A TALE OF THREE CITIES:

CHRONOLOGY AND MlNOANISATION AT PHYLAKOPI IN MELOS

TODD WHITELAW
•

ABSTRACf Consideration of the unpublished records from the early excavations at Phylakopi on Me1os, in conjunction
with the preliminary publications of the 1974-1977 campaign, supports the stratigraphy and chronology originally proposed
for the later MBA and early LBA levels. This also highlights the focal position of the Pillar Rooms Complex within the
community. The differential engagement of specific segments of the community, emphasises the importance of local social
dynamics in contrast to the Creto-centric perspective usually assumed in discussions ofMinoanisation.

KEYWORDS Melos, Phylakopi, late MBA-early LBA, settlement, stratigraphy, chronology, 'Minoanisation'.

I. INTRODUCTION

Since the first excavations at Phylakopi on Melos in
1896-1899, the stratified sequence from the site has
formed the cornerstone of our understanding of the
Bronze Age of the Cyclades, and has been central to
the integration of southern Aegean prehistory. At that
time, before the explosion of excavations on Crete in
1900, a Cretan source for much of the pottery
imported to the site was postulated, with the
recognition that several exotic stone vessels had their
only parallels and likely geological source on Crete.
This was linked with the Classical account of the
'Thalassocracy of Minos', even before the distinctive
character of Cretan Bronze Age society was
recognised (Mackenzie 1898: 34--36). By the time the
excavations were published in 1904, the British
archaeologists were overwhelmed with the riches
being revealed by Evans and Mackenzie at Knossos
(Bosanquet 1904; Mackenzie 1904) and through most
of the subsequent century the evidence for MBA and
early LBA Phylakopi, and the Cyclades as a whole,
has tended to be viewed from a Creto--centric
perspective (Furumark 1950; Renfrew 1972: 195;
Caskey 1973; Hagg & Marinatos 1984).'
* Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 31-34
Gordon Square, London WClH OPY, UK E-mail:
twhitelaW@UcI.ac.uk.
I I met Oliver on Melos in 1977, while he was studying the mainland
imports into MBA and early LBA Phylakopi, and I was excavating
A challenge to this perspective was published in 1972,
with Renfrew's identification of EB ill Phylakopi as
in the final field season and helping in the a1wBIj1aj. While I did not
have the good fortune to work with Oliver or learn anything useful
about mainland pottery, this paper resonates with the work that he
was pursuing on the foreign influences at Phylakopi at the
MBAlLBA transition, and argues a point that I am sure he would
agree with, namely that we consider the impact of such influences
from other than a Creto-centric perspective. It has been gestating
since then, and I offer it in recognition of over a quarter of a century
of professional admiration. I am grateful to Colin Renfrew for
originally accepting me onto the project, and enabling me to
contnbute towards its publication. Colin Renfrew, Jack Davis and
John Cherry kindly allowed me to read various unpublished chapters
for the forthcoming Phylakopi publication. Tony Spawforth and
Roger Just allowed me access to the archives of the 1911
excavations held by the British School at Athens, and Caroline
Barron kindly let me see D.G. Hogarth's Phylakopi diary. Cyprian
Broodbank, Evi Gorogiani and Jack Davis, and cart Knappett and
lrene Nikolakopoulou gave me access to papers currently in press.
The general perspective developed here first arose during my work
documenting the stratigraphy of various trenches for the fina1
publication of the 1974-1977 excavations and comparisons with
Mackenzie's documentation, though the views expressed here are
my own. I am grateful to the editors for their advice and patience, to
Cyprian Broodbank, Jack Davis, Natasha Dakouri-Hild and Sue
Sherratt for comments on an excessively long draft of this paper, to
Andy Bevan for advice on Neopalatial stone lamps, and to students
at University College London for comments at a seminar where
some of these ideas were explored. Room numbers for City 11refer
to Atkinson et al. 1904: pI. I, for City ill to Atkinson et al. 1904: pI.
11;for the Pillar Rooms area, these are reproduced on [Fig. 3] and
[Fig. 4] respectively.
 TODD WHlTELA W
i
'proto-urban' in character. Given that this was
achieved before native Melian culture was thought to
have been swamped by Minoan cultural influence in
the MBA (Renfrew 1972: 186-95), the process of
increasing social complexity resulting in such a centre
was seen as an indigenous Melian or Cycladic
manifestation of an Aegean-wide phenomenon.
Following the systematic documentation provided by
the 1976 site survey (Cherry 1979; 1982), nucleation
of settlement on Melos late in the EBA was linked
directly with the expansion of Phylakopi and its
development into a major centre (Cherry 1979: 43-46;
Wagstaff & Cherry 1982A: 139-40), a pattern
hypothesised for other Cycladic islands as well
(Scholes 1956: 10; Renfrew 1972: 260-62; Barber
1974: 50; 1978: 374; Bintliff 1977: 131-37). This was
identified as the earliest example of a process repeated
throughout the history of settlement on Melos, with
cycles of settlement nucleation and dispersion
reflecting the involvement of the inhabitants of Melos
in larger, off-island economic and political systems
(Wagstaff & Cherry 1982B; Renfrew 1982B). For this
initial cycle, settlement nucleation and the growth of
Phylakopi were seen as a consequence of the
expansion of Cretan interests in the Cyclades.
Theoretically, it is worth separating the process of
economic interaction with one or more Cretan
communities or polities from political domination by
one of them (Dournas 1982; Davis 1979; 1984;
Branigan 1981; 1984; Schofield 1982; Me1as 1988;
1991; Wiener 1990; Broodbank 2004), often
uncritically conflated in the concept of Minoanisation.
After the 1974-1977 excavations at Phylakopi, the
discovery of an administrative tablet in the Cretan
Linear A script (Renfrew & Brice 1977: 118-19) was
seen as perhaps tipping the balance toward some form
of political dominance (Renfrew 1982B: table 20.1;
1982A: 41; 1982C: 225), though the use of Linear A
in local administrative activities, now documented at
several Cycladic sites (Caskey 1970; Palaima 1982;
Boulotis 1998; Owens 1999; Michailidou 2001A;
Kamava in press), need not imply political dominance
by a Cretan polity or intrusive administration.
Substantively, the Island Polity model (Renfrew &
Wagstaff 1982) also has difficulties. At Phy1akopi,the
earliest Minoan ceramic imports date to early in the
MBA City 11,rather than late in the EBA (Renfrew
1972: 198-99; Barber 1974: 5; 1978: 377; 1987: 32,
154-55, 159-200; Papagiannopoulou 1991: 83-127;
Sherratt 2000A: 241-43) and the Minoanisation of
Cycladic material culture is a process which extended
throughout the MBA, becoming pervasive only in the
early LBA (Furumark ·1950: 192-201; Davis 1986:
105-107; Barber 1987: 148-52, 167-72; Marthari
1987; Papagiannopoulou 1990; 1991: 116-22; Berg
38
2000A; Knappett & Nikolakopoulou 2005).
Complicating the picture further, a reassessment of the
evidence for the development of Phylakopi as a centre
indicates slow expansion during the EBA, the site only
achieving its full extent sometime during the MBA,
with the physical features which are usually pointed to
as 'urban' in character, probably emerging during the
later MBA (Whitelaw 2004: 161-63). The regional
settlement data are more ambiguous, since other late
EBA sites are known on the island, MBA ceramics
have been identified at various sites apart from
Phy1akopi (even if not confirmed during the 1976
survey, Cherry & Wagstaff 1982A: 139) and the
difficulty in distinguishing the latest EBA from early
MBA ceramics all unite in suggesting that the process
of settlement nucleation on the island may also have
extended into the MBA (White1aw2004: 158-61).
These empirical reassessments make it clear that
settlement nucleation at Phylakopi is not a
phenomenon that can be associated with
Minoanisation in the late EBA on Melos (Whitelaw
2000: 140-43; 2004: 159-61). Rather, the evidence
indicates that the growth of Phylakopi as a regional
centre, the nucleation of island settlement and the
Minoanisation of the local material culture are
principally processes which play out during the course
of the MBA It is unclear whether the different
processes should still be linked, but be displaced later
intotheMBA
The final publication of the most recent campaign of
excavations at Phy1akopi, directed by Colin Renfrew
between 1974 and 1977, is awaited, though the
outlines of the results of the work have been
summarised over the past 25 years (Renfrew 1978;
1982A; Renfrew & Brice 1977; Evans & Renfrew
1984; Barber 1978; Cherry & Davis 1982; Davis &
Cherry 1984; Mountjoy 1999: 889-928; Mountjoy &
Ponting 2000). With the full documentation of that
fieldwork, it should be possible to synthesise the data
from the various campaigns at the site, and towards
that end, the present paper draws principally upon both
the published and unpublished documentation from
the earlier campaigns to review some of the principal
features of the later MBA and early LBA community
which have been linked with Minoanisation. While
neither excavated nor documented to modem
standards, much additional information is contained in
the unpublished records of the 1896-1899 and 1911
excavations, which together account for the exposure
of some 55% of the surviving site, and 95% of the area
of the site excavated to date. A reassessment of the
early excavations has the potential to bring Phylakopi,
still the most comprehensively investigated MBA and
..LBA site .in the Cyclades, more effectively 'into
debates about Minoanisation and other cultural
transformations in the southern Aegean.
 A TALE OF THREE CITIDS: CHRONOLOGY AND MINOANISATION
11. THE PHYLAKOPI SEQUENCE
A. DEFINING THE SEQUENCE OF OCCUPATION AT
PHYLAKOPI
The site at Phylakopi had been noted by several
antiquarians in the mid- and later 19th century (Ross
1845: 13; Diimmler 1886: 25-34), though its full
significance was only to become clear only with
excavation, when it was found to provide a
stratigraphic link between the principal bodies of
archaeological material known to that point for the
prehistoric period in the Aegean. The British School at
Athens excavated at the site from 1896-1899,
generally working eastwards from the western stretch
of the Fortification Wall, which was visible above
ground prior to excavation (Whitelaw 2004: fig. 13.2).
As the excavation progressed, Duncan Mackenzie (in
day-to-day charge of the work) and his colleagues
developed a better understanding of the architectural
stratigraphy of the site, and of the ceramic sequence
(Smith 1896: 75-76; 1897; Hogarth et al. 1898;
Mackenzie et al. 1899; Atkinson et al. 1904).
During the first two seasons, Mackenzie did not fully
appreciate the entire stratigraphic sequence because
this was not well-preserved at the west end of the site
(Hogarth 1898: 5-{)),though by 1897 he had proposed
a rudimentary threefold phasing, recognising that the
major Fortification Wall was constructed above an
early stratum, was associated with wares similar to
those recovered below the eruption debris on Thera,
and was rebuilt in association with later Mycenaean
pottery (Hogarth 1898: 5; Mackenzie 1898: 17,22,25,
31).
It is clear from the 1898 preliminary report that
questions had been raised about the excavators'
understanding of the sequence (Hogarth 1898: 6) and
two systematic stratigraphic soundings were
undertaken in 1898 in widely separated locations in
order to document the pottery sequence in detail and
relate this to the architectural levels, with all recovered
pottery noted by half-metre intervals (Hogarth 1898:
7-9; Mackenzie 1898: 17-21; Edgar 1898: 38-48;
1904: 159-63). These soundings, and the excavation
of numerous rooms to bedrock in the centre of the site
in 1898, consistently revealed a three-phase sequence
of walls and associated deposits (Hogarth 1898: 5, 10;
Mackenzie 1898: 18-20). This became Mackenzie's
standard basis for recording the stratigraphy: walls of
Stratum 1,2 or 3 (from top to bottom), noted by depth
from the immediately local, pre-excavation surface.
Following the recognition of yet earlier material.in the
1898 season, walls of the three later strata were
mapped in the preliminary reports of 1898 and 1899 as
Cities IT-IV, though by 1904, these were relabelled
39
AT PHYLAKOPI IN MELOS
Cities l-Ill, with the earliest material (without
associated walls) designated Pre-City.2
In his concluding essay in the final publication,
Mackenzie (1904) elaborated the three-City sequence
into a lO-phase scheme, with early Pre-City material,
found only in a limited area at the north-east of the
site, and three sub-divisions of each of the three
previously defined Cities, similar to the nested
tripartite scheme that he was developing at the same
time with Evans for Knossos (Mackenzie 1903;
Momigliano 1999: 54). While Mackenzie (1904: 254-
55, 263) and T.D. Atkinson (1904: 25-29), the
excavation architect, both agreed that the site had been
subjected to two general site-wide destructions
(marking the ends of City I and City II), Mackenzie
noted structures or deposits which had gone out of use
well before the end of each City to illustrate the
subdivisions he proposed in 1904 (Mackenzie 1904:
258-59,263-69). He distinguished these from the City
divisions, because they were not clearly site-wide
destructions with complete rebuilding afterwards. To
what degree the major site-wide horizons were real, or
an idealisation and simplification of a more continuous
sequence of rebuilding, is impossible to determine
conclusively, though Mackenzie himself was clear on
the difference (1904: 254-55, 263). Floor levels were
recognised if they were constructed of stone (only
rarely if composed of plaster or trampled earth) and
were usually simply inferred from the level of
thresholds or the tops and bottoms of walls, therefore
not documenting the build-up of floors through time,
though this process was conceptually understood (e.g.
Mackenzie 1963: 70, 99, 108, 135, 140, 142, 153;
Atkinson 1904: 46; Edgar 1904: 162). As a result, the
recorded stratigraphy is largely one of walls, attributed
following the expectation that three strata would be
present, and dated by the associated pottery.
As D. Mackenzie and C.C. Edgar, the ceramic
specialist, realised, the ceramic styles changed
gradually and not synchronously with the architectural
strata (Mackenzie 1904: 259, 263; Edgar 1899: 15;
1904: 159, 162). The difficulty in relating the two is
exacerbated by the independent presentation of each
sequence, though Mackenzie sketched out the broad
synchronisations (Mackenzie 1898: 28-32; 1904:
248-54, 258-62, 264-67, 270; Edgar 1904: 159-63;
see also Scholes 1956; Barber 1974: 4-5; Sherratt
2000A: 216-347). Independent assessment of
Mackenzie's stratigraphic interpretations is difficult,
even with the benefit of his notebooks, since the
stratigraphy is recorded in his interpretative terms, e.g.:
''walls of Stratum 2 now begin to appear at x.x m from
the surface".
2 Contra Barber (1974: 4), the initial designation of Cities ill and IV
did not represent a division of the LB I~LB ITand LB ill strata, later
amalgamated into City ill.
 TODD WHITELA W

CITY II.iii: Late MC-Early LC I

n AREAS EXCAVATED TO

A-------<i~~~~~~t!~~
[;J
[2] AT
~
~HIJi:rg:~NZE
ESTIMATED 2M CONTOURS
BASE OF LEVEL
BARE ROCK D BEACH
~~=------~~~~~~
~ WALLS BHA E""320M
3
~ UNCERTAIN WALLS

n AREAS EXCAVATED TO
L.J CITY III LEVELS
r<=I ESTIMATED BRONZE
~ AGE SHORELINE
I5fIMATED 2M CONTOURS
2
[2] AT BASE OF LEVEL ---I<??i~~ ••__ ---.~
~ BARE ROCK D BEACH ~~7tAij t:Hjim;:~~
~ WALLS HAH E""320M

~ UNCERTAIN WALLS

Fig. 1. Plans of Phylakopi: A. City lI.iii; B. City III.i-ii; C. City III.iii (drawing by the author).

