5__ hours], Siteia Archaeological Museum; from ca. 10:40 to ca. 11:10 [ _.5___ hours], Karphi (including hike there and back); from ca. 1:30 to ca. 5:00 [ __3.5__ hours]
Weather: Mostly sunny, mild
Today we visited a variety of sites. We began the morning with a visit to Ayia Photia, where we saw two sites. The first, a cemetery dating to 3100-2500 BCE, was probably used by an immigrant community from the Cycladic islands. The site is, unfortunately, now in a poor state of preservation. The other site at Ayia Photia that we saw was a small palace-like building dating to the second Millennium BCE. The building had a large fortification wall, an unusual feature in Minoan buildings. In a slightly later period, several small Minoan-type tholos tombs were constructed on the site, some right on top of existing architecture. We drew approximate plans of the site in groups and identified several features of the architecture. After Ayia Photia, we made a quick stop at the Early Hellenistic settlement of Trypitos. Here we were able to see an architectural feature unique to Crete and the islands. On the mainland, the meat from a sacrifice was consumed outside, but on Crete, it was consumed inside a special andron-like room. We moved on to Petras, the smallest known Minoan palace, where a cache of Linear A documents had been found. Serendipitously, we ran into an archaeologist who works at the site, Yiannis Papadatos. He and his group were doing test trenches on the slopes below the site in anticipation of the site being turned into an archaeological park, more accessible to the public. Yannis let us observe the excavation for a few minutes and explained to us about the type of items they had been finding. We then moved on to the Siteia Archaeological Museum. The piece with pride of place in this museum is a small statuette found in Palaikastro, which dates to the Late Minoan IB period (~1450 BCE). The statuette is made out of ivory, with hair of serpentine, gold and wooden accents, and rock crystal inlays. The hair, hands, and feet are incredibly detailed. The piece was found smashed into many pieces and was reconstructed by conservators. Finally, after a long winding drive away from the coast, we visited Karphi. This particular site is situated on a “saddle” of land between two small peaks. It was quite a trek to make it up to the site, but the view was amazing. Though it was slow going through patches of prickly plants, we all made it down safe and sound. After another bus ride of some length, we arrived in Matala on the southern coast of Crete. The boys celebrated with a dip in the freezing water, while the girls waded and wished for warmer weather.
The Karphi experience was definitely the highlight of the day. Not much of the site remains besides lower courses of walls, but from 1150-1000 BCE, it was inhabited by a refugee community from the coast. Something scared these people away from their traditional homes on the coast. We had learned about such events in class, but it always seemed a little distant. Minoan civilization is prehistorical, so we do not have specific characters, like, say, Pericles and Alcibiades of Athenian history, to enliven the story. We just have the material remains that suggest that large numbers of nameless, faceless people were frightened away from the vulnerable coast to the hills. Hiking up to Karphi made that knowledge so much deeper. The climb was not easy. A whole village of people made that climb not to look at the view, but more probably because they feared for their lives. The site was occupied for about 150, so whole generations of people lived and died up there. Their situation must have been rather desperate, if they were willing to live in an area with not much good, arable land. The weather today was beautiful, but Abby and Professor Rutter told us about a miserable hike to the site during a hailstorm on the ’99 trip. Up in the mountains, the Minoan refugees would have been at the mercy of the elements. The distress of these people became much more real after seen exactly how and where they lived. Their flight from the coast is no longer just part of a macro-event in history; rather it is something that deeply affected real people.