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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
The present dispute over the date of the of the Linear B tablets found at Knossos has been, for the most part, concerned with the question whether they belong to an LM II/IIIA I destruction of the Palace, which Evans dated about 1400 B.c., or to the end of the LM IIIB period, some 150 or more years later, when Evans believed that the Palace ruins were only partly reoccupied [I]. To many archaeologists, however, the problem is a different one. For them the evidence of the pottery and of the sealings associated with the burning of the Palace and with the baking of its clay archives makes the later dating of the tablets impossible. Their concern is rather to determine more exactly when in the 14th century the destruction took place.
The greatest help towards answering this question will come from a closer definition of the style of pottery in use at the time of the catastrophe. The author has been working on this problem over the last three years by studying the considerable amount of unpublished sherd material in the Stratigraphical Museum established by Evans at Knossos. A comprehensive publication of this material will of necessity take some time to complete. Meanwhile it is hoped that it would be generally helpful to illustrate some eight of the pots which the author has been able to have reconstructed from these sherds; at the same time it is proposed briefly to outline the circumstances in which they were originally found according to the excavation reports.
* I wish to express my gratitude to the Managing Committee of the British School at Athens for permitting me both to study the material and to make this preliminary publication of work undertaken mainly while holding the Macmillan Studentship.
† My thanks are due to Mr Petros Petrakis, technician of the B.S.A., and to Dr St Alexiou, Ephor of Antiquities in Crete, and to his technical staff, for these reconstructed vases.
* It is possible that erosion of the building is partly responsible. The possibility suggests itself that much of the Palace may not have been used as living quarters in the final phase of its history. There is a large spread of archive rooms throughout the building, more suggestive of a government secretariat than state apartments.
