Knossos: The Little Palace
by Eleni M. Hatzaki

The Little Palace at Knossos (LP), or - as it was originally named - the West House, is situated on the slopes of Hellenika, the hill which rises to the w of the Kephala mound (PLAN 1 ). It was discovered in the course of tracing the Royal Road, which at the time was thought to follow a NW direction. Instead of a roadway, Arthur Evans and his assistant Duncan Mackenzie uncovered parts of a wellpreserved Neo-palatial building, which still remains the largest house yet discovered within the Bronze Age town of Knossos. The LP was fully explored in the excavation campaigns of 1905, 1908 and 1910 Apart from the invaluable services of Mackenzie, Evans had secured the assistance of Christian Doll, a skilled architect, who was in charge of the architectural plans.

As revealed by the initial trial and subsequent excavation, the building was destroyed by a devastating fire, which caused the preservation of a small group of Linear B clay tablets together with numerous clay sealings. These objects were found scattered within the earth fill on the ground floor of several rooms, and the deposits were interpreted as upper floor collapse. In early publications on the LP, Evans, who based his interpretations largely- on Mackenzie's notebooks, ascribed the destruction deposits to the Re-occupation Period (c. 1300-1200 BC). A slightly modified view was expressed in PM II, where the sealings were disassociated from the tablets, the latter being re-assigned without any stated reasons to the Last Palace Period (c. 1400 BC). Finally, in PM IV, Evans further revised his opinion about the date of the sealings, which he for the first time treated as being- contemporary with other such deposits from Knossos.

In the early 1960s, with the outbreak of the dispute concerning the date of the destruction of the last Palace at Knossos, the LP became part of the debate. Evans's initial account gave some support for the view that tablets and sealings belonged to his 'Re-occupation' Period. John Boardman and Leonard Palmer's opposing accounts gave an insight into the complexity of the site's occupation history, especially since the excavation records were open to diverse interpretations. This was further confirmed by Mervyn Popham's studies on the LP pottery: the quantities of both LM IIIA and LM IIIB wares indicate two distinct occupation phases - or rather two events - in the building's history, but more importantly two candidates for dating the destruction by fire.'

Although research concentrated on the circumstances and timing of the LP's LM III destruction by fire, less notice has been paid to its earlier history and construction date. The lack of an independent study, with a detailed examination of the LP, became more apparent after the excavation and publication of the adjacent Minoan Unexplored Mansion (MUM), especially since the two were once part of the same complex." The present book aspires to bridge this gap, through a fresh examination of the excavation notebooks, the architectural remains, the surviving pottery and small finds. In addition to the Evans material, the results of the 1995 restoration programme, conducted under the auspices of the 23rd Ephoreia of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities, have been fully integrated. They provide invaluable dating evidence for the construction and repair of various LP walls.

The LP forms an integrated part of the ongoing debate regarding the destruction (or destructions?) of the Linear B Archive at the Palace. The archaeological evidence has been thoroughly used in support of a LM IIIA or a LM IIIB destruction date. In this book, the question is approached initially through the detailed and separate examination of the artifactual evidence stratigraphy, architecture, pottery and small finds). Each category of material provides essential but often diverse information for piecing together the building's history. These conclusions are synthesised only in the final chapter where a LM IIIA2 date is proposed. Subsequently, the history of the LP is reconstructed within the urban landscapes of Neo-palatial, Final Palatial and Post-palatial Knossos.