Protopalatial Sanctuary at Anemospilia (Archanes), More on the Peaceful Minoans

Web Site ^ | Temple of the Sacred Sprial

[Little Bill]

Excavated in the summer of 1979, this four-room building set within a low enclosure (temenos) wall serves as a reminder that our views about a past culture may be subject to sudden and drastic change as the result of a single new discovery. The building, oriented roughly to the cardinal points and entered from the north, lies on the northern slopes of Mt. Iuktas some seven kilometers south of Knossos

. In plan, it consists of an east-west corridor at the front off of which open three non-connecting rectangular rooms oriented north-south. In the east room were found large numbers of clay vessels containing agricultural produce, many of them arranged on a series of three steps, perhaps an altar, at the back (south) end of the room.

In the central room, more vases containing agricultural produce were found. These too tended to be located toward the south (rear) end of the room, in the vicinity of a raised platform on which were found two terracotta feet, all that remained, in the excavators' opinion, of a cult statue made mostly of wood, only the carbonized remains of which were actually discovered.

Near the statue and its base, part of the limestone bedrock was left exposed above floor level rather than being cut down and the excavators identify this outcrop as a "sacred stone" over which blood offerings may have been poured.

In the west room, three skeletons were found in positions which indicated that all three had met a violent end: (1) An 18-year-old male, the skeleton so tightly contracted that he is considered to have been trussed in a fashion comparable to that of the sacrificial bull on the Ayia Triadha sarcophagus, was found lying on his right side on a platform in the center of the room.

Among his bones was a bronze dagger 0.40 m. long, on each side of which was incised the frontal head of a boar. Close beside the platform (or sacrificial altar) had stood a pillar with a trough around its base, the trough probably designed to catch the blood from animal (and human) sacrifices. The dead youth's bones were discolored in such a way (those on his upper/left side being white, those on his lower/right side being black) as to suggest to a visiting physical anthropologist that the youth, estimated to have been 5' 5" tall, had died from loss of blood. (2) A 28-year-old female of medium build was found spreadeagled in the southwest corner of the room. (3) A male in his late thirties, 6' tall, was found on his back near the sacrificial platform, his hands raised as though to protect his face, his legs broken by fallen building debris. On the little finger of his left hand he wore a ring of silver and iron. On a thong around his wrist he wore a stone seal on which the intaglio device was a boat.

In the corridor constituting the front room of the building, aside from rows of still more vessels containing agricultural produce, was found a fourth skeleton, too poorly preserved for sex and age to be determinable. Scattered widely around this body were found 105 joining fragments of a bucket-shaped clay vessel bearing a red-spotted bull in relief as decoration on one side.

This was the only vase of the roughly four hundred vessels recovered from the building to be found littered over such a wide area, and the excavators theorize that it was dropped in the corridor by the fourth person when (s)he was felled by the collapsing debris of the building.

The sanctuary was destroyed by fire, probably as the result of an earthquake, at the end of MM II, possibly in the same earthquake which destroyed the Old Palaces at Knossos and Phaistos at this time. The collapsing roof and masonry of the upper walls killed three of the four individuals found within the structure, but the eighteen-year-old was probably already dead..

[SunkenCiv]

thanks to Question_Assumptions for these suggestions:

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War Before Civilization by Lawrence H. Keeley	The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Will Not Give Women a Future by Cynthia Eller paperback

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[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Because of the artistic talants of the Minoans the lefty flower children of our Universities have impressed their idealistic beliefs on their interpitations of the Minoan culture.

That seems to be a common mistake with any artistic culture.

Just being an artistic culture does not make you necessarily a pleasant culture.

In fact to be blunt about it the one with the best art also seem to be the most bloodthirsty.

[Little Bill]

Read one, will read the other. Robert Shaefer wrote an article on Matriarchy, as dreamed up by Marija Gumbas, damned if I can give a link to it, it was published in the Skeptical Inquirer.

[SunkenCiv]

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