Gournia

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
View of the excavation site from the east

Gournia ( Greek Γουρνιά ( n. Sg. )) Is a small ancient port town from Minoan times on the north coast of eastern Crete , about 11 km south-east of Agios Nikolaos . The Minoan name of the settlement is unknown, so the name Gournia, as the local farmers call the place, was used to designate the excavation site. The farmers call this bay, which borders the Gulf of Mirabello to the north , because it is surrounded by hills on all other sides, Gournia, which means basin in English .

Discovery story

In search of a suitable excavation site from the Bronze Age , the American archaeologist Harriet Boyd-Hawes (1871–1945) and a research group from the University of Pennsylvania followed a tip from George Perakis, a farmer and antiquarian from Vasiliki . On May 19, 1901, she and her assistant Blanche Emily Wheeler visited a small hill on the coastal road from Agios Nikolaos to Sitia . Since she immediately found Minoan ceramics and the walls were visible, she started test excavations the next day. Walls and cobbled streets were exposed, and Harriet Boyd-Hawes immediately went to Heraklion to apply for a permit to dig.

In three campaigns in 1901, 1903 and 1904 she exposed the part of the city that is visible today. It did without a reconstruction, such as the one Arthur Evans undertook in Knossos. In 1904 Harriet Boyd-Hawes discovered early Minoan tombs on the hill of Sphoungaras 200 meters north of the ancient city .

Archaeological site

The hill of Gournia was first settled in the Early Minoan Period (FM II A, around 2700 BC) and was continuously inhabited until the Late Minoan Period (SM IB, around 1450 BC). The foundations still visible today date from the end of the Middle Minoan to the Late Minoan period (MM III-SM IB, 1700–1450 BC).

The settlement is grouped around a "mansion", also known as a palace, with a wide courtyard. Three stone-paved streets that run down stairs from the hill and a ring road are clearly recognizable. Individual, delimitable quarters can be identified as residential or workshop quarters or as an area of ​​the “Fürstenhof”. So far 8 quarters have been excavated, which are marked with the letters A – H.

Construction

House AC: mud brick wall and remains of the gypsum plaster

The basement of the houses was made of stone or burnt bricks on stone foundations. The houses had one or more upper storeys made of bricks. As plaster residue shows , the walls were covered with a fine white or a coarser gray plaster. In some cases, a second fine, slightly blue-gray plaster was applied. There were also remains of stucco painted darker than Pompeian red. Two pieces of stucco in the form of a lightning bolt and a swallow were found in a storage room.

The doorsteps found are made of stone and the door frames were made of clay and wood and in rare cases also made of stone. The basement levels probably had windows, but unfortunately, due to the low height of the remaining walls, which have been preserved up to waist height, openings for windows could only be found in three cases. The floors consisted of pounded clay, thin paving stones or thick stones such as those used for road construction. The remains of wooden beams and imprints of reed in plaster that were found suggest that the houses had flat roofs. However, there is a possibility that the floor of the upper floor was built from it. The houses already had a sewer system.

Coming from the street you first entered a forecourt, from here a door led to the ground floor, where workshops and shops were located. Stairs, made of wood or stone, inside or in the forecourt, led to the upper floor to the living rooms. There were also cellars that could be reached by stairs or ladders. Strange vessels that look like mortars , but not a pestle, were found on the floor of the entrance doors . Their function has not yet been satisfactorily clarified.

tour

Cobbled street on the eastern slope

Today you enter the excavation site from the northeast. First you come to a crossroads where a road branches off from the ring road to the west towards the palace. If you follow the ring road to the south, you will find district B on the left and district C on the right. You first come to house CF (left of the street in district C). In addition to a jug and a clay disc inscribed with linear letter A , a stone crucible was found here, which suggests a bronze workshop on the first floor of this house. There is also a sewer pipe in this house. Next, another street that separates district C from D branches off to the west and you come to house DD, in which you can still see the stone bench on which Harriet Boyd found a clay wine press. The grape juice was caught in the hole in front of the bank.

The ring road now turns west and leads up to the hill plateau and first reaches a square. One of the few buildings (Haus He) from the Mycenaean period is located southwest of the square . Larger and better-hewn stones were used for this house. To the north of the square there is a three-step staircase, similar to the display staircase in the Minoan palaces, but that of Gournia goes around the corner. To the left of the stairs is a round stone slab, the so-called kernos, which was used for cultic purposes. It is believed that the square was used both as an agora, for cultural and social events, where the stairs could serve as a seat, as well as for cult activities.

palace

Plan of the Palace of Gournia

To the north of the stairs you reach a corridor which initially leads to the west, bends to the north and opens into an open courtyard. To the west and north of the courtyard were elongated storage rooms, to the south was the throne room, which was surrounded on three sides by benches. A narrow corridor with stairs led from the throne room to the upper floor. From the open courtyard to the north you can first see another staircase to the left to the upper floor, behind which you came to the west entrance of the palace. If you continue northwards you will come to a small bathroom.