40

•
-
A TALE OF THREE CITIES: CHRONOLOGY AND MINOANISA TION AT PHYLAKOPI IN MELOS
While Mackenzie regularly commented on the
associated ceramics, the distinctions that he noted are
often not sufficient to allow clear attribution to one or
the other of Edgar' s styles, or clearly to distinguish the
phases which he proposed in 1904. Mackenzie often
commented only on individual pieces, rather than
assemblages as a whole, and one cannot know how
representative the sherds described are of the full
context assemblage.
For a consideration of Minoanisation at the site, three
phases are particularly relevant, the final phase (IT.iii)
of City II [Fig. lA], and the first two sub-phases (ITI.i-
m.ii) of City m [Fig. IBJ, prior to the construction of
the mainland style Megaron. The latter was dated
during the 1974-1977 excavations to LH IIIA1
(Renfrew 1978: 411; Renfrew & Brice 1977: 11-13),
and has been taken to mark the start of Phase m.iii
(Mackenzie 1904: 269-70; Furumark 1950: 194;
Barber 1974: 51; Renfrew 1982A: 41). This final
phase is also important in constituting the most
comprehensively investigated stratum at the site,
providing a spatial framework against which other
levels can be compared [Fig. I C].
As Barber has noted, Mackenzie did not identify any
deposits to characterise his Phase II.i, which was
simply a logical construct, representing the period of
time between the destruction of City I and the earliest
preserved floor deposits of City II, which he
designated Phase II.ii (Mackenzie 1904: 258; Barber
1974: 4; 1983: 77-78; 1987: 30, 143-44). Following
Barber, it makes more sense to talk in terms of Early
(IT.ii) and Late (IT.iii) City II contexts and material.
The remains mapped as City II by Atkinson represent
essentially the City II.iii structures standing at the
destruction of City II (Atkinson et al. 1904: pl.I).
The destruction marking the end of City II was argued
to have affected the entire site. Though this was not
mentioned in the final report, Mackenzie noted burnt
destruction debris on the City II floors in seven
different rooms (E3.16 [Mackenzie 1963: 89, 91];
F2.16 [1963: 133]; F2.24 [1963: 135]; G1.8 [1963:
120]; G2.10 [1963: 154]; G2.22 [1963: 150]; J1.4
[1963: 104]), distributed widely across the site. He
considered the accompanying ceramics to be
contemporary, and also linked this material to a large
dump of burnt debris immediately outside the
Fortification Wall (B5.13 [Mackenzie 1963: 34-39];
C5.13 [1963: 33, 60]). He interpreted the latter as
resulting from clearance of City II destruction debris in
advance of rebuilding (1963: 31, 33-39). Mackenzie
recorded only two other burnt contexts anywhere
. during the excavation (possibly Early II: E3.l6 [1963:
97]; probably Early m: J1.9 [1963: 104]), so the
repeated association or burnt debris with the City II
floors might suggest that these destructions represent a
single event, widespread within the site. On the other
41
hand, since the build-up of floors during City II was
not recognised, there is no guarantee that these
different burnt levels necessarily represent a precisely
synchronous destruction horizon at the end of City II,
though that was clearly Mackenzie's interpretation.
The rebuilding of the site as City Ill.i involved much
levelling of debris, creating substantial ftll deposits,
and the streets and many walls were laid out on
generally the same lines as those that preceded them
(Atkinson 1904: 38--39, figs. 25, 42). Mackenzie
defined three phases within City Ill, though he
identified only a limited number of contexts which
characterised the first two. These represented
structures or deposits which went out of use early
within the period, and in a few cases seem not to have
been built over subsequently (Mackenzie 1904: 263-
67). Otherwise, he suggested that over large areas of
the site the same City m structures remained in use
throughout the long LBA without any preserved early
floor deposits [Fig.IB-C).
One area (ElF 4), a block only partially explored by
Mackenzie, characterised the first phase of City m
(1904: 265). This block has been problematic in
subsequent presentations of the City m plan (e.g.
Renfrew 1972: fig. 12.3; 1982A: fig. 4.3; Barber 1987:
fig. 45; Dickinson 1994: fig. 4.11), because Atkinson
shaded the walls as 'of doubtful age' in his 1904 plan
(Atkinson 1904: 65,67, pl. II, E4.3, 6, 8--9,11-12, IS--
16, 18, F4.1--6, 8, 10). They were lower than the City
m walls preserved to the west and north-west, but
they were also higher than the City II walls to the
north-east (Atkinson 1904: 65, 67). In fact, Mackenzie
was clear about them, defining them as Phase Ill.i
(Mackenzie 1904: 265, 267), and in his notebook
(1963: 147) noted that the pottery was finer than the
later Mycenaean from higher levels; Hogarth noted
stacks of conical cups in two rooms in this block, also
suggesting a LC I-LC II date (Hogarth 1898: 13;
1904: 23). This appears to have been an area, like that
excavated further to the east by Dawkins and Droop in
1911, and the LC m Sanctuary excavated in 1974-
1977 (Renfrew 1985C: 79-80; 1985B: 89-92, fig.
2.11), where there were two distinct architectural
strata, corresponding to Early and Late phases within
City m [Fig. IB-C). The later stratum of walls
immediately to the west was preserved under a high
terrace; similarly Late City m levels are likely to have
been destroyed on the lower terrace further east, above
the preserved Early City m walls. A distinct stratum of
m.ii date along the south of the site explains why so
much more well-preserved LC II Marine Style pottery
was recovered in the 1911 excavations than had been
noted in the much more extensive original campaigns
(Dawkins & Droop 1911: 14-15). However, in the
areas to the north and east, where there was
considerable continuity in plan between City II and
 TODD WHITELAW
City m (E-H/1-3), a few houses went out of use early
(Mackenzie 1904: 264--{j7),but most structures appear
to have stayed in use throughout the LBA, rather than
being replaced by wholly new constructions.
Neither Phase Ill.i nor Ill.ii was clearly terminated by
a site-wide destruction and rebuilding, although
Mackenzie considered there to have been a 'partial
catastrophe' marking the end of City Ill.ii (Mackenzie
1904: 267). Dawkins' and Droop's 1911 excavation
revealed one room (1911: pl, I, City IT, Room 13)
which had suffered a bumt destruction in Phase m.ii
(Barber 1974: 15, 51: H4/25-26), but only one other
bumt context possibly ascribable to this date has been
noted (J1.9 [Mackenzie 1963: 104]). A postulated
bumt destruction linked to a Mycenaean takeover of
the community (Barber 1974: 52-53; 1981: 8; 1984A:
180; 1987: 162,200,224; Barber 1999: 137;Niemeier
1984: 209, 213) appears to have little support.
B. DAWKINS' AND DROOP'S EXCAVATION OF 1911
In 1911 the British School returned to the site,
particularly to reassess the ceramic sequence, building
on a decade of intensive work at many sites in Crete
(Dawkins & Droop 1911: 1-2). While the report on
the campaign focused in considerable detail on the
ceramics, little documentation was provided for their
context. Dawkins and Droop mapped three distinct
architectural strata in their main excavation trench
(Dawkins & Droop 1911: pl. 1), which they simply
assumed (1911: 6) corresponded to the three Cities
recognised by Mackenzie.
While far less descriptive than Mackenzie's, the
surviving notes from the 1911 excavations record a
summary of the ceramics for each level by ware, as
well as some period diagnostics according to the
Cretan classification schemes, and many of the
retained vessels can be matched with their find
contexts (Barber 1974). Dawkins and Droop also
recorded their stratigraphy by absolute levels, rather
than simply by depth beneath the (variable) modem
surface as Mackenzie had done, though they appear to
have been no better at distinguishing earth floors and
sequences of floor build-up than their predecessor.
Unfortunately, their notes rarely link the excavated
levels clearly with their architectural strata and the
latter are not systematically documented. Additional
complications, were introduced by renumbering the
rooms for the publication (Barber 1974: 3), which
means that only about half of the contexts described in
their notes can be linked with the published plans on
the basis of sketches in their notes or specific reported
finds. The contexts published by Barber (1974) as
H4/3, H4/6, H4/14, H4/16, H4/21,H4/22 and H4/25-
6, appear to correspond, respectively, to the areas
. designated Rooms 18, 19, 8, 7, 9 (possibly), 10 and
42
1------
13/14 on the published Stratum m plan (Dawkins &
Droop 1911: pl. 1). Where ceramics can be associated
with wall strata, this suggests that Dawkins' and
Droop's 'City m' is Le m (Mackenzie's m.iii), 'City
IT' is essentially LC I-LC IT(Mackenzie's Ill.i-ii) and
their 'City l' walls correspond to Mackenzie's City
IT.ii-iii (see Whitelaw 2004: 155-56 for the City I
material in this area). The 1911 campaign records
deserve further detailed consideration, but for our
purposes it is sufficient to note that, while several
contexts date their Stratum ITdestruction to Le ITon
the basis ofLM IDILH ITAimports (Barber 1974: 14-
16,51), there are no chronologically diagnostic pieces
published which unambiguously date the end of their
Stratum I, though what evidence there is suggests a
correspondence with Mackenzie's City IT.iii.
c. GENERALISING THE PHYLAKOPI SEQUENCE
Over the next 50 years, little new excavation was
undertaken in the Cyclades relevant to the MBA and
early LBA and the Phylakopi sequence served as the
basis for the integration of the Cyclades into the
.developing Aegean-wide chronological framework
(Wace & Blegen 1918; Blegen 1921: 121; Harland
1924; Furumark 1941: 217; 1950: 192-201,251-54;
Scholes 1956; Caskey 1973). While the publication of
the Phylakopi ceramics by Edgar (1904) was a model
for its time of systematic and detailed treatment,
relatively little material was actually illustrated; this
was dictated more by accidents of preservation (and
visual appeal: Edgar 1904: 80, 83, 145), than by an
attempt to be fully representative of what was
recovered. Linking of the ceramics with the
stratigraphy is complicated by the separate
presentations by Edgar (1904) and Mackenzie (1904),
rather than the publication of specific contexts, but this
is a format which has dominated publication until
relatively recently. Mackenzie outlined the links
between the two (Mackenzie 1898: 28-29, 32; 1904:
248-54, 258-62, 264--{j7,270; see also Edgar 1904:
159-63), but this does not provide sufficient well-
provenanced data to permit a comprehensive
reappraisal of his interpretations.
In 1921, Evans referred to a broad synchronisation
between the Minoan and Cycladic sequences,
identifying the final phase of City ITas MC m (Evans
1921: 558, 560, n. 7), and stressing the links with MM
m, most clearly documented by the Melian bird jugs
recovered from the MM rrm Temple Repositories at
Knossos (Evans 1921: 547, n. 1,557-60).
The published reports on the 1896-1899 and 1911
campaigns were all that was available to Furumark
when he essentially fossilised the definitions of the
MC and LC periods (Furumark 1941: 217; 1950: 192-
 AT ALE OF THREE CITIES: CHRONOLOGY AND MINOANISATION
200; Mountjoy 1999: 890, n. 192) as equivalent to
Cities IT and m, respectively, with subdivisions
following Mackenzie's minimally documented phases.
Up until that point, the parallels were drawn between
ceramic styles, not read directly onto the Phylakopi
stratigraphy (e.g. Wace & Blegen 1918: 187; Blegen
1921: 121); while the former blended into each other,
the latter represented fixed blocks of time. Scholes
reconsidered the ceramic styles against the stratigraphy
and phasing, and Barber brought in the 1911 (Barber
1974: 178-37,48-51) and 1974-1977 material (1978;
1983; 1987: 30-32, 146-52), but recognised that the
full City IT sequence might not be well-represented in
the limited 1974-1977 trenches (1987: 143). While the
latter two scholars stressed the overlap of styles and
phases, the equation of Cities IT, Ill.i, Ill.ii and m.iii
with MC, LC I, LC IT and LC m respectively, had
been established.
Mackenzie defined his phases in terms of the ceramic
styles which were typical of the relevant deposits
(1904: 258-62, 264-67), but these definitions can be
considered only to be approximate, as the individual
plates to which he refers in the final publication were
designed by Edgar to illustrate individual styles, which
occurred across Mackenzie's stratigraphic phases. For
example, Mackenzie cites pls. XVI-XXI as
representing material typical of City IT.iii (Mackenzie
1904: 262), but these illustrate Edgar's 'Early
Mycenaean with Decoration in Matt Black' and 'Black
and Red' styles, which dominated in Phase IT.iii but
also continued into Early City m. So the documented
samples are illustrative, but not definitive, of the
dominant wares of the different stratigraphic phases.
The 1911 excavation added little, since the material
was not linked directly to the stratigraphy, but only to
the preexisting stylistic categories (Dawkins & Droop
1911: 9-15).
While Wace and Blegen (1918: 176), Scholes (1956:
28-35), Renfrew (1972: 141), Mountjoy (1999: 888-
928) and Sherratt (2000A: 216-351) have reexarnined
material from the 1896-1899 excavations, and some
20010 of the retained sherds appear to be marked with
some context documentation, this is only by 20 m
square and depth below the surface (e.g. Sherratt
2000A: 216-351,passim). This is not specific enough
to allow attribution of sherds to particular levels within
individual rooms, so a detailed reconsideration of the
relationship between the stratigraphy and ceramic
sequence is usually not possible. Barber's (1974) study
of the 1911 material was able to establish contexts for
many pieces, but the original documentation of the
contexts was so poor that he could not match the
recorded contexts with the published plans (Barber
1974: 3), nor note the discrepancy between Dawkins'
and Droop's strata and Mackerizie's Cities (Mackenzie
1974: 48); the presentation is stylistic rather than
strati graphic.
43
L
AT PHYLAKOPI IN MELOS
D. REDEFINING THE STRATIGRAPHY AND CHRONOLOGY:
THE 1974-1977 CAMPAIGN
The objective of the 1974-1977 campaign was
stratigraphic; close attention was paid to the context of
the ceramics and other materials recovered. However,
other than the area excavation to explore the LC m
Sanctuary (Renfrew 1985A), the other soundings were
mostly widely scattered and very small, and it can be
extremely difficult to tie them, with confidence, to the
previously excavated but relatively poorly documented
contexts which surround them. Close synchronisation
is particularly problematic because Mackenzie's
strati graphic phasing did not recognise more
continuous minor rebuilding, often involving the reuse
of individual walls and the gradual build-up offloors.
Following the 1974-1977 excavations, Renfrew
announced a fundamental reinterpretation of the site
stratigraphy, which is far more than the simple
relabelling of phases that it might at first appear
(Renfrew 1978; 1982A: 35-36). As well as creating a
City 0 out of the original Pre--City and City I.i levels
and amalgamating City Lii and Liii (Whitelaw 2004:
153-56), this redefined the boundary between Cities IT
and m, and subdivided City m into two, with
Renfrew's new City m representing the LC I-LC IT
periods (Mackenzie's City Ill.i and m.ii), and City IV
representing the LC m period (Mackenzie's City
m.iii).
Renfrew has implied that the LC I-LC IT and LC m
levels were not adequately distinguished by
Mackenzie (Renfrew 1978: 404-405; 1982A: 35),
though this was the basis for discriminating between
City m.ii and City Ill.iii (Mackenzie 1898: 32-33;
1904: 263), and the differences in the material culture
across this transition were recognised as significant
and exercised Mackenzie profoundly (1904: 263,267-
72; Momigliano 1999: 33-34, 56-57). He did not
designate these phases as separate Cities, because they
were not distinguished by a complete rebuilding
following a site-wide destruction (Mackenzie 1904:
254-55, 263, 266-67, 269-70; Atkinson 1904: 27-
29). The subsequent 1911 and 1974-1977 excavations
along the south of the site indicate that there was far
more extensive rebuilding in this area than
Mackenzie's excavations elsewhere had revealed [Fig.
IB-C]. Whether the destructions of the earlier LBA
structures represent a site-wide synchronous horizon
has yet to be established, but the reuse of most
structures in the core of the site throughout the LBA is
consistent with Mackenzie's scheme. In this case, it
appears that the two classifications do not agree
because of real differences in the record in different
areas of the site, and because Renfrew has changed the
criteria for. defining Cities, not because of
observational failures on Mackenzie's part,"
 TODD WHITELA W
/
Renfrew has asserted that Mackenzie's failure to
distinguish these levels resulted in the regular
confusion of the strata by, in some locations counting
architectural levels from the bottom up, and in other
locations, from the top down. Such confusions are
argued to have led Mackenzie to misdate two of the
principal features of the LC I community, the
Fortification Wall and the Pillar Rooms, to the MC
period (Renfrew & Brice 1977: 116-17; Renfrew
1978: 404-407; 1982A: 35-36, 38-39). This claim
completely ignores the documentation provided in
Mackenzie's notebooks (1963: passim; see
Momigliano 1999: 23-25) about his approach to
excavation at the site, and for the excavation of these
specific contexts. He supervised the excavation of each
space, though with up to 100 workmen and trenches
running in several areas of the site concurrently, most
rooms received only brief descriptions and some no
record at all. On the other hand, as well as describing
the architecture and stratigraphy, Mackenzie also
regularly recorded observations on the pottery, and his
discussions of the pottery in his notebooks and in his
published accounts (Mackenzie 1898: 24-25, 28-29,
32-33; 1904: 248-54,258-62,264-67,270) show an
intimate familiarity with it. He went on to become
Evans' pottery expert as well as field director at
Knossos (Momigliano 1999: 58-60). By the time he
wrote his synthetic contribution to the final Phylakopi
publication (Mackenzie 1904), he could draw on four
seasons of excavation at Knossos, where he had
already developed the main outlines of the Cretan
ceramic sequence, which is still the basis for Aegean
chronology a century later (Mackenzie 1903; 1906;
Momigliano 1999: 54, fig. 19).
Working in detail through Mackenzie's notebooks for
Phylakopi and Knossos, while there are often
uncertainties or ambiguities about specific contexts
and though he certainly relied principally on the
architectural evidence when little pottery was
recovered or it was largely undiagnostic, it seems
inconceivable that he would regularly make the sort of
error that Renfrew attributes to him; it is abundantly
clear that he was not digging by architecture alone. For
the City IT to City Ill transition, during the last two
seasons when the full stratigraphy was understood,
Mackenzie oversaw the excavation of some 3000 m2,
which will have involved the recovery of perhaps a
million sherds (69 days at 10,000--20,000 sherds per
day: Edgar 1904: 81), all of which will have passed
under Mackenzie's scrutiny (Momigliano 1999: 21);
the comparable figures for the 1974-1977 trenches are
ea. 30 m2 and ea. 75,000 MC-LC IT sherds (Berg
2oo0A: 144). While Mackenzie's interpretation of
individual contexts may be uncertain or mistaken, he
was in an unrivalled position to perceive the overall
patterns. It should also be remembered that throughout
the debate over the date of the Linear B tablets at
Knossos (Boardman & Palmer 1963), it was Evans'
44
L
interpretation, rather than Mackenzie's observation
and documentation, which was criticised, and it was
Mackenzie's excavation notes which allowed
reassessment and reinterpretation. While his
interpretations can certainly be challenged, it seems
most appropriate to do this through the detailed
consideration of the documentation for specific
contexts.
Integral to Renfrew's redefinition of the sequence
seems to be a further set of assumptions. Mackenzie's
original City distinctions were designed to represent
the local site architectural history. Because Phylakopi
was the only excavated stratified site in the Cyclades,
its stratigraphic sequence subsequently became the
basis for the regional ceramic and chronological
schemes, and the local site sequence has been assumed
to correspond in a direct way to the Aegean-wide
EBA, MBA and LBA divisions. For the EBA-MBA
transition, this correspondence has been widely
debated through the terminology and chronology for
Phylakopi I (Rutter 1983; 1984; Barber 1983; 1984B;
Barber & MacGillivray 1980; 1984; MacGillivray
1984; Overbeck 1984; Manning 1995: 66-72;
Sotirakopoulou 1996; Broodbank 2000: 331-35). The
transition between Phylakopi IT and Ill is far more
problematic, since Renfrew has redated key features of
City IT, the Fortification Wall and the Pillar Rooms, to
City Ill, on the basis of their association in the 1974-
1977 trenches with LC I-LC IT pottery (Renfrew
1978: 405-11). Mackenzie explicitly linked both
features (in different ways) to the destruction horizon
representing the end of City IT. The new dating of the
pottery, if it is demonstrably associated with these
features, should lead us to bring the end of City IT
down within LC I-LC IT, not to extract these contexts
from City IT and place them in a newly defined entity,
City rn. No detailed consideration appears to have
been given to the implications of redating these
individual contexts for the surrounding structures;
Renfrew has suggested that much of what was
originally identified as City IT should be shifted into
City Ill (Renfrew 1982A: 38), though this leaves one
wondering what constitutes City IT or the MBA at
Phylakopi. As part of his critique, Renfrew went on to
argue that "in order to have full confidence in the
dating of buildings, it would be necessary to set out in
detail the accompanying pottery" (Renfrew 1982A:
38); surely this applies equally to the redating of such
contexts. The problem which Renfrew was attempting
to resolve seems to stem from an assumption that City
IT is precisely coextensive with the MC period, a claim
which Mackenzie never made.
Individual architectural features can be extracted and
redated to City Ill only by redefining Mackenzie's
stratigraphic phases in purely ceramic terms, rather
than treating them as a local architectural and
occupational sequence, as originally designed. This
 A TALE OF THREE CITIES: CHRONOLOGY AND MINOANISA TION AT PHYLAKOPI IN MELOS
definitional shift seems to be based on an expectation
that the local sequence of building must correspond
with the Aegean-wide general periodisation of the
Bronze Age. This is confusing and its merit is not
clear, since no such uniformity should be anticipated in
what is simply our analytical classification, a point
made long ago by Renfrew for the EBA (Renfrew
1972: 53-54; 1979A). A recognition of the need to
distinguish the local site stratigraphic sequence from
broader ceramic phases appears to be embodied in the
definition of two new sets of sequences for
Phylakopi-Periods (Cities) and ceramic phases
(Renfrew 1978: table II}-though the transitions then
seem to be assumed to correspond neatly. That
Mackenzie's and Renfrew's schemes, defined on
different bases, do not wholly correspond is not
surprising. But this does not, as Renfrew has
frequently asserted, indicate that Mackenzie
misinterpreted the Phylakopi stratigraphy, and it
appears to introduce new terminological confusions,
rather than help to clarify the Phylakopi stratigraphy,
the ceramic sequence, or the history of the site.
The real issue can be disaggregated into two separate
questions. First, was there a general destruction
horizon across the site-that which Mackenzie took to
define the end of City IT-and second, what was the
date of such a horizon, if it existed? The first is not an
explicit element of Renfrew's critique, though
extracting two of the key components of Mackenzie's
City IT,essentially amounts to this.
Was there a general site-wide destruction,
corresponding to the end of Mackenzie's City 11?
No matter how well--excavated or thoroughly
documented, the 1974-1977 excavations are unlikely
to answer this question conclusively, because the
limited number of trenches which encountered the
relevant levels were very small and widely scattered
across the site. Each usually encompassed only one or
two walls of one room within a structure, so it is
inherently difficult to determine whether any structural
changes are minor rebuildings affecting one wall, a
whole room, or a complete structure, let alone a
significant area of the site. Secondly, it is extremely
difficult to synchronise chronologically the contexts in
widely separated trenches, though the innovative
seriation of the ceramics from Le I contexts from all
trenches, combined with the link provided by the first
appearance of traces of Theran tephra in each trench
(Davis & Cherry 1984), is probably as close as one
could hope to get to such synchronisation.
As an example of this difficulty, Barber has noted
substantial later MC mixed fill levels in various of the
1974-1977 trenches, which he equates with one
45
another, and with Mackenzie's site-wide City IT.iii
destruction (Barber 1978: 377). Davis and Cherry have
identified dumps of LC I pottery on the south edge of
the site in Trenches PK and KKd, though seriation
analysis suggests that the dumps are of slightly
different dates in the two trenches (Davis & Cherry
1984: fig. 2; Berg 2000A: 131-43). Further west,
Mackenzie identified an extensive dump deposit
outside the Fortification Wall as characteristic debris
from the final destruction of City IT(Smith 1987: 12-
14; Mackenzie 1898: 22, 25; 1963: 33-39). So the
1974-1977 trenches appear to document three
different destruction/reconstruction episodes, but
which, if any, of these corresponds with Mackenzie's
City IT.iiidestruction? On the face of it, the deposits
identified by Barber sound most compatible, but given
the limited documentation of the pottery from
Mackenzie's contexts, and the small exposures and the
lack of unambiguous stratigraphic associations with
structural evidence for major destructions and
rebuildings in the 1974-1977 trenches, we simply do
not know. Renfrew's warning about 'suppositious
correlations' (Renfrew 1979B: 582; Davis & Cherry
1984: 148; 1990: 193-98) applies as much to intra-site
correlations between trenches as it does to correlations
between horizons at different sites.
Therefore, it seems that we have to rely on
Mackenzie's own observations, which it has already
been noted, are difficult to reinterpret. That he was
able to contrast major site-wide destructions with
more localised phase-specific events suggests in itself
that he was sensitive to the differences, and felt no
need to create major horizons where none existed
(Mackenzie 1904: 254-55, 263). However, it cannot
be ruled out that he could have conflated a series of
individual rebuildings which occurred in the late MBA
and early LBA, thereby creating a unified 'event' out
of a more extended phase of disruption or
transformation.
Is Mackenzie likely to have been able to assess the
broad synchroneity of the ceramics in the final City IT
levels across the site? The principal ceramic styles in
use during City IT.iiicontinued in use in City Ill.i, the
difference being in the relative prominence of the
different types (Mackenzie 1898: 32-33; 1904: 263-
66; Edgar 1898: 44-47; 1904: 106--108,129;Dawkins
& Droop 1911: 11-14; Barber 1974: 51; 1987: 148-
52, 167-72). There are indications that the contents of
each deposit were systematically assessed (Mackenzie
1963: 10--11;Hogarth 1898: 4, 11; Edgar 1898: 37-
38; 1904: 81), though this alone is unlikely to have
produced any clear dichotomisation. Even
comprehensive quantification did not achieve this for
the deposits carefully excavated in the 1970s, which
reveal continuous changes in the representation of
 TODD WHITELA W

