Logic would dictate that I continue making my way eastward, but the opportunity for a second meeting with Elpida Hadjidakis at Falasarna lured me back west yesterday. I’ll be reporting separately on our conversation regarding a groundbreaking discovery she made at another site.

Today, I was delighted also to meet again with Athanasia Kanta, director of Iraklion’s Archaeological Museum. The experienced and passionate archaeologist, who has dug at sites all over Crete, guided me through Monastiraki (named after a small monastery in a nearby village of the same name), where she has been leading excavations since 1980. The Minoan site, which lies in the Amari Valley near the southwest foothills of Mt. Ida, was a major center for wine and cloth production during the Protopalatial period (Middle Bronze Age). Kanta also believes it had a close and special relationship with the palace at Phaistos.

The last year of large-scale excavations at Monastiraki was 1999. Over the past decade, Kanta has focused on studying and publishing material from this fascinating site.

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In the large rectangular room toward the back of this photo (behind Hercules), Kanta's team found pithoi and a small bench with the skeleton of a little animal on it (only its head was missing), along with conical cups--both standing and upside down--placed all around it. The skeleton has been identified as a dog, which was likely sacrificed as a desperate attempt to avoid catastrophe. (Note that dog sacrifice was not common in Minoan Crete.) In another room, they found a big basin that had been placed upside down, covering the skull of a bull, which also appears to have been sacrificed.

Throughout the site, there are collapsed walls, typical of the damage incurred by an earthquake, as well as evidence of a big fire (lamps in the storage areas filled with goods like olive oil would have ignited during an earthquake). Kanta believes the people must have felt the first tremors, gotten frightened, and started praying and making sacrifices to the gods. The Minoans abandoned the site immediately after its destruction and never returned.

This entry was posted by Eti Bonn-Muller on Sunday, August 2, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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