New-Fangled ‘Digi-Dig’ May Solve Enduring Mystery of Minoa’s Death
Only this much is certain: About 3,100 years ago, the main port on the eastern edge of Crete was abandoned during the dying gasps of the Minoan civilization.
What brought about the end at Palaikastro is just one question in the hugely incomplete picture of the Minoans--a culture connected in the popular imagination with the legendary King Minos, enigmatic labyrinth complexes and the cult of the bull.
Many theories have been put forth on the Minoan language, belief systems, political structure and even why the culture collapsed. Almost none, however, has been proved.
But research underway in a long-ignored corner of Palaikastro could offer fresh perspectives on the Minoans and reshape ideas of how Bronze Age power and influence was distributed on the island from about 3000 to 1100 BC.
“What we’re seeing is potentially staggering,” said J. Alexander MacGillivray, a Minoan expert leading an unusual winter field study on Crete’s eastern shore.
Instruments that probe for buried structures suggest contours that could approach the size of the famous Minoan “palace” at Knossos, about 60 miles to the west, dubbed the seat of Minos and his mythical man-bull Minotaur.
Such a discovery could bolster theories that Minoan culture had many poles of power and was not centralized under the authority of Knossos. But even more intriguing is what clues may be entombed below.
The area--now dotted with olive trees, brambles and wild sage--was quickly covered over by silt-laden runoff from a red clay quarry after the town emptied. The first archeologists to excavate Palaikastro about 100 years ago saw no pottery shards or building stones in the runoff field and declared it a “nil zone.”
The belief was reconfirmed in 1986 when MacGillivray began digs that uncovered portions of the well-organized Minoan port town. The nil zone, however, produced no interesting feedback on devices that use electric current to chart anomalies such as buried walls and roads.
“We just became absorbed in other things,” said MacGillivray. “It’s like we couldn’t see the pot for the shards.”
The bypassed sector started to interest MacGillivray again late last year after steps were found leading in its direction.
New electric-current probes were taken by experts from the British School of Archeology in Athens, one of the sponsors of the dig. This time, in the wet winter ground, the readings were sharp. It was immediately obvious that the current simply was unable to penetrate the sunbaked earth during the normal summer excavation months.
“We were just blown away by the results,” said MacGillivray.
What has appeared is the classic outline of a Minoan complex: long, straight outer walls oriented to the north, with a central court surrounded by a warren of small chambers. The dimensions could reach 264 feet by 396 feet--which would make it second only to Knossos’ 462-by-462-foot expanse. Smaller courtyard complexes also appear throughout Crete.
MacGillivray plans to continue with the digital readings from the surface probes--what he calls a “digi-dig”--until he isolates the most promising areas for limited excavations possibly as early as May.
Scholars say there is no other way to confirm the suspicions from the digital images since the machines cannot discern the ruin’s age or pick up distinct Minoan architectural features, such as sunken bathing areas.
“Only excavation can tell us whether it is, in fact, a palace,” said Anthony James Whitley, a lecturer on Mediterranean archeology at Cardiff University in Britain.
What particularly excites MacGillivray is the apparent quick burial of the area from the quarry runoff. This could have shielded any ruins from the ravages of weather and raiders for more than three millenniums.
Palaikastro’s role as a trading port with present-day Turkey and the Middle East also makes it a potential treasure trove about Minoan life. The ultimate find would be clues to help translate the Minoans’ main written language, known as Linear A, which remains almost a total mystery.
Frescoes or any other examples of the rich Minoan craftsmanship--protected by the quarry silt--could open up new interpretations of Minoan civilization.
MacGillivray and others strongly reject the contentions of Sir Arthur Evans, who began excavating Knossos in 1900. He called the culture Minoan--after King Minos--and bestowed it with values and gods similar to what would later develop in ancient Greece.
The many dissident opinions believe the Minoans were a distinct ethnic group heavily influenced by Egypt and other eastern Mediterranean cultures. MacGillivray also wonders whether the Minoan “palaces” were actually temple-arena settings or a grand structure to mark the paths of the sun and stars.
He even rejects one of the mainstays of Minoan lore: the bull-leaping spectacle apparently depicted in a famous fresco from Knossos.
Instead MacGillivray sees a representation of four constellations: Taurus the bull with Perseus cartwheeling over its back; Orion holding its horns and Andromeda reaching out behind its tail.
“There are so many riddles about the Minoans,” he said. “We’d be thrilled just to answer a few of them.”