different types (Davis & Cherry 1984: fig. 1; Berg
2000A: figs. 4.9-11; 2000B: fig. 5). Mackenzie's
discrimination of deposits will have needed to draw on
both the ceramic and architectural characteristics of
each context, and his interpretation of the latter, given
the coarse stratigraphic framework employed, may
have encouraged the conflation of different individual
events into a general horizon.
deposits in the 1974-1977 trenches appear to provide
support for Mackenzie's interpretation (Barber 1978:
377).3 Therefore, it seems appropriate to accept
Mackenzie's interpretation, pending either new, much
more widespread investigations at the site, or the
detailed reassessment of the original documentation
for specific contexts.

Countering these uncertainties and contributing to the What was the date of the City 11 destruction?
likelihood that Mackenzie would have correctly The second question focuses on the date of such a
recognised the transition, is the scale of the debris horizon. The stylistic characteristics of Cretan and
layer (1-2 m thick), which represents the City Il level mainland ceramics around the transition between the
all over the site, which is not simply the result of rising MBA and LBA have been intensively investigated in
floor levels during the duration of City n. Mackenzie recent decades (summarised in Walberg 1992; Warren
recognised this as a raft of debris on which City Ill.i 1999; Warren & Hankey 1989; Dickinson 1977: 17-
was rebuilt (Mackenzie 1904: 263). This was noted by 31; Rutter 2001: 124-44; Dietz 1991), though they
Atkinson as being far more substantial than the debris remain somewhat problematic. Mackenzie consistently
level marking the destruction of City I.ill (Mackenzie refers to the material recovered in the City Il
1904: 28), which may be a reflection of more frequent destruction contexts as 'Theraean', drawing
two-storey houses in City n. An estimate of the comparisons with the pre-eruption ceramics of Thera
volume of rubble and earth from the collapse of a two- (Mackenzie 1899: 4; 1963: passim). Based on the
storey structure (given the known wall thickness and . material published at that time (e.g. Fouque 1998;
room size, and estimating original heights from the Dumont & Chaplain 1888: pls. 1-2; Perrot & Chipiez
preserved structures at Akrotiri), would suggest about 1894: 136-54), and available for examination in the
2-2.5 m of debris in each room, reduced to the degree collections of the French School in Athens (Renaudin
that stones were salvaged for rebuilding. This is 1922) and on Thera (Hiller von Gaertringen & Wilski
comparable in scale to the well-documented debris 1904: 39-47; Scholes 1956: 26), these should have
level which represents the early LC I seismic been the styles now well-documented in the
destruction at Akrotiri, where the upper floors of many assemblage from the volcanic destruction level at
buildings were destroyed, and the rubble from them Akrotiri (Marthari 1984; 1987; 1990A).
used to raise the level of the streets and some ground
floor rooms (palyvou 1984; Marthari 1984; 1990A). Given their descriptions and the plates in the final
This provided a major horizon which we can have volume to which they refer, it appears that Edgar
confidence Mackenzie will have recognised, even in (1898: 44-46) and Mackenzie (1963: passim) used the
separate parts of the site excavated in different years. term 'Theraean' to describe several different classes of
While more difficult to recognise in limited exposures, Dark-on-Light wares with curvilinear and floral
as Barber has suggested (1978: 377), it may also motifs which were characteristic of later City Il,
provide a clear enough horizon to link to the sequences including at least some examples of those eventually
in the individual 1974-1977 trenches, though this will published as the 'Early Mycenaean Style with Designs
have to be assessed on a trench by trench basis when in Matt Black' and the 'Early Mycenaean Period with
the stratigraphy and associated deposits are published Designs in Black and Red', which continued into
in full. Early City ill, and the 'Later Local of the Mycenaean
Period', which included the 'Red and Black' style,
In conclusion, while one can identify potential sources which developed into a monochrome red variant. The
of confusion, particularly given the rapid excavation 'Later Local' styles began in Late City Il, but were
and limited supervision during the 1896-1899 most characteristic of Early City ill; they were
campaign, the detail of stratigraphic documentation recognised by both Mackenzie, and Dawkins and
and the developing understanding of the ceramics and Droop as being heavily derivative of Cretan LM lA
stratigraphy as the excavation progressed, no evidence models (Mackenzie 1904: 264-65; Dawkins & Droop
has yet been presented to challenge Mackenzie's 1911: 10-14; Furumark 1950: 192-201).
interpretation of a site-wide destruction marking the
end of his City Il, The scale of the destruction, with its 3 The inability of a Correspondence analysis to seriate these
resulting debris, makes it likely that Mackenzie would deposits chronologically has been argued to support Barber's
have recognised the level consistently. In addition, interpretation (Berg 2000A: 131-32), though the variables on
which the seriation was based were not demonstrated to be
Barber's observations on the character of the latest MC chronologically sensitive within the MC period.

46
 A TALE OF THREE CITIES: CHRONOLOGY AND MINOANISATION
Visually, it is the material which Mackenzie identifies
as typical of the first phase of City ID (Mackenzie
1904: 264, pls. XXIII, XXV) which appears most
directly comparable to the ceramics from the volcanic
destruction level at Akrotiri. Edgar and Mackenzie
defined this later phase as 'Mycenaean', on the basis
of the lustrous-surfaced Dark-on-Light Cretan and
mainland imports and their similarity to material from
the Shaft Graves at Mycenae (Edgar 1898: 38; 1904:
106-108; Mackenzie 1898: 32), previously classified
as 'Mycenaean' by Furtwangler and Loschke (1886).
The terminological quandary caused by the inclusion
of'Theraean' type material alongside the 'Mycenaean'
material in the Shaft Graves, was explicitly recognised
by Edgar (1898: 38, 45-47; 1904: 106-107). Initially
the decision was taken to limit the term 'Mycenaean'
to pottery of the uppermost stratum (Mackenzie 1898:
32; Edgar 1898: 38), but established usage led Edgar
to rechristen the later City IT material as 'Early
Mycenaean' in the final publication (Edgar 1904: 106-
107).
It is also worth bearing in mind that the distinctive
imports which may have been the most tell-tale pieces
distinguishing the two phases, are now known to occur
only in very low percentages (Cherry & Davis 1982:
337); the balance between the different local wares and
their stratigraphic context will have provided the
principal clues as to when a deposit was to be classed
as 'Theraean' (Late City II) or 'Mycenaean' (City ID).
An idea of the uncertainty is provided by the fact that,
while Furumark rarely discussed the Theran material
known from the 191h century excavations, he classed it
with the Final City Il.iii material, as MC ID (Furumark
1941: 217).
While City IT has been equated with the MC period
(Furumark 1941: 217; 1950: 192; Scholes 1956: 4, 22,
36-39; Barber 1978; 1983), most analysts have
suggested that some Cretan LM IA vessels were
imported to the site before the destruction which ended
City IT.ill(e.g. Scholes 1956: 24, 35; Barber 1974: 51;
Warren & Hankey 1989: 66). These assessments are
based on only a small range of published material
(Atkinson et al. 1904: pls. XN-XXII), which does not
appear to include any obvious imports from Crete,
though imports are presupposed by the local
imitations. In fact, this conclusion appears to rely on
two individual vessels (Atkinson et at. 1904: pl.
XIX.9-IO; possibly also pl. XVIII.6), both tall conical
bowls ('flower pots') with pierced bases, decorated
with grass/reed motifs-a Minoan shape with Minoan
style decoration, which would be considered LM IA in
Crete (Warren & Hankey 1989: 66). The plates on
which these pieces are shown were compiled to
illustrate the 'Early Mycenaean Style with Designs in
Matt Black', rather than pottery from City Il.iii
47
AT PHYLAKOPI IN MELOS
contexts, and the style itself continued, though
declining in popularity, into Early City ID. As Warren
and Hankey recognise (1989: 66), there is no
guarantee that these two pieces derived from City Il.iii,
rather than ID.i contexts.
A further salutary caution is provided by the only
illustrated vessel for which a City IT.iii provenance
seems secure (Edgar 1904: 137; pl. XXVII.1; almost
certainly one of the five pedestalled bowls from the
City IT.iiidestruction level in G3.04), which is actually
illustrated with the 'Later Local Mycenaean Pottery',
which, while beginning in Late City IT, is most
characteristic of Early City ID (Mackenzie 1898: 32-
33; 1904: 264-Q5; Edgar 1904: 129; Dawkins &
Droop 1911: 11-14; Barber 1987: 150-52; Sherratt
2000A: 278, 287-88). The retorted running spiral
motif might place these vessels in mature LM IA in
Minoan terms (cf Warren & Hankey 1989: 74;
Warren 1999; Niemeier 1980: 29-31), if the motif is
derived from LM IA Dark-on-Light pottery. While
this might seem obvious, running spirals also have a
considerable history at Phylakopi in the local
repertoire, going back into the early MC period (Edgar
1904: pls. VII.1, XLl, XID.9, 11-13, XV-XVII, XIX-
XX, XXXN.9). Retorted spirals are also a frequent
MM IIB-MM ID motif on Crete, though painted in
white on a dark ground (Betancourt 1985: 109;
Walberg 1992: 92-93; MacGillivray 1998; Betancourt
1990; Levi 1976). Like other MM IT-MM ID
influences on MC vase painting, they may have been
adopted but translated directly from Light-on-Dark, to
the local Dark-on-Light technique (Mackenzie 1904:
260; Furumark 1941: 220-22). Relevant examples are
provided by a White-on-Dark MM import to
Phylakopi (Sherratt 2000A: 244 [III.13.b.i.105]),and a
Dark-on-Light retorted spiral on a sherd of Cycladic
White Ware (Sherratt 2000A: 248 [ITI.13.b.i.118]).An
early transfer appears particularly likely, since thick-
banded retorted spirals seem more characteristic of
later MM Light-on-Dark than LM I Dark-on-Light
versions. Running spirals are the standard decoration
for Cretan pedestalled bowls in both Light-on-Dark
(MacGillivray 1998: pl. 95.575-7) and Dark-on-Light
(popham 1967: pl. 76g; 1984: pI. 131.k, 143.14)
schemes, and the shape and decoration could have
4 If the vessel illustrated by Edgar (1904: pI. XIX.I0), noted as
having exceptional alternating red and black floral sprays
(Edgar 1904: 118, 169), was that recovered in G2.23, 1.20 m
below the surface (Mackenzie notes such an exceptional vessel
with alternating colours [1963: 217-18]), its context is
unhelpfully vague: no floor level was noted in the alley where it
was recovered, but the City III floor in the nearby Room H2.23
was at -1.1 m (Mackenzie 1963: 217), and the City III street
level to the south appears to have been ea. 1-1.2 m below the
surface (Atkinson 1904: fig. 59). Unfortunately, given local
variations in the surface level, the vessel cannot be attributed
with confidence to either phase.
 TODD WHITELA W

