Posted on 08/28/2015 5:10:40 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Ongoing excavations at a site in the southern Peloponnese are offering rare insight into the ancient past of Laconia, about which very little physical evidence exists, the state-run Athens-Macedonian News Agency cited the Culture Ministry as saying on Tuesday.
Covering an expanse of 3.5 hectares, the site on Aghios Vassilios Hill near the village of Xirokambi on the Sparta plain has been under excavation since 2009 and is believed to contain valuable evidence that will shed light on life in the area during the 17th to 16th centuries BC, the announcement said.
A palace complex found on the site and dated to the Mycenaean era is believed to have been razed by fire in the late 15th or early 14th century BC, which destroyed several buildings but preserved Linear B tablets and seals constructed of unbaked clay.
A number of these artifacts were discovered in what is believed to have been the palace’s archive, which also contains records of commercial transactions, offerings to a sanctuary, male and female names, as well as place names – pointing to a highly organized and sophisticated bureaucracy.
The fire that destroyed the complex is also believed to have preserved a sanctuary, which has yielded valuable evidence such as clay and ivory idols, decorative objects and 21 bronze swords.
A second building found on the site contains fragments of murals, suggesting that the palace’s more prominent structures were richly decorated, the Culture Ministry said in its briefing on ongoing excavations.
(Excerpt) Read more at ekathimerini.com ...
A handout photo released by the Greek Ministry of Culture on Tuesday shows the excavations site with remains of a palace of the Mycenaean period (17-16 century BC.), bearing important inscriptions in archaic Greek, discovered near Sparta in the Peloponnese region of Greece.
That small houselike structure on top is, I believe (haven't beeen there) a shrine (iow tourist trap) to Helen of Troy (she was originally Helen of Sparta). Let's make this the weekly Digest ping, one day early.
I always thought linear B was associated with Crete.
The main house appears to be in pretty good shape! ;^)
Indeed it was. Arthur Evans wanted to be the one to crack the decipherment and failed. He saw to it that very little was published during his lifetime. The first tablets which showed up in his dig at Knossos he had laid out on the hillside overnight. There was rain in the night and the surfaces of those tablets were ruined, basically “no more tablets” (Wunderlich). Evans insisted that the one language that they couldn’t be was Greek.
Some years after Evans died, Carl Blegen got a permit to dig at the “Palace of Nestor” at Pylos, and in a legendary best-first-day-ever uncovered the lost city’s archive of Linear B tablets, which were published pretty quickly, and allowed Ventris et al to break the decipherment wide open despite the lack of a bilingual.
Linear B records Greek.
That’s what was built later, by the Youcenaeans. You seen one...
Don’t tell ISIS moozlum idiots...they’ll bulldoze or bomb it.
“Laconia” is the source of our word “laconic”; supposedly they were besieged, and when the attacking force sent a message detailing all the things they would do if they took the city, the Laconian response was “If”...
The lacedaemonians were pretty extreme about using too many words, especially in public speaking.
Once a Spartan general needing food for his army, stood in front of the council and held out an empty sack and said “food”.
To the Spartans, this was too wordy. He should have just held out the empty sack.
ISIS will get right on that.
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For a minute there, I thought they meant Laconia, New Hampshire!
I always connected laconia wit Bike Week.
But I am sure there are quite a few fossils up there, too! :-)
That’s when a Shovel head comes in handy.
LOL really. That hill would be a great place for a water slide.
Wonder where and how they got the ivory for the ivory idols. Who were they trading with?
Too funny; holding the empty sack should have sufficed...
so did I!
A palace complex found on the site and dated to the Mycenaean era is believed to have been razed by fire in the late 15th or early 14th century BC, which destroyed several buildings but preserved Linear B tablets and seals constructed of unbaked clay.
.................
The fire dates tend to associate it with the thera volcanic eruption and the destruction of the Minoan civilization.
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