Vassiliki

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Vassiliki archaeological site

Vassiliki ( Greek Βασιλική ), also Vasiliki , is an archaeological excavation site in the northeast of the Greek island of Crete . It is located in the municipality of Ierapetra of the Lasithi regional district on the isthmus of Ierapetra, about 500 meters southeast of the village of Vasiliki , after which it is named. The settlement remains uncovered on a hill (Κεφαλή Kefali ) come from the Early Minoan through the Middle to the Late Minoan Period in the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC. Chr.

Location and history

The Minoan settlement of Vassiliki was strategically located in the northern area of ​​the isthmus of Ierapetra, about 3 kilometers from the Cretan Sea in the north and 9.5 kilometers from the Levantine Sea in the south. From there you can get to both seas without having to cross mountain ranges that form barriers between the north and south coasts in other parts of Crete. The excavation site occupies the top and primarily the eastern slope of a small hill that rises 180 meters west of the main road from Pachia Ammos to Ierapetra. A 100-meter-long path leads to the entrance of the fenced-in area, which begins north on the side road to the village of Vasiliki.

Entrance to the excavation site

Public access to the 65 × 85 meter excavation site is at the foot of the hill in the northeast. Only the foundation walls of the buildings of the prehistoric settlement are preserved. The first excavations took place in 1903, 1904 and 1906 under Richard Berry Seager , which Nikolaos Plato continued in 1953. More detailed investigations of the site were carried out from 1970 to 1982 and from 1990 by Antonis A. Zois . While Seager interpreted the remains of the building, which he called the "house on the hill", as a single structure with several wings and considered a primitive form of the "Minoan palace" with the seat of a tribal leader, Zois was able to prove that the settlement consisted of several houses in successive phases of construction had up to six closely spaced houses in both sections of Early Minoan II (FM II).

The Minoan Vassiliki originated in the time FM II A (approx. 2650 to 2450/2400 BC) and existed until the end of SM I A (approx. 1700/1675 to 1625/1600 BC). The settlement reached its greatest expansion in phase MM I A (approx. 2200/2150 to 1925/1900 BC). It is unclear whether the settlement continued to be inhabited up to SM III C (approx. 1200/1190 to 1075/1050 BC), since Seager found a Tholos grave from this near Agios Theodoros (which no longer exists today) in 1906 Culture stage, which, however, correlates temporally and spatially more with the late Minoan settlement of Vassiliki Kephala 700 meters to the west .

The earliest buildings by Vassiliki from FM II A were the northern houses F and X and the south building under the later "west house", the south-west wing near Seager. After its destruction in FM II B (approx. 2450/2400 to 2300/2250 BC) first the “Red House” with a spacious open space adjoining it to the west, later the “West House” and the “Southwest House”, the partially overlaid the paved area of ​​the square. Zois suspected that up to 200 people lived in the settlement. Most of the finds come from FM II B in the Vassiliki style , a ceramic style with a differently colored, flamed surface, which was named after the excavation site from which the earliest pieces come. Vassiliki style ceramics dominated the entire eastern and southern part of Crete during this period. There were probably two main production facilities, the exact location of which is still unknown.

At the end of FM II B, the settlement was destroyed by fire. Simultaneous destruction of the Fournou Koryfi and Myrtos Pyrgos settlements on the south coast suggests external attacks. Vassiliki continued to be inhabited and prospered in phase MM I A. Even after another fire in MM II B, the settlement was rebuilt. The buildings in the northeastern area of ​​the excavation site date from the late Minoan period SM I A. There are few indications of a settlement after this cultural level.

literature

  • Richard Berry Seager: Excavations at Vasiliki, 1904 . In: University of Pennsylvania Transactions of the Free Museum of Science and Art 1 . University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania 1904, pp. 207–221 (English, digitized version [PDF; 8.0 MB ]).
  • Richard Berry Seager: Report of Excavations at Vasiliki, Crete, in 1906 . In: University of Pennsylvania Transactions of the Free Museum of Science and Art 2 . University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania 1906, pp. 111–132 (English, digitized [PDF; 12.6 MB ]).
  • Stefan Hiller : The Minoan Crete after the excavations of the last decade (=  meeting reports of the philosophical-historical class . Volume 330 ). Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1977, ISBN 978-3-7001-0176-5 , p. 82-83 .
  • L. Vance Watrous: Review of Aegean Prehistory III: Crete from Earliest Prehistory through the Protopalatial Period . In: American Journal of Archeology . No. 98/4 . Archaeological Institute of America, Boston 1994, p. 707–709 ( uniroma1.it [PDF; 12.0 MB ]).

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d Vasiliki. Minoan Crete, July 12, 2015, accessed January 9, 2017 .
  2. a b c J. Lesley Fitton: The Minoans . Theiss, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-8062-1862-5 , Frühminoisch II, p. 43 (English: Peoples of the Past - Minoans . London 2002. Translated by Tanja Ohlsen).
  3. Sebastian Zöller: The society of the early "dark centuries" on Crete. An examination of the archaeological legacies of the population of Crete during the Late Minoan IIIC and Sub-Minoan Periods in terms of their social significance and significance. Master's thesis, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg 2005, p. 70 ( PDF; 1391.54 KB ).
  4. Yasemin Leylek: Public rooms in the Minoan culture. Dissertation, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg 2012, p. 232 ( PDF; 13749.72 KB ).
  5. Jeremy B. Rutter: The Early Minoan Period: The Settlements. Aegean Prehistoric Archeology. Dartmouth College, accessed January 11, 2017 .
  6. Yasemin Leylek: Public rooms in the Minoan culture. Dissertation, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg 2012, p. 236 ( PDF; 13749.72 KB ).

Web links

Commons : Vassiliki Archaeological Dig Site  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 35 ° 4 ′ 55.3 "  N , 25 ° 48 ′ 39.6"  E