/
been introduced together in the late MBA or early fact found in a higher stratum above the floors of the
LBA. Pillar Crypts on which these frescoes lay" (Evans
1921: 547). These details may represent new
Mackenzie notes contexts for a handful of other information from Mackenzie, but were presumably a
vessels with such 'meandering spirals', all either in recollection from memory, as Mackenzie made no
Final City n, Early City m, or borderline deposits notes on the pottery from the East Pillar Room in his
(Mackenzie 1963: 55, 66-67, 120, 123-124, 197; own notebooks at the time of excavation.
1898: 29; 1904: 265; Hogarth 1898: 11; 1904: 13-14;
Edgar 1904: 141). So while the decoration of these Unfortunately, while quite specific, the accuracy of
vases might initially appear to bring the destruction of Evans' statements is questionable, as Hogarth, present
City n well into LM IA in Cretan terms, the style at the excavation of the East Pillar Room noted
could have been adopted earlier, appears to be (Hogarth 1904: 17): "in all three chambers potsherds
regularly associated with the transition between Cities were very scarce and whole vases were not found".
Il and m, and need not be inconsistent with a date Furthermore, no LB I floor was identified during the
close to the boundary between the MBA and LBA. excavation above the City n destruction levels in either
pillar room; Mackenzie explicitly stated that the East
With their focus on the ceramics, one might have Pillar Room was rebuilt only late in City m
hoped for clarification from the 1911 excavations, but (Mackenzie 1904: 269). It is likely that Evans is
Dawkins' and Droop's failure clearly to relate their referring to the five spiral-decorated pedestalled bowls
discussion of pottery styles to excavated contexts, which were found at and slightly above the City n
contributes little to the understanding of the date of the floor of the West Pillar Room, though at the time of
Final City n destructions. Barber (1974) linked many excavation they were considered to be contemporary
vessels to contexts and, in general, their Stratum I with the City n destruction of the room (Hogarth
appears to correspond to Mackenzie's City Il.ii-iii, but "1904: 18; Mackenzie 1898: 29; 1963: 171). Evans
no typologically diagnostic pieces can be linked appears generally to have been vague about the
unambiguously to the relevant destruction deposits. stratigraphic details, since the column base which he
One pedestalled bowl (Dawkins & Droop 1911: pi. suggests had fallen from the same upstairs room as the
vm.91) was found just below a floor which can be Flying Fish fresco (Evans 1921: 554, n. 3) was
dated to City m.ii, and may have been in a City n.iii actually found several rooms to the west (Hogarth
context, but this is not absolutely certain (Barber 1974: 1904: 18; Atkinson 1904: 61). Therefore, Evans'
13, 15 [Assemblage F)). It was accompanied by a few supplementary statements purporting to represent
sherds imitating LM I styles and conical cups (Barber Mackenzie's views do not appear to add reliably to the
1974: table 7, Assemblage F). An almost identical original published details.
vessel was recovered from a probable Late City n
context in F2.l3, along with a conical rhyton with Overall, with so little published material, almost none
'meandering spirals' (Edgar 1904: 137, fig. 110; of it ascribed to specific contexts and none of it
Mackenzie 1898: 29; 1904: 265; Hogarth 1904: 13); published as coherent deposits, it is difficult to place
the uncertainty over their contexts emphasises the the end of City Il relative to other sites, with either
stylistic continuity between the phases, as well as the precision or confidence (Warren & Hankey 1989: 65).
unreliability of trying to date contexts on the stylistic The most recent assessments continue to place the end
characteristics of individual vessels. of City n around the transition between the MBA and
LBA, drawing parallels with MM m-LM IA
In attempting to date various frescoes from Knossos, transitional assemblages on Crete (Warren 1991: 338;
Evans drew upon similarities with those from the final Warren & Hankey 1989: 66; otherwise viewed as
City n contexts at Phylakopi, providing an assessment Evans' MM llIB [Hood 1996; Macdonald 1996;
of their date in the by then well-established Minoan Warren 1999]), and the seismic destruction level
ceramic framework (Evans 1921: 544): "the Phylakopi assemblage at Akrotiri (Warren 1991: 338; Davis
wall-painting was found on the floor of the Pillar 2001: 75). But these conclusions can only be as
Crypt of the early Palace in association with sherds of reliable as the original published data on which they
a Melian class, parallel with the M.M. m phase in are based, scanty as they are, reviewed above.
Crete and belonging to the last epoch of the Second
City of Phylakopi." Elsewhere he was more specific The finer distinctions within the sequence of later MC
(Evans 1921: 547): "the catastrophe of the building in and early LC ceramics at Ayia Irini (Davis 1986;
which they were found [... ) as the vessels found on its Schofield 1984; Curnmer & Schofield 1984;
original floor-level demonstrate, must have taken Herschenson 1998), and those emerging from the
place at the end of M.M. m." He attributed this " analysis of the material from soundings and the roof
information to Mackenzie (Evans 1921: 544, n. 1), support pits at Akrotiri (Marthari 1984; 1990A;
adding that "vases showing L.M. I influence were in Kariotis 2003; Nikolakopoulou et al. in press;

48
 A TALE OF THREE CITIES: CHRONOLOGY AND MINOANISATION
Knappett & Nikolakopoulou 2005), are helping to
define the transition between the MBA and LBA in the
Cyclades, against which the old and new Phylakopi
material can be compared. The analysis and
publication of the material from the 1974-1977
excavations will undoubtedly give us a much better
idea of the chronological changes within the Phylakopi
assemblages (e.g. Barber 1978; 1987: 146-52, 154-
56; Davis & Cherry 1984; 1990: 193-96; Mountjoy
1999; Mountjoy & Ponting 2000; Berg 2000A), and
their links with other sites. Cretan LM IA imports and
imitations are reported from the latest MC (Barber
1978: 368, 377; 1984A: 180; 1987: 31, 159) and the
earliest LC I levels (Renfrew 1978: 407) in the 1974-
1977 trenches; but, without a clear site-wide horizon,
these correlations are subject to the somewhat arbitrary
division of the sequence of levels in each trench, based
on continuous change in stylistic criteria (Berg 2oo0A:
figs. 4.9-11). Because of this, linking specific levels in
the 1974-1977 trenches to Mackenzie's phases is
likely to continue to be difficult, and the date of the
end of City lI.iii is also likely to remain somewhat
imprecise, unless the late MC dumps identified by
Barber (1978: 377) are accepted as synchronous and
corresponding to Mackenzie's City lI.iii debris level,
once the evidence is published and can be assessed.
Ill. DATING SPECIFIC CONTEXTS
Moving away from the site-wide horizon to specific
architectural contexts at the site may be more
informative, as these have been the basis for
Renfrew's critique and allow explicit comparison of
old and new observations and interpretations. Renfrew
has used three of the 1974-1977 trenches to challenge
the dating of the Fortification Wall and the Pillar
Rooms, which were key components of Mackenzie's
City 11 (Renfrew 1978: 407-11). While detailed
analysis must await the :full publication of the 1974-
1977 excavations, the preliminary reports provide
sufficient information to raise doubts about the
redatings proposed, and it is worth looking at each in
turn, to see if they require a revision of Mackenzie's
conclusions.
A. THE FORTIFICATION WALL
The Fortification Wall at the west end of the site was
dated by Mackenzie to City 11, though both he and
Atkinson were uncertain about its construction date
within the period and the precise date of subsequent
modifications (Mackenzie 1904: 255, 258; Atkinson
1904: 30-35). Further east, various internal and
external lines of walling were traced which were
thought might relate to one or more phases of
fortification, but the shallow 1898 trenches did not
date their construction (Hogarth 1898: 7; 1904: 8-9;
Mackenzie 1898: 31; Atkinson 1904: 35).
49
AT PHYLAKOPI IN MELOS
To the west, Mackenzie identified walls dated to the
final phase of City I which ran under the Fortification
Wall on the interior, over which deposit had
accumulated before the Fortification Wall was built
(Hogarth 1904: 11; Mackenzie 1898: 22; 1904: 255).
Unfortunately, the inner line of the casement wall is
probably a secondary addition, so the stratification
inside need not, in itself, date the construction of the
original Fortification Wall, recognised in Atkinson's
admittedly arbitrary decision to mark the inner face as
constructed in City ID (Atkinson 1904: 30).
Excavation within the cells of the wall revealed
'Mycenaean' sherds for the upper 2 rn, with
'Theraean' wares below (Mackenzie 1963: 12-16),
suggesting only that the casemates at the west of the
site were probably added in later City 11 or City ID.
Along the exterior of the Fortification Wall,
Mackenzie encountered burnished and geometric
painted wares of Late City I (or potentially Early City
II) date, directly overlying the rock (Mackenzie 1963:
40-43, 45-46). 10 most cases, the foundation of the
Wall rested on the rock, but at one point, he appears to
have recognised a deposit of these wares beneath the
foundations (Mackenzie 1963: 42-43, 45-46; Hogarth
1898: 5; Momigliano 1999: 24), and he decided that
the latter had been cut down into the earlier deposit
Overlying the City I material was an extensive deposit,
characterised by 'Theraean' wares, mixed with burnt
destruction debris, including painted fresco fragments.
Mackenzie considered this debris to be from the City
11 destruction, cleared out during the rebuilding of City
ID.i (Mackenzie 1963: 33-39). He noted that this
debris extended physically under the foundation of the
projecting bastion at B5 (Hogarth 1904: fig. 2), and
under the bottom course of an outer wall which ran
roughly parallel to the Fortification Wall (Mackenzie
1898: 25, 3~; 1963: 30, 32, 34-37). The bastion and
outwork were therefore part of a rebuilding of the
Fortification Wall sometime during City ID (Hogarth
1904: 7; Atkinson 1904: 33; Mackenzie 1963: 29-52,
72).
The pottery up against the exterior of the Fortification
Wall for the top two metres was 'Mycenaean',
Mackenzie's City ID, though he does not specify
whether Early or Late. The upper part of the main
Fortification Wall itself was rebuilt at this time, in
slightly looser construction, ignoring a minor set-back,
visible in the lower, original masonry; the bastion at
B5 was probably added at the same time (Mackenzie
1898: 25, 31; Atkinson 1904: 35; Hogarth 1904: fig.
15). It may be that the inner Wall and casernate
structure was part of this rebuilding, though this would
need restudy to clarify the construction sequence. Also
attributed to the late rebuilding was the bastion outside
the staircase which led to the top of the Wall (D5/6),
though Mackenzie dated the stair itself to City 11
(Mackenzie 1963: 51,72). He does not indicate what
 TO DD WHITELA W
Fig. 2. Proposed sequence of fortification at Phylakopi: A. City I.iii; B. City II.iii; C. City III.i-ii;
D. City III.iii (drawing by the author).
observation led him to the latter view, and Atkinson
dated the entire bastion to City ill on his final 1904
plan. Trench KKd, excavated in 1976, was placed
against the exterior of a small projecting bastion in
square E5 (Renfrew 1984 [1976]: 346) [Figs. tB,2C].
The line of the Wall had been revealed through
shallow trenching in 1897, but this was not carried
down to a significant depth; Mackenzie barely
comments on this area in his notebooks (Mackenzie
1963: 74), though the line of the Fortification Wall and
bastion was planned (Smith 1897: pl. I). The 1976
excavation reached bedrock, and revealed a layer of
early MC material on the rock (Berg 2000A: 138),
overlain by deposits with mid-LC I material, which
have been taken as dating the construction of the Wall
(Renfrew 1978: 408; Davis & Cherry 1984: 154). The
bastion itself was seated directly on the rock (Davis &
Cherry 1984: fig. 3), so the relationship between its
construction and the MC deposit is unclear. The LC I
pottery appears to have been deposited against the base
of the bastion, but whether at the time it was
constructed or significantly later, cannot be
established. In addition, there appears to be a complex
sequence of building and rebuilding of the bastion at
this point, Clark's plan of 1897 appears to distinguish
the bastion as an addition (Smith 1897:pl. I, E5.4), and
Atkinson explicitly noted that the Fortification Wall
50
A A A E- 320 M
immediately to the east of the bastion represented the
'probable original face of wall' (Atkinson 1904: 67,
E5.c). This indicates that the projecting bastion
exposed by the trench, appeared, like that further west
in square B5, to be a later addition, rather than an
integral component of the original Fortification Wall.
Therefore, because of the unclear relative stratification,
complex construction sequence and the small size of
the exposure, it appears unlikely that the original
Fortification Wall was actually encountered in the
1976 trench, and it is not clear that any of the LC I
ceramics can be clearly associated with the
construction, rather than the later use, of either the
bastion or the Fortification Wall at this location. That
material provides a terminus ante quem for the bastion,
which itself may be contemporary with or postdate the
Fortification Wall behind it.
Further to the east, Trenches PLa and PK, opened in
1974-1975, defined a refortification of the site in the
LH IIIBl period (Renfrew 1978: 407; 1985C: 81)
(Fig. 2C-D). The inner face of this wall was traced in
1898, and in the 1911 excavation could be seen to
represent a rebuilding inside whatever earlier line of
fortifications might have existed at this part of the site,
since it was built over house walls of Stratum 11
 A TALE OF THREE CITIES: CHRONOLOGY AND MINOANISA TION AT PHYLAKOPI IN MELOS
(Dawkins & Droop 1911: pl I). South of Trench PLa,
Trench PK, opened in 1975, located a line of walling
further down the slope, which has been dated to LC I
and taken to represent the eastward extension of the
original Fortification Wall (Renfrew 1978: 408). This
must correspond to one of a series of walls running
across the slope which were encountered in the 1898
excavation [Fig. 2C]. None of these were as massive
as the Fortification Wall at the west of the site (cf
Renfrew 1978: pl. c), leading the original investigators
to question whether they were part of the fortification
system (Hogarth 1898: 7; 1904: 9; Atkinson 1904: 35;
Mackenzie 1898: 31). Given the number of walls in
this area (Atkinson et al. 1904:pl, IT,G-H5-6) and the
narrow 1975 trench, it is still not clear whether any or
all of these were part of a fortification system, or
simply retaining walls stabilising the slope above the
small inlet which lay immediately south of the site. It
is not clear that the LB I wall revealed in Trench PK
relates directly to the Fortification Wall in the west, or
has anything to do with the earliest fortification of the
site.
Together, these ambiguities indicate that the
construction of the major Fortification Wall at the west
of the site cannot be closely dated on the basis of
Mackenzie's excavations, though it probably postdates
City I (or possibly early MC), and predates or is
contemporary with the 'Theraean' material dumped
against its lower face. As already noted, by 'Theraean',
Mackenzie might have been referring to late MC or
LC I-LC IT styles, though he used the term
consistently to refer to the ceramics characteristic of
the final phase of City IT.While it might be tempting to
equate Mackenzie's 'Theraean' material with the Le I
pottery found outside the walls in Trenches PK and
KKd, these latter dumps appear to be of slightly
different dates (Davis & Cherry 1984: 154, fig. 4; Berg
2000A: 131--43)and there seems to be no secure basis
for equating either deposit with the material recovered
by Mackenzie further to the west. Taking all of these
observations together, there appears to be no
conclusive dating evidence for the construction of the
original Fortification Wall; the 'Theraean' burnt debris
dumped against it, which Mackenzie associated with
the destruction of City IT, provides a terminus ante
quem for the construction of the Wall. The evidence
recovered in the 1974-1977 trenches does not
contradict this, nor does it appear to provide any less
ambiguous dating. At present, it does not appear to be
justified to claim that the construction of the
Fortification Wall should be redated to LC I, or that its
construction postdates Mackenzie's City IT (Renfrew
1978:.408; 1982A: 39; Davis & Cherry 1984: 154).
Interestingly, accepting Mackenzie's original dating
brings the history of fortification at Phylakopi more
into line with that of Ayia Irini on Kea (Davis 1986).
While such synchronisation is certainly not necessary,
51
since different commumnes can be expected to
develop in different ways, some broad similarities
would not be surprising and may allow more nuanced
explorations of the similarities and differences in the
development of each site.
B. THE PILLAR ROOMS
Renfrew has claimed, and it has been generally
accepted, that the East Pillar Room, and by extension
the entire Pillar Rooms Complex, should be redated
from the MC City IT to the LC I-LC IT City ill
(Renfrew 1983 [1975]: 332; 1978: 411; 1982A: 39;
Davis & Cherry 1984: 154). As already noted, since
the destruction of these rooms was taken by
Mackenzie as defining the end of City IT,dating the
associated ceramics within LC I-LC IT should refine
the dating of the end of City IT,not simply shift these
individual contexts into a newly defined City ill. In
addition, a destruction in ceramic phase LC I-LC IT
need not date the construction or use of these rooms
entirely within this phase, as has been asserted
(Renfrew 1978: 408), and widely followed,
particularly in discussions of the date at which the
frescoes were painted (Hood 1978: 53; Immerwahr
1990A: 189; Morgan 1990: 263--64; E. Davis 1990:
225).
The evidence for redating comes from Trench II-S, a
small trench opened in Room G3.l1 [Fig. 3A), the
room immediately to the south-east of the East Pillar
Room. Davis and Cherry date the construction of the
room in which Trench II-S was located to LC I (Davis
& Cherry 1984: 154), but no structural evidence has
been presented to demonstrate that this applies to the
adjacent East Pillar Room as well. Fresco fragments
which can be associated with those recovered in 1898-
1899 from the rooms immediately to the west were
recovered within Mackenzie's back-dirt, but also in a
debris level which included LC I-LC IT sherds
(Renfrew 1983 [1975]: 332; Davis & Cherry 1984:
154). This deposit appears to represent collapse
material from the rooms to the west, and similarly
dispersed fresco fragments were recovered from the
uppermost (City III) level in the street to the north of
the East Pillar Room in 1898, at the same level as (but
not directly associated with) fragments of a LC IT
Marine Style vessel (Hogarth 1904: 16-17).
The original excavators believed that the East Pillar
Room had collapsed gradually (Mackenzie 1899: 3;
1963: 168; Hogarth 1898: 15), and that rebuilding,
marked by the overlying walls, took place only late in
City ill (Mackenzie 1904: 269). The City ITwalls were
probably demolished and the area levelled with debris
to provide a secure foundation for rebuilding, since the
City III walls deviate significantly from the underlying
City IT walls (Atkinson 1904: 28; Mackenzie 1898:
30--31).
 To DD WHITELA W

CENTRE EAST

1898
SURFACE

SCHEMA TIC SECTION THROUGH

PILLAR ROOMS COMPLEX
BASED ON ARCHITECfURAL ELEVATION BY ATKINSON,
AND FEATURE DEPTHS RECORDED BY MACKENZIE.

Fig. 3. The Pillar Rooms area: A. plan showing walls of all phases;
B. reconstructed schematic west-east section (drawing by the author).

