The
Hagia Photia Cemetery I:
The Tomb Groups and Architecture
by Costis Davaras and Philip
P. Betancourt
The
Hagia Photia Cemetery takes its name from the nearby village
on the northeast coast of Crete, 5 km east of modern Siteia.
This large Early Minoan burial ground with over fifteen
hundred Cycladic imports was discovered in 1971. A total
of 263 tombs were excavated as a rescue excavation in 1971
and 1984. Among the 1800 artefacts are some of the earliest
known Cretan discoveries of several types: the grave goods
come mostly from the Kampos Group, an assemblage of artefacts
known mainly from the Cyclades. Similarly, the tombs represent
an architectural style and a series of burial customs that
are foreign to Crete but familiar from elsewhere within
the Aegean. In fact, the cemetery has such close parallels
from the Cyclades that it has often been regarded as a Cycladic
colony. The burial contents are an extremely interesting
body of evidence for the study of the formative phases of
Minoan Crete.
Contents: 1. Introduction (Philip P. Betancourt);
2. The Tomb Groups (Costis Davaras and Philip P. Betancourt);
3. Discussion of the Architecture (Philip P. Betancourt and Costis Davaras).
Review by P.M. Warren in JHS 127 (2007), pp. 211–212: "The present volume is a fundamental record, well produced and very fully illustrated. . . . The corpus of over 1,800 artefacts in discrete, well-recorded groups (individual tombs) is one of exceptional richness for developing understanding of Early Bronze Age Crete."
290p, 580 b/w illus
(Prehistory Monographs 14, INSTAP Academic Press, 2004)
ISBN 1-931534-13-6
ISBN-13: 978-1-931534-13-0 |
