Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Evans continued to excavate at Knossos for the next thirty years, during which time
he established, on the basis of changes in the pottery styles, the
system of dating
that
remains in use today for classifying
Greek prehistory
: Early, Middle and Late Minoan
(Mycenaean on the mainland). Like Schliemann, Evans attracted criticism and
controversy for his methods - most notably his decision speculatively to reconstruct
parts of the palace in concrete - and for many of his interpretations. Nevertheless, his
discoveries and his dedication put him near the pinnacle of Greek archeology.
Into the twentieth century: the foreign institutes
In 1924 Evans gave to the
British School at Athens
the site of
Knossos
and all other
lands within his possession on Crete (it was only in 1952 that Knossos became the
property of the Greek State). At the time the British School was one of several foreign
archeological institutes in Greece; founded in 1886, it had been preceded by the
French
School
, the
German Institute
and the
American School
.
Greek archeology owes much to the work and relative wealth of these foreign schools
and others that would follow. They have been responsible for the excavation of many of
the most famous sites in Greece: the
Heraion
on
Sámos
(German); the sacred island of
Delos
(French); sites on
Kos
and in southern
Crete
(Italian);
Corinth
,
Samothráki
and
the
Athenian Agora
(American), to name but a few.
One of the giants of this era was
Alan Wace
who, while director of the British School
at Athens from 1913 to 1923, conducted excavations at
Mycenae
and proposed a new
chronology for prehistoric Greece, which put him in direct conflict with Arthur Evans.
Evans believed that the mainland citadels had been ruled by Cretan overlords, whereas
Wace was convinced of an independent Mycenaean cultural and political development.
Wace was finally vindicated after Evans's death, when in the 1950s it emerged that
Mycenaean Greeks had conquered the Minoans in approximately 1450 BC.
The period between the wars saw many new discoveries, among them the sanctuary
off
Asklepios
and its elegant Roman buildings on
Kos
, excavated by the Italians from
1935 to 1943, and the Classical Greek city of
Olynthos
, in northern Greece, which was
dug by the American School from 1928 to 1934. After the wholesale removal of houses
and apartment blocks that had occupied the site, the American School also began
excavations in the
Athenian Agora
, the ancient marketplace, in 1931, culminating in
the complete restoration of the
Stoa of Attalos
.
More recent excavations
Interrupted by World War II and the Greek civil war, it was not until 1948 that
excavations were resumed with a Greek clearance of the
Sanctuary of Artemis
at
Brauron
in Attica, and in 1952
Carl Blegen
cleared
Nestor's Palace
at
Pylos
in Messenia.
Greek archeologists began work at the Macedonian site of
Pella
, the capital of ancient
Macedonia, and at the
Nekromanteion of Ephyra
in Epirus.
In comparison to earlier digs, these were minor operations, reflecting a modified
approach to archeology, which laid less stress on discoveries and more on
documentation
. Which is not to say that there were no spectacular finds. At
Mycenae
,
in 1951, a second circle of graves was unearthed, and at Pireás, a burst sewer in 1959
revealed four superb Classical bronzes. In 1961 the fourth great
Minoan palace
off
Káto
Zákros
(following the unearthing of Knossos, Phaestos and Malia) was revealed by
torrential rains at the extreme eastern tip of Crete.
At
Akrotíri
on the island of
Thíra
(Santoríni),
Spyros Marinatos
revealed, in 1967, a
Minoan-era site that had been buried by volcanic explosion in either 1650 or 1550 BC
- the jury is still deliberating that one. Its buildings were two or three storeys high, and
superbly frescoed. Marinatos was later tragically killed while at work on the site when
he fell off a wall, and is now buried there.