52

=
 A TALE OF THREE CITIES: CHRONOLOGY AND MINOANISATION
The spread of rubble into the adjacent spaces may
have taken place at the time of the initial City II.iii
destruction, during delayed gradual collapse, or at a
subsequent date when the ruins were demolished and
rebuilding undertaken. The latest sherds within the
debris level in Trench II-S may have been associated
with the use of the room before the destruction, though
they could as well date an independent and
significantly later episode of demolition and
rebuilding. The occurrence of fresco fragments at the
level of the City III street, about 1 m higher than both
the City II floor and street levels, is suggestive of later
City III disturbance of the collapsed ruins and late
rebuilding, as Mackenzie reported.
Therefore, this deposit does not necessarily indicate
the date of the construction, or the final use, of the
Pillar Rooms Complex, or the painting of the
associated frescoes, or all of the frescoes atPhylakopi,
all of which have been suggested (Renfrew 1978: 405,
407, 409; 1982A: 38-39; Renfrew & Brice 1977:
117). The evidence from Trench II-S appears to date
the final collapse or demolition of the East Pillar
Room, and provides a terminus post quem, in
agreement with Mackenzie's Late City III date, for the
rebuilding above the City II structure. This does not
actually contradict Mackenzie's 1898-1899
conclusions based on his excavations within the East
Pillar Room itself.
In the case of the Pillar Rooms, as with the
Fortification Wall, it does not appear to be clear what
has been dated in the 1974-1977 trenches; the dateable
deposits in the small trenches do not appear to be
unambiguously linked to the architectural features of
interest. The LC I-LC II ceramics provide only a
terminus ante quem for each feature, which is not
actually inconsistent with Mackenzie's City II dating,
based on far more extensive exposures of relevant
deposits. There appear to be no contradictions in the
actual observations made on either context in the
1896-1899 and 1974-1977 investigations, only in the
way these data are interpreted.
Underlying any assessment of Minoanisation at the
site must be a reliable chronological framework. This
is impossible to establish conclusively on the basis of
the published account of the 1896-1899 excavations,
given that little material was actually published, and
very little of that was attributed to specific contexts.
Drawing upon the published and unpublished records
for the preceding assessment, nothing has been found
to contest Mackenzie's interpretation, though equally,
little secure documentation can be provided to support
it. What can be established is the scale of the
destruction horizon representing the end of City II, and
we can approach the problem in reverse, by asking
how likely it is that Mackenzie would not have
recognised and properly identified such a major
53
AT PHYLAKOPI IN MELOS
horizon in contexts across the site. This suggests that,
in broad outline, he is likely to have been correct,
having had an unrivalled overview of the site, though
uncertainties may be anticipated depending on how
clear the City II debris level was in specific contexts.
While the chronological questions will need to be
considered in detail once the full data from the 1974-
1977 excavations are published, the provisional
examination here suggests that the wide-ranging
reinterpretation presented in the preliminary reports
was overambitious. This relates principally to the
difficulty in relating the sequences in the small 1974-
1977 trenches to the wider contexts only cursorily
documented in the original excavations. This is a
fundamental constraint which is unlikely to change,
even with the detailed presentation of the stratigraphic
evidence from the 1974-1977 trenches.
IV. THE PILLAR ROOMS COMPLEX AT PHYLAKOPI
We can anticipate that the full publication of the 1974-
1977 excavations will provide a much better
understanding of the long-term process of
Minoanisation of the ceramics at the site, upon which
so much of the debate has rested (Barber 1978; 1987:
146-52, 154-58, 167-72; Davis & Cherry 1984;
Mountjoy 1999; Mountjoy & Ponting 2000; Berg
2000A; 2004). Arguments about Minoanisation at
Phylakopi have otherwise tended to focus on the two
Pillar Rooms and the frescoes associated with them,
and a systematic analysis of the records of the 1896-
1899 excavations yields information which allows
these contexts to be reassessed within the broader
framework of the history of the site. The presentation
of such an assessment is beyond the scope of the
present paper, but the outlines and implications can be
summarised here.5
The earliest evidence for occupation in this part of the
site dates to late in Phylakopi I (I.iii), though too few
spaces were excavated to these levels to allow the
layout of structures at that time to be understood [Fig.
3A]. During Period II, the block structure which is
most apparent in the extensive exposure of the
uppermost stratum can be recognised, and the Pillar
Rooms and associated spaces occupied the northern
half of the block [Fig. 4]. Excavation concentrated on
the northern rooms, which were larger and had the
most interesting finds. Given the room
interconnections, there appear to have been three suites
of rooms, the West and Central Suites opening off an
open court to the north.
5 The reanalysis of the Pillar Rooms Complex stratigraphy
doubled the length of the present paper, so it has been feasible
only to summarise the results here. The full documentation and
reanalysis will be published elsewhere.
 TO DD WHITELA W

:·f..· I..

Fig. 4. The PiUar Rooms area during Late City 11 (drawing by the author).

There are no doorways connecting these with most of
the small rooms to the south and east, and it is not clear
to what extent the three principal suites of rooms were
interconnected above the ground floor; the East Suite
must have been entered from the upper floor, possibly
from the Central Suite, since no doorways existed at
ground level in the well-preserved walls. The complex
was rebuilt, according to the excavators late in Period
Ill (Mackenzie 1904: 269), rather than immediately
preserved and little pottery was recovered. However,
the doorway in the preserved north wall and the floor
level, as well as the foundations of the walls, were all
at comparable depths to those of the City IT rooms to
the east and west, and approximately 1 m below the
level of the City Ill street to the north [Fig. 3A-B].
A. DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PILLAR ROOMS

after the destruction of City IT. This uppermost stratum COMPLEX

was only poorly preserved and the character of the
structures at that time is not clear; houses were also
built over the court to the north, though whether early
or late in City Ill is not documented [Fig. 5].
Mackenzie appears to have been mistaken in dating
the Central Suite to City Ill, rather than City IT,
probably because no traces of late rebuilding were
The architectural characteristics of the Pillar Rooms
Complex are worth considering in the context of the
site, and in terms of the process of Minoanisation in
the Cyclades. The excavators, when first exploring the
block in 1898, were 'warned by the solidity of the
northern outer wall to expect charnbers of better
character than any explored before' (Hogarth 1904:
16).

54

L -
 A TALE OF THREE CITIES: CHRONOLOGY AND MINOANISATION AT PHYLAKOPIIN MELOS

_MmW;~4 [1911)

[I UN~~VATED
CITY ill (POSSmLE) I H H I

Fig. 5. The Pillar Rooms area during Late City III (drawing by the author).

That wall, which faced the public court, was
constructed at least in part of roughly coursed,
hammer-dressed blocks (Mackenzie 1963: 150;
Atkinson 1904: figs. 43, 46), which suggests a
relatively high investment in these structures within
the community (and presumably their high status),
from their original construction.
In terms of internal features, the carefully worked
pillars themselves have been assumed to be a
Minoanising introduction at Phylakopi (Mackenzie
1904: 261; Evans 1901: 111). The span of neither
room is exceptional and it appears unlikely that the
pillars were structurally necessary. The association of
five pedestalled bowls, pierced at top and bottom to
allow liquids to drain through them, with the west
pillar, provides a parallel to the Cretan pillar rooms
with built floor receptacles (Evans 1901: 111; Gesell
1985: 26-28). Here, the physical form of the pillars
and their associations suggest a Cretan link in physical
form, practice and concept. No other pillars were
identified in City IT, though several built piers were
incorporated in City ID structures (Atkinson et al.
1904: pi. IT:E3.23; J3.05, and E3.8 [marked only on
the 1898 plan]). Only three column bases have been
recognised at the site: one of these was in a City ID
context, while the remaining two were recovered in the
West and Central Suites of the Pillar Rooms Complex.
It has been suggested that worked column bases are a
Minoanising feature in the Cyclades (palyvou 1984:
147; Wiener 1990: 140). While the dearth of
excavated MC contexts might urge caution, the direct
association of the only two examples recovered from
City IT contexts, with the equally rare pillars,
emphasises their exotic or exclusive status.
Lacking detailed documentation, the layout of the
structures at Phylakopi cannot be analysed with the

55
 TODD WHITELA W
thoroughness possible at either Ayia Irini (Curnrner &
Schofield 1984) or Akrotiri (palyvou 1986; 1990;
1999A; 1999B; Michailidou 1990; 200lB), though
some similarities and differences with the better
documented sites can be noted. Houses appear to have
opened directly off streets, rather than courts as at
Akrotiri, except for the two northern doors into the
Pillar Rooms Complex, which opened off the only
major court known in the community. In the Central
and possibly the West Suites, the entrance was directly
into a large room with a column, a common Cretan
and Theran room type (Michailidou 1987; 1990;
200lB: 382-86; 1999A: 612-13; 1999B: 235-38),
otherwise not documented in City IT. Minoan- and
Theran-style U-plan staircases were probably rare at
the site, the only likely example in City IT being
Rooms 8 and 13 in the West Suite of the Pillar Rooms
Complex.
The rectangular layout of the West Suite, while seen in
a few other houses in City IT, deviates from the
standard linear plan of interconnecting rooms,
represented by the Central and East Suites. This linear
layout is also the standard architectural suite at Ayia
Irini, and the conspicuous exception there is the
rectangular block of the east wing of the central
mansion, House A, the locus of the most Minoanised
architectural and decorative features at that site in LC
I-Le IT (Cummer 1980; Cummer & Schofield 1984:
40-41; Hitchcock 1998). House A itself expanded and
developed through several phases, but its original
form, in Period VI, is reconstructed as a rectangular
block of rooms with two adjacent rows of rooms with
their own separate entrance (Cummer & Schofield
1984: 31-32, pl. 46), a mirror image of the entire Pillar
Rooms Complex [Fig. 6A-C]. As with House A at
Ayia Irini (Cummer 1980; Cummer & Schofield 1984:
40-1; Hitchcock 1998), the Pillar Rooms Complex
was elaborately constructed, the exclusive focus of
Minoanised architectural traits in City ITPhylakopi and
opened directly off a public court near the centre of the
site.
The assessment of Minoanisation in City IThas always
drawn heavily on the painted wall plaster recovered
principally from the Pillar Rooms Complex
(Bosanquet 1904; Mackenzie 1904: 261; Evans 1921:
542-47; 1930: 40-42; Furumark 1950: 192; Hood
1978: 53-54; Renfrew 1982C: 225; Marinates 1990;
Boulotis 2000). The fragments recovered are sufficient
to suggest that four rooms (or the rooms above them)
had painted plaster decoration: G3.04, 06, 11 and 14.
The Pillar Rooms Complex was the clear focus in City
ITfor frescoes in terms of variety as well as quantity; it
is also the principal location of representational wall-
paintings from the site, with only three individual
56
fragments recovered from other contexts, all Early
City ill in date.
Several of the limited collection of finds recorded from
the Pillar Rooms Complex are exceptional within the
site. Fragments of a clay bovine rhyton (Bosanquet &
Welch 1904: fig. 176) were recovered from Room
G3.8 (Mackenzie 1963: 158; not G3.10 as stated by
Bosanquet & Welch 1904: 204). The rhyton is coil-
made rather than wheel-turned or mould-made
(French 1985: 240) and comparisons with well-
documented examples are consistent with a Late City
ITor Early City ill date. An imported Cretan steatite
lamp found in Room G3.10 (Bosanquet & Welch
1904: 209, fig. 184, pl. XLI.1; Warren 1969: 53), is an
undecorated form and is therefore likely to be earlier
rather than later within the Neopalatia1 period (A.
Bevan, pers. comm.). One other lamp from the site
may have been either Late City IT or Early City ill
(Hogarth 1898: 14; 1904: 13; Mackenzie 1963: 144);
the other Cretan stone vessels were all said to be from
Early City ill contexts (Mackenzie 1898: 34; 1904:
266; Bosanquet & Welch 1904: 196). Also recovered
from the Central Complex was a carved ivory volute,
probably a decorative attachment for furniture or some
other artefact, from G3.05 (Bosanquet & Welch 1904:
193-94, fig. 163;pl. XL.8). It is a unique exotic import
in Late City IT,the only other ivory artefacts from the
site being assigned an Early City ill provenance
(Bosanquet & Welch 1904: 193), or coming from the
Le ill Shrine (Renfrew & Cherry 1985: 323-24).
In the West Suite, the five pedestalled bowls found
near the pillar have already been noted (Edgar 1904:
137-38, pl, XXVII.1). They have clear Cretan models
in shape and decoration (MacGillivray 1998: pl.
95.575-7; Popham 1967: pl. 76g; 1984: pls. 131.k,
143.14). These vessels, unlike some variants of the
shape, were pierced so that liquids could drain through
the upper bowl and also through the base. It has been
suggested that such pedestalled bowls may have
developed into the cultic 'snake tube', which served as
the columnar support for a separate conical bowl
(Gesell 1985: 63). Despite Nilsson's (1950: 243)
dismissal, the pierced form, as here, should have a
strong claim as a receptacle for libations. The location
of this group, near the base of the pillar, led to their
interpretation as receptacles for offerings (Edgar 1904:
136-37), particularly once pillar rooms with adjacent
built stone receptacles were encountered on Crete
(Evans 1900: 34; 1901: 111; Hogarth 1900: 76).
From the floor near the west pillar, broken vessels
holding scarlet earth were recovered (Hogarth 1904:
18). This may have been the material analysed and
reported as a possible pigment by Bosanquet (1904:
79). Red pigment has been· repeatedly noted
 A TALE OF THREE CITIES: CHRONOLOGY AND MINOANISA nON AT PHYLAKOPI IN MELOS

PILLAR ROOMS COMPLEX B

HOUSE A
'" - .... ~.
AYIA IRINL KEOS

PERIOD VI
• ORIGINAL
~ ADDITION

WEST HOUSE. AKROTIRI

UPPER FLOOR UPPER FLOOR

GROUND FLOOR GROUND FLOOR

SINGLE - STRUCTURE TWO - STRUCTURE

MODEL MODEL C COURT
F FRESCOES
5M

C = D

Fig. 6. Pillar Rooms Complex and alternative layout models: A. the PiUar Rooms Complex in Late City
11;B. House A at Ayia Irini, in Periods VI and VII; C. the PiUar Rooms Complex reconstructed as a
single structure, and House A, Ayia Irini; D. the PiUar Rooms Complex reconstructed as two structures,
and the West House, Akrotiri (drawing by the author).

in ritual contexts in Crete (Gesell 1985: 11, 35;
Marinatos 1983: 13), in the Temple at Ayia Irini
(Caskey 1981: 132), and associated with an offering
table and rhyta in the West House at Akrotiri
(Marinatos 1983: 13, table I; 1984A: 49). Red plaster
was recovered from both pillar rooms, attached to the
west pillar, and may have adorned a rear room of the
later Le ill West Shrine (Renfrew & Cherry 1985:
340).
This range of exceptional finds from a series of
associated contexts represents an exceptional
assemblage both at Phylakopi and in a late MBA-
early LBA Aegean context. The majority have palatial
and elite cult associations on Crete in the Neopalatial
period, individually and in combination. Here, most
are unique within the site and take on added
significance in such close association. Their three
characteristics, elite, cult and Minoan or Minoanising,
along with the concentration of elaborated architecture,
frescoes and the pillars and columns, further justify
associating the three architectural suites as a complex,
though it is not clear whether this should be considered
a single integrated structure or two, closely related.
The finds and features are not, however, concentrated
in the same or just a couple of linked rooms. The

57
 TODD WmTELAW

picture that they present is consistent with that from a led to a major gateway through the Fortification Wall
variety of contexts at Akrotiri (Marinatos 1983; (Whitelaw 2004: 151, fig. 13.8). Therefore, despite the
1984A; 1984B; 1985; Niemeier 1992), where arguably limited sample of the City IT community which has
ritual equipment and material characteristics are far been exposed (ca. 25% of the preserved site), few if
more generally distributed within the community than any other locations within the community would have
seems normally to be the case at contemporary sites on been as central or prominent.
Crete.
The two components of the Pillar Rooms Complex
individually are the largest structures preserved within
B. WHAT DOES THE PILLAR ROOMS COMPLEX City IT,and if they comprised a single complex, would
REPRESENT? be comparable in scale to the original central mansion
Following the initial seasons at KnOS$OS,Mackenzie ofLC I Ayia Irini and would approach the scale of the
tentatively suggested (though he never argued the LC ID Megaron, accepted as the administrative focus
case), that the East Pillar Room represented the 'early at Phylakopi during later City ID [Fig. 7]. The Pillar
palace' at Phylakopi during City IT(Mackenzie 1908: Rooms Complex is uniquely the focus for architectural
369, n. 1). Evans expressed the same idea, though and decorative elaboration (worked stone features,
again with no supporting argument, while discussing frescoes), and for Minoanised architectural and
the Phylakopi frescoes (Evans 1921: 544, 547), decorative characteristics and artefacts in Late City IT.
presumably because of the largely palatial contexts of On the existing evidence, the Pillar Rooms Complex
the similar frescoes recovered at Knossos. However, appears to be both the focal point of the community,
consideration of the full range of exceptional, elite, and the focus of Minoanisation and the ideological
ritual and strongly Minoanised characteristics from the strategies it represents.
entire Pillar Rooms Complex, and the range of direct
parallels which can now be drawn with other Cycladic .Given this concentration, we can view the Pillar
sites, allows Phylakopi to be brought into the Rooms Complex as the residence of an elite family or
Minoanisation debate in a way which has not families within the community which adopted and
previously been possible. adapted Minoanised material culture and practices,
whereas any other such groups expressed their
Specific parallels in architectural layout, construction identities in more traditional Cycladic terms. However,
details, decoration and finds can be drawn with several the central physical residence of this group suggests
of the better documented structures at contemporary that this was not simply one among any number of
Cycladic sites, such as House A at Ayia Irini, and the such groups within the community, but one that was
West House, House of the Ladies and Xeste 3 at central, socially as well as physically, a particularly
Akrotiri [Fig. 6]. Unfortunately, detailed comparison is important and powerful group. The minimal diffusion
constrained by the poor resolution and documentation of ideologically charged Minoanised characteristics
at Phylakopi, the loss of most of the relevant early throughout the community probably also indicates the
(period VI) deposits in House A at Ayia Irini, and the relatively recent adoption of this set of status strategies
preliminary or partial nature of the publication of the by the group. A relatively shallow time depth for the
most relevant contexts at Akrotiri. A distinction process within the MC period would be consistent
between an elite or ritual interpretation of the Pillar with the recognised pattern of acceleration in the
Rooms Complex, or of either spatial component of it, Minoanisation of ceramics through the MC into the
is a problem equally encountered in the interpretation early LC periods. Given this shallow time depth, and
of the far better preserved and documented structures the elaborate construction, not just decoration, of the
at Akrotiri (e.g. Dournas 1983: 45-77, 122-25; Pillar Rooms Complex, the Minoanised material and
Marinatos 1983; 1984A; 1985; Niemeier 1992). behavioural traits are likely to have been adopted by a
group already in control, rather than to have been one
of the strategies which put them into that position.
C. WAS THE PILLAR ROOMS COMPLEX THE COMMUNITY However, they perceived a need to adopt such a
Focus IN LATER CITY II? strategy, whether to maintain or enhance their position
Regardless of uncertainty over how much of the site locally, in inter-community interactions, or both. This
has been lost to coastal erosion (Whitelaw 2004: 151), suggests that a primary social context in which they
it is worth noting the focal position of the Pillar Rooms were competing was one which attached a value to
Complex within the site. It is located on a locally high Minoan ways of behaving, whether because it was
point of the central ridge, overlooking the entire principally composed of Cretans, or comparable
eastern half of the site, on the only major public court groups in other Minoanising communities. The
known in City IT, at the probable centre of the exclusive concentration of such activity within the.
community [Fig. lA]. It also opens off the widest and· .Pillar Rooms Complex may also indicate that such
probably the principal and axial street of the off-island interactions were highly centralised in City
community, which is the most likely candidate to have ITPhylakopi.