Places of worship

If you return to the square, a path leads along the outer wall of the palace on its west side. At a crossroads you come to an upright stone, which is believed to be a sacred stone for a batyle . Nearby there is a stone block with a double ax symbol . If you follow the cobblestone street to the north, you come to a small square that was at the west entrance of the palace. To the right are some of the little-preserved building remains from the Middle Minoan period. At the northern end of the palace, a path on the right leads to a small sanctuary about three by three meters. Various clay cult statuettes and other offerings were found here.

north

Early Minoan stone vessels from the tombs of Gournia in the Archaeological Museum of Agios Nikolaos

In the northern area of ​​the Ringstrasse, a pile of shards from the Middle Minoan period was found right next to a house. Since all the broken pieces come from the same time, it is assumed that after being destroyed by attackers, the debris was disposed of on the outskirts. North of the city, Harriet Boyd found a cemetery in 1904, which was examined in more detail in 1971 and 1972 by the archaeologist Costis Davaras . The graves date mainly to the Early Minoan, Middle Minoan and Mycenaean times. Some of the dead were buried under ledges. But there were also burial houses in the middle of which an open-air shrine was found. Since these graves from FM II and MM I were more richly furnished than simultaneous graves in Sphoungaras, it is assumed that the city's elite were buried here.

If you follow the ring road further south, you will reach house AC. A brick wall and remnants of plaster have been preserved in the basement of the house. The recess for a window is visible in room 7. In the rooms one found a potter's wheel, two ritual vessels and a large pithos .

Destruction

Around 1450 BC BC (SM IB) Gournia, like the Minoan palace complexes, was destroyed and abandoned for 50 years. There are still slight traces of subsequent Minoan and Mycenaean settlement. Around 1200 BC In BC (SM III) Gournia was finally destroyed and abandoned.

literature

  • Harriet Ann Boyd: Gournia. In: Transactions of the Department of Archeology. Free Museum of Science and Art. Vol. I, Philadelphia 1904-1905, pp. 7-44. ( online )
  • Harriet Ann Boyd: Gournia. In: Transactions of the Department of Archeology. Free Museum of Science and Art. Vol. III, Philadelphia 1904-1905, pp. 177-190. ( online )
  • Edith Hayward Hall , Early painted pottery from Gournia, Crete. In: Transactions of the Department of Archeology. Free Museum of Science and Art. Vol. III, Philadelphia 1904-1905, pp. 191-206. ( online )
  • Jeffrey S. Soles: The prepalatial cemeteries at Mochlos and Gournia and the house tombs of Bronze Age Crete , American School of Classical Studies at Athens , 1992, ISBN 0-87661-524-8
  • Wanda Löwe: Settlements and graves of the palace period in Im Labyrinth des Minos , Munich, 2000, ISBN 3-930609-26-6
  • Esther Widmann: The Archeology of the Household in the Cretan New Palace period . Master thesis. Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg 2007, Gournia, p. 48–71 ( digitized version [PDF; 23.6 MB ; accessed on February 7, 2018]).
  • L. Vance Watrous: The Harbor of Gournia: Fieldwork in 2008-2009 . In: Kentro . tape 13 . INSTAP Study Center for East Crete, Philadelphia 2010, p. 12–14 (English, digitized version [PDF; 1.1 MB ; accessed on February 7, 2018]).
  • L. Vance Watrous: Gournia 2015: Progress Toward Publication . In: Kentro . tape 18 . INSTAP Study Center for East Crete, Philadelphia 2015, p. 12–13 (English, digitized version [PDF; 3.3 MB ; accessed on February 7, 2018]).

Web links

Commons : Gournia  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Harriet Ann Boyd: Gournia. In: Transactions of the Department of Archeology. Free Museum of Science and Art. Vol. I, Philadelphia 1904-1905, p. 31.
  2. ↑ Harriet Ann Boyd: Gournia. In: Transactions of the Department of Archeology. Free Museum of Science and Art. Vol. I, Philadelphia 1904-1905, pp. 29-33.
  3. ↑ Harriet Ann Boyd: Gournia. In: Transactions of the Department of Archeology. Free Museum of Science and Art. Vol. I, Philadelphia 1904-1905, pp. 7-44.
  4. ↑ Harriet Ann Boyd: Gournia. In: Transactions of the Department of Archeology. Free Museum of Science and Art. Vol. III, Philadelphia 1904-1905, pp. 177-190.
  5. ↑ Harriet Ann Boyd: Gournia. In: Transactions of the Department of Archeology. Free Museum of Science and Art. Vol. I, Philadelphia 1904-1905, pp. 33-37.
  6. ^ Edith Hayward Hall, Early painted pottery from Gournia, Crete. In: Transactions of the Department of Archeology. Free Museum of Science and Art. Vol. III, Philadelphia 1904-1905, pp. 191-206.
  7. ↑ Jeffrey S. Soles: The prepalatial cemeteries at Mochlos and Gournia and the house tombs of Bronze Age Crete , pp. 1-40.
  8. ↑ Th. Iliopoulos: Gournia , Ministry of culture, Archaeological Receipts Fund, 2006.

Remarks

  1. ↑ In some travel guides the name Gournia (Greek = "drinking trough") is wrongly attributed to the fact that in some houses there are cattle troughs in the ground.

Coordinates: 35 ° 6 ′ 33.2 "  N , 25 ° 47 ′ 33"  E