58

L
 A TALE OF THREE CITIES: CHRONOLOGY AND MINOANISA TION AT PHYLAKOPIIN
Fig. 7. The core areas ofCycladic sites: A. Phylakopi City II.iii; B. Phylakopi City III.iii;
C. Ayia Irini, LC I-LC 11 (drawing by the author).
D. WHAT DOES THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PILLAR ROOMS
COMPLEX REPRESENT?
If the Pillar Rooms Complex was a-if not the-focal
structure within the Late City ITcommunity, it seems
remarkable, from the perspective of the history of the
community and the process of Minoanisation, that the
complex was not immediately rebuilt, and that houses
were allowed to encroach over the open court
associated with it. Elsewhere in the town, following
the City IT destruction, the streets and individual
houses were rebuilt along generally similar lines,
stressing continuity. However, in the case of the Pillar
Rooms Complex and associated court, the changes
implemented transformed the core of the community
(presumably shifting the focus elsewhere) made a
decisive break with the organisational pattern of the
past, and emphasised this through leaving at least part
of the complex in ruins during Early City ill.It might
be argued that this shift was to the LC I-LC IT
Mansion, recognised in 1974--1977underneath the LC
ill Megaron (Renfrew 1978; 1982A; Renfrew & Brice
1977), though as yet the character and focal status of
this structure remain unclear [Fig. lB].
What do these decisions on the part of the inhabitants
represent, in terms of the organisation of the site or the
process of Minoanisation? Other than a few fragments
of frescoes, there are no known traces in Early City ill
of any Minoanised structures comparable to the Pillar
Rooms Complex, precisely in the period which saw
such an intensified investment in Minoanised material
traits at Akrotiri. This should encourage us to consider
alternative, more local processes behind the
transformations at Phylakopi. If, as has been
suggested, the Minoanisation of the material culture
and the associated practices focused on the Pillar
Rooms Complex were part of a power strategy
59
MELOS
AYIA IRINI
PERIOD VI/VII
developed by a quite limited faction within the
community, then because of their exclusivity, we can
anticipate that these material practices will have been
directly identified with those individuals. If those
individuals, whom we can presume to have held a
socially central position within the community, were
held in some way culpable for the catastrophe which
befell the community as a whole, then the rejection of
their authority or status, marked by the failure to
rebuild the complex, could also be manifest through
the rejection of, or resistance to, Minoanised material
symbols and practices, following the City IT
destruction. Not only is there nothing comparable to
the intense Minoanisation documented at Akrotiri in
LC I, such traits are less apparent at Phylakopi in Early
City ill than they were in Late City IT,when they were
extremely restricted, both spatially and socially.
A counter-argument would point to the increasing
Minoanisation of the ceramic assemblage in LC I-LC
IT. However, this continuing transformation was a
broad-based economic and social transformation
(Davis 1984; Davis & Lewis 1985; Papagiannopoulou
1990; 1995), rather than an elite-centred, ideologically
charged, process of competitive cultural emulation,the
latter more in tune with Wiener's 'Versailles effect'
(1984; 1990). A comparable contrast between
increasingly Minoanised everyday material culture
such as ceramics, but only limited adoption of elite
material traits, appears to have characterisedthe LC I-
LC ITsituation at Ayia Irini (Schofield 1982; Cummer
& Schofield 1984: 145). In contrast, at Akrotiri the
widespread Minoanised characteristics in elite/ritual
material culture and practices, indicate that a more
extensive segment of the population was participating
in, or had adopted or adapted a wide range of Minoan
behavioural and ideological practices (Schofield 1982;
 TODD WHITELA W
I'
1983; Davis 1984; Marinatos 1984A; 1984B; 1990;
Hood 1990; Wiener 1990: 13~3).
The absence of clear evidence for such a degree of
Minoanisation at LC I-LC IT Phylakopi may indicate
that these practices were no longer desired, were
actively resisted, or were explicitly rejected after the
City IT destruction. We presently cannot demonstrate
this convincingly, since we have so few well-
documented Early City ill contexts, but such a contrast
raises interesting questions about the nature of the
processes involved in Minoanisation, and why these
might play out in distinct ways in different
communities, as different groups of individuals
(classes, kin-groups, political factions) incorporated
and deployed specific elements of Minoanised
material culture and behavioural practices in their local
social and political strategies in a variety of ways.
CONCLUSION: MINOANISATION AT PHYLAKOPI
In his recent review of the prehistory of the Aegean
islands, Davis (2001: 73) made a specific plea that we
move 'beyond Phylakopi'. This is Undoubtedly
appropriate, since research over the past four decades
is beginning to produce enough information about sites
on other islands, particularly but not exclusively in the
Cyclades, to permit effective comparative analysis
(Davis & Gorogianni in press; Broodbank 2004). On
the other hand, as this paper has argued (see also.
Whitelaw 2004), Phylakopi itself is far less well-
understood than is generally assumed. While the
majority of the excavation at the site was conducted
over a century ago, and the detail of the documentation
available does not compare well with more recent
excavations, the site remains the most
comprehensively investigated site of the MBA and
LBA Aegean, and the older excavations are a resource
which we cannot afford to ignore.
In assembling the full range of evidence from the
original excavations, and considering the Pillar Rooms
Complex as a context, rather than in terms of
individual categories of material, its exceptional
character can be appreciated and explored. This
emphasises just how concentrated non--ceramic
Minoanised material culture and practices were during
Late City IT, which can be explored through four
different comparative perspectives: intra-site, inter-
site, diachronic, and processual.
At the intra-site level, only a small segment of the
community appears to have been employing
Minoanised material culture and the practices
embodied through it, in statements of identity and
competitive access to . off-island cultural and
ideological resources. Given the central situation of the
60
Pillar Rooms Complex, this appears to have been a
strategy employed by a group already in a position of
power within the community. This indicates the
dynamism of local cultural values at the time, since an
already powerful group recognised the need to develop
new social strategies, in the changing economic and
political context of the southern Aegean, seen perhaps
most dramatically in the contemporary emergence of
the Shaft Grave elite at Mycenae (Dickinson 1977;
Graziadio 1988; 1991; Dabney & Wright 1990; Dietz
1991; Wright 1995; Voutsaki 1995).
At the inter-site level, while hampered by the absence
of final MC contexts from Ayia Irini, comparisons'
have some validity since the foundation of the Period
VI House A is likely to extend back far enough to
overlap with the Pillar Rooms Complex. The focal
Minoanisation embodied in the layout, construction
details and decoration, of House A provides close
parallels for the distinctive characteristics of the Pillar
Rooms Complex. The comparability in the nature and
degree ofMinoanisation, despite the different locations
of the two islands with respect to Crete, challenges the
.passive model which accounts for the degree of
Minoanisation in terms of distance from Crete
(Warren 1975: 103; 1984: 39, 43, n. 29; Cherry &
Davis 1982; Schofield 1982). Either Cretans
dominated the exchange networks and interacted with
local populations at different distances along trade
routes in a fairly comparable way, or the local elite at
the two sites arrived at broadly comparable forms of
investment in Minoanised cultural traits, despite being
at different positions within the exchange networks.
The latter seems more likely, given the evidence that
each site was engaged to varying degrees in different
exchange networks, in which exchange with Cretan
sites can be seen to be just one variable component
(Overbeck 1982; Graziadio 1998; Die1Z 1998; Berg
1999; 2000A). Appreciation of these wider networks
can also help to explain the emergence of local centres
which do not show such close ties to Crete, such as
Kolonna on Aegina (Walter & Felten 1981;
Papagiannopoulou 1991: 186-97; Hiller 1993;
Niemeier 1995; Kilian-Dirlmeier 1997) and Paroikia
on Paros (Overbeck 1989; Papagiannopoulou 1991:
172-82).
Considered diachronically, the focus of the principal
(non--ceramic) Minoanised characteristics at Phylakopi
on the Pillar Rooms Complex in City IThighlights the
dearth of such characteristics in the more widely
exposed Early City ill community. While far from
conclusive, given the relatively poor preservation of
Early City ill contexts, this points to the actively
negotiated character of Minoanisation as a strategy, as
well as, in comparison with the ceramics, the
recognition of different material strategies, potentially
 A TALE OF THREE CITIES: CHRONOLOGY AND MiNOANISA TION AT PHYLAKOPI IN MELOS
engaged in by different segments of the local
population, for different reasons. From this
perspective, the elite of Phylakopi appears to have
withdrawn from, or rejected, Minoanisation as a status
strategy in Early City ill; those of Ayia Irini in Period
VI and VI1 appear to have maintained a broadly
comparable engagement through time; while those of
Akrotiri, in the architectural elaborations introduced
after the seismic destruction, appear to have expanded
their engagement very significantly.
Finally, the contrast in the Minoanisation of different
categories of material culture, roughly dichotomised
into everyday versus elite and ideologically charged,
has been inherent both in the pattern of Minoanisation
at Ayia Irini and in the contrast between LC I Ayia
Irini and Akrotiri, but this has, to a degree, been
obscured by the interpretation that it represents a
difference in the degree of presence or status of Cretan
emigrants in each community, rather than as different
strategies of cultural emulation by each local
population. The potential for different material
strategies to be employed by different segments of the
local population-multiple processes of
Minoanisation-is brought out more starkly by the
comparison of Late City ITand Early City ill material
behaviour at Phylakopi. This encourages us to
consider the processes in term of individual agents and
their motivations: some individuals, but not all; elite,
but not all the elite. At a collective level, we can start
to explore elite versus non-elite strategies, some of
which entail the adoption and adaptation of Minoan
things, practices and ideologies. Viewed as the actions
of individuals in particular contexts, Minoanisation is
likely to be a strategic and variable phenomenon, not
uniform, imposed, or inevitable.
The conceptual unpacking of the phenomenon of
Minoanisation has begun through the detailed analysis
of ceramics (Marthari 1990B; Papagiannopoulou
1990; 1991; 1995; Davis & Lewis 1985; Berg 2000A;
2004), frescoes (E. Davis 1990; Morgan 1990;
Televantou 1992; 2000; Boulotis 2000), household
. industries (Davis 1984; Tzachili 1990) and architecture
(Dournas 1974; 1982; 1983; Shaw 1978; Palyvou
1984; 1990; 1999A; 1999B; Michailidou 1987; 1990;
Sinos 1987), working up from the detail of the
technology and crafting to questions of organisation.
This is encouraging the consideration of new
dynamics and is helping to define the variable nature
of the influences from Crete and other areas, but also
the degree of independence, and the strength of, and
innovation in, local traditions. What has only begun to
be touched on, so far, are questions of decision-
making: who is adopting and adapting what, from
whom, how, and why. All of these explorations are,
often implicitly rather than explicitly, challenging the
61
monolithic conceptualisation of Minoanisation as a
process. Comparisons between sites, but also between
crafts (e.g. Davis 1984; E. Davis 1990; Immerwahr
1990B; Marthari 2000; Papagiannopoulou in press)
emphasise the dynamic character of cultural emulation
as negotiable and manipulable economic, social,
political and ideological strategies. This encourages us
to think analytically about the multiple processes
involved in the overall phenomenon referred to as
Minoanisation, while also opening up the prospect for
recognising and understanding different patterns in
Minoanisation in different communities.
REFERENCES
Atkinson, T.D. 1904. "The architecture", in Atkinson et al.
1904:25-69.
Atkinson, T.D., Bosanquet, RC, Edgar, CC, Evans, A.J.,
Hogarth, D.G., Mackenzie, D., Smith. C & Welch, F.B.
1904. Excavations at PhylakDpi in Melos conducted by the
British School at Athens, Society for the Promotion of
Hellenic Studies Supplemental Paper 4, The Society for
the Promotion of Hellenic Studies/Macmillan: London.
Barber, RLN. 1974. "Phylakopi 1911 and the history of
the later Cycladic Bronze Age", Annual of the British
School at Athens 69: 1-53.
Barber, RLN. 1978. ''The Cyclades in the Middle Bronze
Age", in Doumas 1978 (ed.): 367-79.
Barber, RL.N. 1981. ''The Late Cycladic period: a
review", Annual of the British School at Athens 76: 1-21.
Barber, RL.N. 1983. "The definition of the Middle
Cycladic period", American Journal of Archaeology 87: 76-
81.
Barber, RLN. 1984A. "The status of Phylakopi in Creta-
Cycladic relations", in Hagg & Marinatos 1984 (eds.):
179-82.
Barber, RL.N. 1984B. ''The pottery of Phylakopi, First
City, phase ii (I-ii)", in MacGillivray & Barber 1984 (eds.):
88-94.
Barber, RL.N. 1987. The Cyclades in the Bronze Age,
Duckworth: London.
Barber, RLN. 1999. "Hostile Mycenaeans in the
Cyclades?", in Laffineur 1999 (ed.): 133-39.
Barber, RL.N. & MacGillivray, J.A. 1980. ''The Early
Cycladic period: matters of definition and terminology",
American Journal of Archaeology 84: 141-57.
Barber, R.LN. & MacGillivray, J.A. 1984."The prehistoric
Cyclades: a summary", in MacGillivray & Barber 1984
(eds.): 296-302.
 TODD WHITELA W
Berg, I. 1999. "The southern Aegean system", Journal of
World Systems Research 5: 475--84.
Berg, I. 2000A. The Minoanisation of the southern Aegean: a
comparative approach through ceramic assemblages,
unpublished PhD. dissertation, University of
Cambridge.
Berg, I. 2000B."The pots of Phylakopi: applying statistical
techniques to Archaeology", Chance 13 (4): 8-15.
Berg, I. 2004. "The meaning of standardisation: conical
cups in the Late Bronze Age Aegean", Antiquity 78: 74-
85.
Betancourt, P.P. 1985. The history of Minoan pottery,
Princeton University Press: Princeton.
Betancourt, P.P. 1990. Kommos II: the Final Neolithic
through Middle Minoan III pottery, Prince ton University
Press: Princeton.
Betancourt, P.P., Karageorghis, V., Laffineur, R &
Niemeier, W.-D. 1999 (eds.). MeiiE'rt7J.la'ra: studies in
Aegean archaeology presented to Malcolm H. Wiener as he
enters his 65th year, Aegaeum 20, Universite de Liege,
histoire de l' art et archeologie de la Crece
antique/University of Texas at Austin, Program in
Aegean Scripts and Prehistory: Liege and Austin.
Bintliff, J.1. 1977. Natural environment and human
settlement in prehistoric Greece, British Archaeological
Reports Supplementary Series 28, British Archaeological
Reports: Oxford.
Blegen, e.W. 1921. Korakou: a prehistoric settlement near
Corinth, The American School of Oassical Studies: New
York.
Boardman, J. & Palmer, 1. 1963. On the Knossos tablets,
Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Bosanquet, Re. 1904. "The wall paintings", in Atkinson
et al. 1904:70-79.
Bosanquet, Re. & Welch, F.B. 1904. "The minor
antiquities", in Atkinson et al. 1904: 190-215.
Boulotis, Ch, 1998. ''Les nouveaux documents en lineaire
A d' Akrotiri (Thera): Remarques preliminaires", Bulletin
de Correspondance Hellenique 122:407-11.
Boulotis, 0\. 2000. ''Travelling fresco painters in the
Aegean Late Bronze Age: the diffusion patterns of a
prestigious art", in Sherratt 2000B (ed.): 844-58.
Branigan, K. 1981. "Minoan colonialism", Annual of the
British School at Athens 76: 23-33.
Branigan, K. 1984. "Minoan community colonies in the
Aegean?", in Hagg & Marinatos 1984 (eds.): 49-53.
62
Brodie, N., Gavalas, G. & Doole, J. in press (eds.). Orizon:
a colloquium on the prehistory of the Cyclades, The
McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research:
Cambridge.
Broodbank, e. 2000. An island archaeology of the early
Cyclades, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
Broodbank, e. 2004. "Minoanisation", Proceedings of the
Cambridge Philological Society 50: 46--91.
Buchholz, H.-G. 1987 (ed.). Agiiische Bronzezeit,
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft: Darmstadt.
Caskey, J.1. 1970. "Inscriptions and potters' marks from
Ayia Irini in Keos", Kadmos 9: 113--17.
Caskey, J.1. 1973. "Greece and the Aegean islands in the
Middle Bronze Age", in Edwards et al. 1966 (eds.): 117-
40.
Caskey, M.E. 1981. "Ayia Irini, Kea: the terracotta statues
and the cult in the Temple", in Hagg & Marinatos 1981
(eds.): 127-35.
Cherry, J.F. 1979. "Four problems in Cycladic
prehistory", in Davis & Cherry 1979 (eds.): 22-47.
Cherry, J.F. 1982. "A preliminary definition of site,
distribution on Melos", in Renfrew & Wagstaff 1982
(eds.): 10-23.
Cherry, J.F. & Davis, J.1. 1982. ''The Cyclades and the
Greek mainland in LC I: the evidence of pottery",
American Journal of Archaeology 86: 333-41.
Cherry, J.F., Scarre, e. & Shennan, S. 2004 (eds.).
Explaining social change: studies in honour of Colin Renfrew,
The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research:
Cambridge.
Cullen, T. 2001 (ed.). Aegean prehistory: a review, American
Journal of Archaeology Supplement 1, The
Archaeological Institute of America: Boston. r'
Cummer, W.W. 1980. "Itinerant Aegean builders",
Temple University Aegean Symposium (Department of Art
History, Temple University) 5: 3--14.
Cummer, W.w. & Schofield, E. 1983. Keos Ill. Ayia lrini:
House A, von Zabern: Mainz am Rhein.
Dabney, M.K. & Wright, j.C, 1990. "Mortuary customs,
palatial society and state formation in the Aegean area: a
comparative study", in Hagg & Nordquist 1990 (eds.):
45-53.
Darcque, P. & Poursat, J.--C. 1985 (eds.). L'iconographie
minoenne: Actes de la table ronde d'Aihines (21-22 avril
1983), Bulletin de Correspondance Hellenique
Supplement 11, Ecole Francaise d' Athenes/Boccard:
Paris.
 A TALE OF THREE CITIES: CHRONOLOGY AND MINOANISATION
Darcque, P. & Treuil, R 1990 (eds.). L'habitat egeen
prihistorique, Bulletin de Correspondance Hellenique
Supplement 19, Ecole Francaise d' Athenes/Boccard:
Paris.
Davis, E.N. 1990. "The Cycladic style of the Thera
frescoes", in Hardy et al. 1990 (eds): 214-28.
Davis, J.L. 1979. "Minos and Dexithea: Crete and the
Cyclades in the later Bronze Age", in Davis & Cherry
1979 (eds.): 143-57.
Davis, J.L. 1984. "Cultural innovation and the Minoan
thalassocracy at Ayia Irini, Keos", in Hagg & Marinatos
1984 (eds.): 159--66.
Davis, J.L. 1986. Keos V. Ayia Irini: Period V, von Zabern:
Mainz am Rhein.
Davis, J.L. 2001. "Review of Aegean prehistory I: the
islands of the Aegean", in Cullen 2001 (ed.): 1~76.
Davis, J.L. & Cherry, J.F. 1979 (eds.). Papers in Cycladic
prehistory, Institute of Archaeology Monograph 14,
University of California Press: Los Angeles.
Davis, J.L. & Cherry, J.F. 1984. "Phylakopi in Late
Cycladic I: a pottery seriation study", in MacGillivray &
Barber 1984 (eds.): 148-61.
Davis, J.L. & Cherry, J.F. 1990. "Spatial and temporal
uniformitarianism in Late Cycladic I: perspectives from
Kea and Milos on the prehistory of Akrotiri', in Hardy et
al. 1990 (eds.): 185-200.
Davis, J.L. & Gorogianni, E. in press. "Potsherds from the
edge: the construction of identity and the limits of
Minoanized areas of the Aegean", in Brodie et al. in press
(eds.).
Davis, J.L. & Lewis, H.B. 1985. "Mechanization of pottery
production: a case study from the Cycladic islands", in
Knapp & Stech 1985 (eds.): 7~92.
Dawkins, RM & Droop, J.P. 1911. ''The excavations at
Phylakopi in Melos", Annual of the British School at Athens
17: 1-22.
Dickinson, O.T.PK 1977. The ongms of Mycenaean
civilisation, Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 49,
AstrOm: GOteborg.
Dickinson, O.T.PK 1994. The Aegean BronZe Age,
Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
Dietz, S. 1991. The Argolid at the transition to the Mycenaean
Age: studies in the chronology and cultural development in the
Shaft Grave period, National Museum, Denmark:
Copenhagen.
Dietz, S. 1998. "The Cyclades and the mainland in the
Shaft Grave period-a summary", Proceedings of the
Danish Institute at Athens 2: 9-36.
63
AT PHYLAKOPI IN,MELOS
Doumas, Ch. 1974. "TI£ql tiic; fllVWucfjC; £XQXl'tEK'tOVU<ijc;
i» E>t'JQ~",}\PXaLOAOYLlaJ 'Ec/JTfflEpiC; 1974: 1~219.
Doumas, 01. 1978 (ed.). Thera and the Aegean world, 11:
papers presented at the second international scientific congress,
Santorini, Greece (August 1978), Thera and the Aegean
World: London.
Doumas, 01. 1982. "The Minoan Thalassocracy and the
Cyclades", Archiiologischer Anzeiger 1982: 5-14.
Doumas, 01. 1983. Thera: Pompeii of the ancient Aegean,
Thames & Hudson: London.
Diimmler, F. 1886. "Mittheilungen von den griechischen
Inseln", Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archiiologischen
Instituts, Athenische Abteilung 1886: 15-46.
Dumont, A & Chaplain. J. 1888. Les ceramiques de la Grece
propre, volume 1,Didot: Paris.
Edgar, c.c. 1898. "The pottery", in Hogarth et al. 1898:
37-48.
Edgar, c.c. 1899. "The pottery", in Mackenzie et al. 1899:
14-19.
Edgar, c.c. 1904. "The pottery", in Atkinson et al. 1904:
80-176.
Edwards, LE.S., Gadd, er, Hammond, N.G.L. &
Sollberger, E. 1973 (eds.). The Cambridge ancient history,
volume 2 (1), Cambridge University Press: Cambridge
(second edition).
Evans, AI. 1900. "Knossos: summary report of the
excavations in 1900", Annual of the British School at Athens
6:3-70.
Evans, AJ. 1901. "Mycenaean tree and pillar cult and its
Mediterranean relations", Journal of Hellenic Studies 21:
~204.
Evans, AI. 1921. The palace of Minos at Knossos, I,
Macmillan: London.
Evans, AJ. 1930. The palace of Minos at Knossos, ill,
Macmillan: London.
Evans, RK & Renfrew, AC. 1984. ''The earlier Bronze
Age at Phylakopi", in MacGillivray & Barber 1984 (eds.):
63-69.
Evely, D., Lemos, I.S. & Sherratt, S. 1996 (eds.). Minotaur
and Centaur: studies in the archaeology of Crete and Euboea
presented to Meruyn Popham, British Archaeological
Reports International Series 638, Tempus Reparatum:
Oxford.
Fouque, F.A. 1998 [1879]. Santorini and its eruptions, [ohns
Hopkins University Press: Baltimore.
 TODD WHITELA W
French. E.B. 1985. "Chapter VI: the figures and figurines",
in Renfrew 1985A (ed.): 209--80.
Furtwiingler, A & Loeschcke, G. 1886. Mykenische Vasen:
Vorhellenische Thongeftisse aus dem Gebiete des Mittelmeeres,
von Asher: Berlin."
Furumark, A 1941. Mycenaean pottery, I: analysis and
classification, Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets
Akademien: Stockholm.
Furumark, A 1950. "The settlement at Ialysos and
Aegean history, ca. 1550-1400 BC", Opuscula
Archaeologica 6: 150-271.
Gesell, G.C 1985. Town, palace, and house cult in Minoan
Crete, Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 47, Astrom:
Coteborg.
Gillis, C, Risberg, C & Sjoberg, B. 1995 (eds.). Trade and
production in premonetary Greece: aspects of trade.
Proceedings of the third international workshop, Athens,
Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-book 134,
Astrom: Jonsered.
Graziadio, G. 1988. "The chronology of the graves of
Circle B at Mycenae: a new hypothesis", American Journal
of Archaeology 92: 343-72.
Graziadio, G. 1991. "The process of social stratification at
Mycenae in the Shaft Grave Period: a comparative
examination of the evidence", American Journal of
Archaeology 95: 403-40.
Graziadio, G. 1998. "Trade circuits and trade-routes in
the Shaft Grave period", Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici
40:29-76.
Hagg, R. & Marinatos, N. 1981 (eds.). Sanctuaries and cults
in the Aegean Bronze Age: proceedings of thefirst international
symposium at the Swedish Institute in Athens (12-13 Mily
1980), Skrifter Utgivna av Svenska Institutet i Athen 4°
28, Svenska Institutet i Athen/ Astrom: Stockholm.
Hagg, R. & Marinatos, N. 1984 (eds.). The Minoan
thalassocracy: myth and reality. Proceedings of the third
international symposium at the Swedish Institute in Athens
(31 Mily-5 June 1982), Skrifter Utgivna av Svenska
Institutet i Athen 4° 32, Svenska Institutet i
Athen/Astrom: Stockholm.
Hiigg, R. & Nordquist, G.C 1990 (eds.). Celebrations of
death and divinity in the Bronze Age Argolid: proceedings of
the sixth international symposium at the Swedish Institute at
Athens (11-13 June 1988), Skrifter Utgivna av Svenska
Institutet i Athen 4° 40, Svenska Institut;;t i
Athen/ Astrom: Stockholm.
Halstead, P. & Frederick, C. 2000 (eds.). Landscape and
land use in Postglacial Greece, Sheffield Studies in Aegean
Archaeology 3, Sheffield Academic Press: Sheffield,
64
Hardy, D.A, Doumas, Ch., Sakellarakis, J.A & Warren,
P.M. 1990 (eds.). Thera and the Aegean world, III (1):
archaeology. Proceedings of the third international congress,
Santorini, Greece (3-9 September 1989), The Thera
Foundation: London.
Hardy, D.A. & Renfrew, AC 1990 (eds.). Thera and the
Aegean World, III (3): chronology. Proceedings of the third
international congress, Santorini, Greece (3-9 September
1989), The Thera Foundation: London.
Harland, J.P. 1924. "Aegean (Bronze Age) chronology
and terminology", American Journal of Archaeology 28: 69-
72.
Hershenson, CR. 1998. "Late Helladic IIB at Ayia lrini,
Keos", in Mendoni & Mazarakis Ainian 1998 (eds.): 161-
68.
Hiller vonGaertringen, F. & Wilski, P. 1904.
Stadtgeschichte von Thera, Reimer: Berlin.
Hiller, S. 1993. "Minoan and minoanizing pottery on
Aegina", in Zemer et al. 1993 (eds.): 197-99.
Hitchcock, L. 1998. "Blending the local with the foreign:
Minoan features at Ayia lrini, House A", in Mendoni &
Mazarakis Ainian 1998 (eds.): 169-74.
Hogarth, D.G. 1898. "The season's work", in Hogarth et
al. 1898: 1-16.
Hogarth, D.G. 1900. "Early town and cemeteries", Annual
of the British School at Athens 6: 70-85.
Hogarth, D.G. 1904. "The excavation", in Atkinson et al.
1904:5-24.
Hogarth, D.G., Mackenzie, D. & Edgar, CC 1898.
"Excavations in Melos, 1898", Annual of the British School
at Athens 4: 1-48.
Hood, M.S.F. 1978. The arts in prehistoric Greece, Pelican:
Harmondsworth.
Hood, M.S.F. 1990. "The Cretan element on Thera in Late
Minoan lA", in Hardy et al. 1990 (eds.): 118-23.
Hood, M.S.F. 1996. "Back to basics with Middle Minoan
IIIB", in Evely et al. 1996 (eds.): 10-16.
Immerwahr, S.A. 1990A Aegean painting in the Bronze
Age, Pennsylvania State University Press: University Park
and London.
Immerwahr, S.A. 1990B. "Swallows and dolphins at
Akrotiri: some thoughts on the relationship of vase-
painting to wall-painting", in Hardy et al. 1990 (eds.):
237-45.
Kariotis, S. 2003. "AKQum']Ql E>l']Qa<;:flUX 71QWn]
avayvUJOT] 'IT]C; u'rQw~'roYQa<t>lKf]c;
aKOAou8iac; U'ITJv
 A TALE OF THREE CITIES: CHRONOLOGY AND MINOANISATION
rna'tEla Lll'ITA.Wv KEQa'tWV",in Vlachopoulos & Birtacha
2003 (eds.): 419-44.
Kamava, A in press. ''Written and stamped records in
the Late Bronze Age Cyclades: the sea journeys of an
administration", in Brodie et al. in press (eds.).
Kilian-Dirlmeier, 1. 1997. Das Mittelbronzezeitliche
Schachtgrab van Agina, von Zabern: Mainz am Rhein.
Knapp, AB. & Stech, T. 1985 (eds.). Prehistoric production
and exchange: the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean,
Institute of Archaeology Monograph 25, University of
California Press: Los Angeles.
Knappett, C & Nikolakopoulou, 1. 2005. "Exchange and
interaction networks in the MBA southern Aegean: Crete,
Akrotiri and Miletus", in Laffineur & Greco 2005 (eds.):
175-84.
Koehl, R 2003. Aegean Bronze Age rhyta, Archaeological
Institute of America Monograph 7, The Archaeological
Institute of America: Boston.
Krigka, D. 2003. "Oi acral-UV80l O'tO A1<QUJT1lQl
8fJQa<;~',
in Vlachopoulos & Birtacha 2003 (eds.): 461-82.
Krzyszkowska, O. & Nixon, L. 1983 (eds.). Minoan society:
proceedings of the Cambridge colloquium, Bristol Classical
Press: Bristol.
Laffineur, R 1999 (ed.). II6AEf.lot;: Le coniexte guerrier en
Egee a l'Age du Bronze. Actes de la sepiieme renamire egeenne
internationale, Ilnioersiie de Liege (14-17 avril 1998),
Aegaeum 19, Universite de Liege, histoire de I'art et
archeologie de la Grece antique/University of Texas at
Austin, Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory: Liege
and Austin.
Laffineur, R & Basch, L. 1991 (eds.). BaAaaaa: L'Egee
prehistorique et la mer. Actes de la troisieme rencontre egeenne
iniernaiionale de l'Unioersiie de Liege, Station de Recherches
Sous-marines et Oceanographiques (StaReSo), Calvi, Corse
(23-25 avril 1990), Aegaeum 7, Universite de Liege,
histoire de l'art et archeologie de la Crece
antique/University of Texas at Austin, Program in
Aegean Scripts and Prehistory: Liege and Austin.
Laffineur, R & Crowley, J.L. 1992 (eds.). ELKdlv: Aegean
Bronze Age ironography, shaping a methodology. Fourth
international Aegean conference, University of Tasmania,
Hobart (6-9 April 1992), Aegaeum 8, Universite de Liege,
histoire de l'art et archeologie de la Grece
antique/University of Texas at Austin, Program in
Aegean Scripts and Prehistory: Liege and Austin.
Laffineur, R & Greco, T. 2005 (eds.). Eunopia: Aegeans in
the central and eastern Mediterranean. Proceedings of the tenth
international Aegean conference, Italian School of Archaeology Mackenzie, D., Atkinson, ToO. & Edgar, Cc. 1899.
in Athens (14-18 April 2004), Aegaeum 25, Universite de . "Excavations in Melos, 1899'~, Annual of the British School
Liege, histoire de I'art et archeologie de la Grece
AT PHYLAKOPI IN·MELOS
antique/University of Texas at Austin, Program in
Aegean Scripts and Prehistory: Liege and Austin.
Laffineur, R & Niemeier, W.-D. 1995 (eds.). IIoAL'CEia:
society and state in the Aegean Bronze Age. Proceedings of the
fifth international Aegean conference, University of Heidelberg,
Archiiologisches Institut (10-13 April 1994), Aegaeum 12,
Universite de Liege, histoire de l'art et archeologie de la
Crece antique/University of Texas at Austin, Program in
Aegean Scripts and Prehistory: Liege and Austin.
Lamb, W. 1936. Corpus vasorum antiquorum. Great Britain:
Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, fascicule 2, Oxford
University Press: Oxford.
Levi, D. 1976. Festos e la civilta minoica, Incunabula Graeca
60, Edizioni dell' Ateneo: Rome.
Macdonald, CF. 1996. "Notes on some Late Minoan IA
contexts from the palace of Minos and its immediate
vicinity", in Evely et al. 1996 (eds.): 17-26.
MacGillivray, JA. 1984. "The relative chronology of Early
Cycladic ID", in MacGillivray & Barber 1984 (eds.): 70-77.
MacGillivray, J.A 1998. Knossos: pottery groups of the Old
Palace period, British School at Athens Studies 5, The
British School at Athens: London.
MacGillivray, J.A & Barber, RLN. 1984 (eds.). The
prehistoric Cyclades: contributions to a workshop on Cycladic
chronology, Department of Classical Archaeology, University
of Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh Press: Edinburgh.
Mackenzie, D. 1898. ''The successive settlements", in
Hogarth et al. 1898: 17-36.
Mackenzie, D. 1899. "The season's work", in Mackenzie
et al. 1899: 3-10.
Mackenzie, D. 1903. ''The pottery of Knossos", Journal of
Hellenic Studies 23: 157-205.
Mackenzie, D. 1904. ''The successive settlements at
Phylakopi and their Aegeo-Cretan relations", in
Atkinson et al. 1904: 238-72.
Mackenzie, D. 1906. "The Middle Minoan pottery of
Knossos", Journal of Hellenic Studies 26: 243-67.
Mackenzie, D. 1908. "Cretan palaces and the Aegean
civilization, IV", Annual of the British School at Athens 14:
343--422.
Mackenzie, D. 1963. Daybook of the excavations at Phylakopi
in Melos, 1896-1899, unpublished typescript (edited by
AC Renfrew).
at Athens 5: 3-19.
65
 TODD WHITELA W
Manning, S.W. 1995. The absolute chronology of the Aegean
Early Bronze Age: archaeology, radiocarbon and history,
Sheffield Academic Press: Sheffield.
Manning, S.W. 1999. A test of time: the volcano ofThera and
the chronology and history of the Aegean and edstern
Mediterranean in the mid second millennium BC, Oxbow:
Oxford.
Marinatos, N. 1983. "The West House at Akrotiri as a cult
center", Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archiiologischen
Instituts, Athenische Abteilung 98: 1-19.
Marinatos, N. 1984A. Art and religion in Thera:
reconstructing a Bronze Age society, Ma8LOuMKT)~:Athens.
Marinates, N. 1984B. "Minoan threskeiocracy on Thera",
in Hagg & Marinatos 1984 (eds.): 167-78.
Marinatos, N. 1985. "The function and interpretation of
the Theran frescoes", in Darcque & Poursat 1985 (eds.):
219-30.
Marinates, N. 1990. "Minoan-Cycladic syncretism", in
Hardy et al. 1990 (eds.): 37G--77.
Marthari, M. 1984. "The destruction of the town at
Akrotiri, Thera, at the beginning of LC I: definition and
chronology", in MacGillivray & Barber 1984 (eds.): 119-
33.
Marthari, M. 1987. "The local pottery wares with painted
decoration from the volcanic destruction level of Akrotiri,
Thera", Archiiologischer Anzeiger 1987:359-79.
Marthari, M. 1990A "Investigation of the technology of
manufacture of the local LBA Thera pottery:
archaeological consideration", in Hardy et al. 1990 (eds.):
449-58.
Marthari, M. 1990B."The chronology of the last phases of
occupation at Akrotiri in the light of the evidence from
the West House pottery groups", in Hardy & Renfrew
1990 (eds.): 57-70.
Marthari, M. 2000. "The attraction of the pictorial:
observations on the relationship of Theran pottery and
Theran fresco iconography', in Sherratt 2000B (ed.): 873-
89.
Melas, M. 1988. "Minoans overseas: alternative models of
interpretation", Aegaeum 2: 47-70.
Melas, M. 1991. "Acculturation and social mobility in the
Minoan world", in Laffineur & Basch 1991 (eds.): 169-88.
Mendoni, L.G. & Mazarakis Ainian, AI. 1998 (eds.). Kia-
Kv8vot;: unopla lCat apxalOAoyia. Ilpawttxa 'rov
DLEBvovt; ouunoalov (Kta-Kv8vot;, 22-25 Iovviov 1994),
MEAE'tI']flU'ta27, E8vLK6lbQuflL\ EQ€uVWv,Ivo-nrooro
EMT]vud]~ Kal PWfla"lKf]~ AQxaL6't:TJ'ta~rrflijfla
IO"I:OQla~,
16vLODavEma'tl']flLO:Athens.
66
Michailidou, A 1987. "To bwfl£X'tlOflE ''COVxlova 0"1:0
MlVWLK6 U71:l1:t", in Tiverios et al. 1987 (eds.): 509-25.
Michailidou, A 1990. "The settlement of Akrotiri (Thera):
a theoretical approach to the function of the upper
storey", in Darcque & Treuil1990 (eds.): 293-306.
Michailidou, A 2oo1A "Indications of literacy in Bronze
Age Thera", Minos 35-36: 7-30.
Michailidou, A 2oo1B. AlCpOJ7:ryPLBrypat;: TJflEM'tTJ 'twv
op6cpwv a'ta lC7:ryPLarou OLlCLaflOV, B~AL08ijKTJ'tT]~ EV
A8ijva~ AQxaLOAaylKf]~E'taLQEla~183, H EVA8ijva~
AQxaLOAayuo']E'taLQEla:Athens.
Momigliano, N. 1999. Duncan Mackenzie: a cautious canny
highlander and the palace of Minos at Knossos, Bulletin of the
Institute of Oassical Studies Supplement 72, The Institute
of Oassical Studies: London.
Morgan, L. 1990. "Island iconography: Thera, Kea,
Miles", in Hardy et al. 1990 (eds.): 252-66.
Mountjoy, P.A. 1999. Regional Mycenaean decorated pottery,
Deutsches Archaologisches Institut/Leidorf: Rahden.
Mountjoy, P.A. & Ponting, M.J. 2000. "The Minoan
thalassocracy reconsidered: provenance studies of LH IT
A/LM I B pottery from Phylakopi, Ayia Irini and
Athens", Annual of the British School at Athens 95: 141--84.
Niemeier, W.-D. 1980. "Die Katastrophe von Thera und
die spatminoische Chronologie", Jahrbuch des Deutschen
Archiiologischen Instituts 95: 1-76.
Niemeier, W.-D. 1984. "The end of the Minoan
thalassocracy", in Hagg & Marinatos 1984 (eds.): 205-15.
Niemeier, W.-D. 1992. "Iconography and context: the
Thera frescoes", in Laffineur & Crowley 1992 (eds.): 97-
104.
Niemeier, W.-D. 1995. "Aegina-first Aegean 'state'
outside of Crete?", in Laffineur & Niemeier 1995 (eds.):
73-80.
Nikolakopoulou, I., Georma, F., Moschou, A & Sofianou,
F. in press. "Trapped in the middle': new stratigraphical
and ceramic evidence from MC Akrotiri, Theta", in
Brodie et al. in press (eds.).
Nilsson, M.P. 1950. The Minoan-Mycenaean religion and its
survival in Greek religion, Gleerup: Lund.
Overbeck, J. 1982. "The hub of commerce: Keos and
Middle Helladic Greece", Temple University Aegean
Symposium (Department of Art History, Temple University)
7:38-49.
Overbeck, J. 1984. "Stratigraphy and ceramic sequence in
Middle Cycladic Ayia Irini, Kea", in MacGillivray &
Barber 1984 (eds.): 108-13.
 AT ALE OF THREE CITIES: CHRONOLOGY AND MINOANISATION AT PHYLAKOPI IN MELOS

Overbeck, J. 1989. The Bronze Age pottery from the Kastro at
Paros, Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-
book 78, Astrtim: Jonsered.
Owens, G. 1999. ''Linear A in the Aegean: the further
travels of the Minoan script. A study of the 30+ extra-
Cretan Minoan inscriptions", in Betancourt et al. 1999
(eds.): 583--97.
Palaima, T.G. 1982. ''Linear A in the Cyclades: the trade
and travel of a script", Temple University Aegean
Symposium (Department of Art History, Temple University)
7: 15-22.
annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America,
New Orleans, Louisiana (28 December 1992), with additions,
Aegaeum 11, Universite de Liege, histoire de l' art et
archeologie de la Grece antique/University of Texas at
Austin, Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory: Liege
and Austin
Renaudin, L. 1922. "Vases prehelleniques de Thera a
I'Ecole Francaise d' Athenes", Bulletin de Correspondance
Hellenique 46: 113-59.
Renfrew, AC 1964. "Crete and the Cyclades before
Rhadamanthus", KprrrLlc& XpovLlCll 18: 107-41.

Palyvou, C 1984. "The destruction of the town at Renfrew, AC 1972. The emergence of civilization: the
Akrotiri, Thera, at the beginning of LC I: rebuilding Cyclades and the Aegean in the third millennium BC,
activities", in MacGillivray & Barber 1984 (eds.): 134-47. Methuen: London.

Palyvou, C 1986. "Notes on the town plan of Late
Cycladic Akrotiri, Thera", Annual of the British School at
Athens 81: 180-94.
Palyvou, C 1990. "Architectural design at Late Cycladic
Akrotiri", in Hardy et al. 1990 (eds.): 44-56.
Palyvou, C 1999A ''Theran architecture through the
Minoan looking glass", in Betancourt 1999 (ed.): 609-15.
Palyvou, C 1999B. AxpW7:11PL Brypac;: 1] oLxo60J.lLxry
'rEKVTJ, BlfHLOBr']KT]'tT]<;E.VA8f]vau; AexaLOAoyud]c;
EmLQE.lro:; 183, H €V A8f]vau; AexaLOAoyud] EmLQE.la:
Athens.
Papagiannopoulou, A 1990. "Some changes in the
Bronze Age pottery production at Akrotiri and their
possible implications", in Hardy et al. 1990 (eds.): 57-66.
Renfrew, AC 1978. "Phylakopi and the Late Bronze I
period in the Cyclades", in Doumas 1978 (ed.): 4D3-:21.
Renfrew, AC 1979A ''Terminology and beyond", in
Davis & Cherry 1979 (eds.): 51--63.
Renfrew, AC 1979B.''The eruption of Thera and Minoan
Crete", in Sheets & Grayson 1979 (eds.): 565-85.
Renfrew, AC 1982A. "Bronze Age Melos", in Renfrew &
Wagstaff 1982 (eds.): 35-44.
Renfrew, AC 1982B. "Polity and power: interaction,
intensification and power", in Renfrew & Wagstaff 1982
(eds.): 264-90.
Renfrew, AC 1982C "Prehistoric exchange", in Renfrew
& Wagstaff 1982 (eds.): 222-27.

Papagiannopoulou, A 1991. The influence of Middle Renfrew, AC 1983 [1975]. "Phylakopi in Melos",
Minoan pottery on the Cyclades, Studies in Mediterranean ApxawAoyLxo L1Ethio 30 B2:331-32.
Archaeology Pocket-book 96, Astrtim: Jonsered.
Renfrew, AC 1984 [1976]. ''Melos: Phylakopi",
Papagiannopoulou, A 1995. "The change in LC pottery ApxawAoyLxo Llethio 31 B2: 344--45.
production and its trade implications", in Gillis et al. 1995
(eds.): 55-60. Renfrew, AC 1984 [1977]. ''Melos: Phylakopi",
ApxawAoyLxo L1Ethio 32 B2:343.
Papagiannopoulou, A in press. "From pots to pictures",
in Brodie et al. in press (eds.). Renfrew, AC 1985A (ed.). The archaeology of cult: the
Sanctuary at Phylakopi, British School at Athens
Perrot, G. & Chipiez, C. 1887. Histoire de l'ari dans Supplementary Volume 18, The British School at
l'antiquiie, Egypte, Assyrie, Phenicie, [udee, Asie mineure, Athens/Thames & Hudson: London.
Perse, Grece, Etrurie, Rome. Tome VI: La Grece primitive. L'art
mycinien, Hachette & Cie: Paris. Renfrew, AC 19858. "Chapter IV: the material", in
Renfrew 1985A (ed.): 89-150.
Popham, M.R 1967. "Late Minoan pottery, a summary",
Annual of the British School at Athens 62: 337-51. Renfrew, AC 1985C "Chapter IX: the history and use of
the Phylakopi sanctuary", in Renfrew 1985A (ed.): 361-
Popham, M.R. 1984. The Minoan Unexplored Mansion at 92.
Knossos, British School at Athens Supplementary Volume
17, The British School at Athens/Thames & Hudson: Renfrew, AC & Brice, W.C 1977. "A Linear A tablet
London. fragment from Phylakopi in Melos", Kadmos 16: 111-19.

Rehak, P. 1995 (ed.). The role of the ruler in the prehistoric Renfrew, AC & Cherry, J.F. 1985. "Chapter VIII: the
Aegean: proceedings of a panel discussion presented at the other finds", in Renfrew 1985A (ed.): 299-359.

67

------=-,---'---------- ----- ---

 TODD WHITELA W

Renfrew, A.c. & Wagstaff, J.M. 1982 (eds.). An island Televantou, Ch. 1992. "Theran wall-painting: artistic
polity: the arcJwrology of exploitation in Me/os, Cambridge tendencies and painters", in Laffineur & Crowley 1992
University Press: Cambridge. (eds.): 145--59.

Ross, L. 1845. Reisen auf den griechischen Inseln des Televantou, Ch. 2000. "Aegean Bronze Age wall painting:
iigiiischen Meeres, Gotta'sche: Stuttgart. the Theran workshop", in Sherratt 2000B (ed.): 831-43.

Rutter, J.B. 1983. "Some observations on the Cyclades in Tiverios, M., Drougou, S. & Saatsoglou, Ch. 1987 (eds.).
the later third and early second millennia", American Awrr:oe;: 'rLPT/'wc6e; 7:0pOe; yux 7:OV m81JYT/7:1] M:
Journal of ArcJwrology 87: 69-76. Av6pOvLlCO, AQlO't07:€Ano !laveruO"d]f,uo: Thessaloniki.

Rutter, J.B. 1984. "The 'Early Cycladic III gap': what it is Tzachili, I. 1990. "All important yet elusive: looking for
and how to go about filling it without making it go evidence of cloth-making at Akrotiri", in Hardy et al.
away", in MacGillivray & Barber 1984 (eds.): 95--107. 1990 (eds.): 380--89.

Rutter, J.B. 2001. "Review of Aegean prehistory IT: the Vlachopoulos, A. & Birtacha, K 2003 (eds.). Apyovainnc:
prepalatial Bronze Age of the southern and central Greek 'rLpT/7:LlCOe;7:0pOe; yta 7:OV lCa81JYT/7:rJ Xpio7:o f. N7:0vpa,
mainland", in Cullen 2001 (ed.): 95--147. Ka8T]fleQlvt'J: Athens.

Schofield, E. 1982. "The western Cyclades and Crete: a
special relationship", Oxford Journal of ArcJwrology 1: 9-25.
Schofield, E. 1983. "The Minoan emigrant",
Krzyszkowska & Nixon 1983 (eds.): 293-301.
Schofield, E. 1984. "Destruction deposits of the earlier
Late Bronze Age from Ayia Irini, Kea", in MacGillivray &
Barber 1984 (eds.): 179-83.
Scholes, K 1956. "The Cyclades in the later Bronze Age: a
synopsis", Annual of the British School at Athens 49: 4-40.
Shaw, J.W. 1978. "Consideration of the site of Akrotiri as
a Minoan settlement", in Doumas 1978 (ed.): 429-36.
Sheets, P.D. & Grayson, D.K. 1979 (eds.). Volcanic activity
and human ecology, Academic Press: New York.
Voutsaki, S. 1995. "Social and political' processes in the
Mycenaean Argolid: the evidence from the mortuary
practices", in Laffineur & Niemeier 1995 (eds.): 55--66.
in
Wace, A.J.B. & Blegen, C.W. 1918. "The Pre-Mycenaean
pottery of the mainland", Annual of the British School at
Athens 22: 175--89.
Wagstaff, J.M. & Cherry, J.F. 1982A. "Settlement and
population change", in Renfrew & Wagstaff 1982 (eds.):
136-55. -
Wagstaff, J.M. & Cherry, J.F. 1982B. "Settlement and
resources", in Renfrew & Wagstaff 1982 (eds.): 246-63.
Walberg, G. 1992. Middle Minoan III-a time of transition,
Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 97, Astrom:
Jonsered.

Sherratt, S. 2oooA. The captive spirit: catalogue of Cyc/adic Walter,H. & Felten, F. 1981. Die vorgeschichtliche Stadt:
antiquities in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University Befestigungen-Hiiuser-Funde,
Alt-Agina 3 (1), von Zabern:
Press: Oxford. Mainz am Rhein.

Sherratt, S. 2000B (ed.). The wall paintings of Thera: Warren, P.M. 1969. Minoan stone vases, Cambridge
proceedings of 'the first international symposium, Petros M. University Press: Cambridge.
Nomikos conference centre, Thera, Hellas (30 August-4
September 1997), The Thera Foundation: Athens. Warren, PM. 1975. The Aegean civilizations,
Elsevier/phaidon: London.
Sinos, S. 1987. "Beobachtungen zur Siedlung von Akrotiri
auf Thera und ihrer Architektur", in Buchholz 1987 (ed.): Warren, P.M. 1984. "The place of Crete in the
288--313. thalassocracy of Mines", in Hagg & Marinatos 1984
(eds.): 39-44.
Smith, C. 1896. "Excavations in Melos, 1896", Annual of
the British School at Athens 2: 63-76. Warren, P.M. 1991. "A new Minoan deposit from
Knossos ca. 1600 BC, and its wider relations", Annual of
Smith, C. 1897. "Excavations in Melos, 1897", Annual of
the British School at Athens 86: 319--40.
the British School at Athens 3: 1-30.
Warren, PM. 1999. "IM lA: Knossos, Thera, Gournia", in
Sotirakopoulou, P. 1996. "The dating of late Phylakopi I Betancoiut et al. 1999 (eds.): 893-903.
as evidenced at Akrotiri on Thera", Annual of the British
Warren, P.M. & Hankey, V. 1989. The absolute chronology
School at Athens 91: 113-36.
of the Aegean BronzeAge, Bristol Classical Press: Bristol.

68
 A TALE OF THREE CITIES: CHRONOLOGY AND MINOANISATION AT PHYLAKOPI IN MELOS

Whitelaw, T. 2000. "Settlement instability and landscape

degradation in the southern Aegean in the third
millennium BC", in Halstead & Frederick 2000 (eds.):
135-{)1.

Whitelaw, T. 2004. 'The development of an island centre:

urbanization at Phylakopi on Melos", in Cherry et al. 2004
(eds.): 14~.

Wiener, MH. 1984. "Crete and the Cyclades in LM 1: the

tale of the conical cups", in Hagg & Marinatos 1984 (eds.):
17-26.

Wiener, M.H. 1990. "The isles of Crete? The Minoan

thalassocracy revisited", in Hardy et al. 1990 (eds.): 128-
61.

Wright, re. 1995. "From chief to king in Mycenaean

Greece", inRehak 1995 (ed.): 63--80.

Zerner, e., Zerner, P. & Winder, r 1993 (eds.), Wace and

Blegen: pottery as evidence for trade in the Aegean Bronze Age,
1939-1989. Proceedings of the international conference held at
the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (Athens, 2-
3 December 1989),Gieben: Amsterdam.

69
AUTOCHTHON
PAPERS PRESENTED TO O. T.P .K. DICKINSON
ON THE OCCASION OF HIS RETIREMENT

INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

9 NOVEMBER 2005

Edited by

ANASTASIA DAKOURI-HILD & SUE SHERRATT