DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.807#0005
PREFACE
The excavations carried out by me from 1900 onwards on the site of
Knossos, which brought to light the prehistoric Palace and its dependencies,
were provisionally described in my somewhat full and copiously illustrated
Reports in the Annual of the British School at Athens. Of the extent of the
great building the view opposite, showing its remains from the East, and the
' Tell' on which it stood, will give the best idea. It embraced fully six acres
of ground.
But to the excavators, entering on what was then in fact a wholly
unexplored world, the true relationships of the vast mass of new materials
there brought to light could only be gradually elucidated. The finds in many
cases necessarily came out piecemeal, and the lacunas in them were often
only filled in after intervals of years. The ground-plan of the Palace itself
and its successive stages could only be laboriously traced out by means of the
cumulative results of successive campaigns. Every step forward was in the
dark. There was no existing building of the class to serve as a guide, and
logically consecutive exploration was impossible. It became evident, more-
over, that, marvellously rich in materials as was the Palace Site of Knossos,
its full story could only be told with constant reference to the supplementary
light supplied by the parallel excavations which the discovery of the ' Palace
of Minos' had called forth on other Cretan sites.
It seemed to be highly desirable, therefore, that at least a summary
presentment of the results obtained by the excavations at Knossos should
be set forth in a systematic fashion, as part of a single story and in close
relation to the evidence obtained from these other sources. As a preliminary
step, however, to any such undertaking it was necessary to elaborate
a system of archaeological classification which should cover the vast field
occupied by the prehistoric Cretan civilization. W ith this object I had already
submitted to the Anthropological Section of the British Association, at
its Cambridge Meeting in 1904, a preliminary scheme for classifying the
successive phases of the prehistoric civilization of Crete, and for which I then
ventured to propose the term 1 Minoan'. An outline of this scheme, by
which this Minoan Civilization was divided into three main Sections—■
The excavations carried out by me from 1900 onwards on the site of
Knossos, which brought to light the prehistoric Palace and its dependencies,
were provisionally described in my somewhat full and copiously illustrated
Reports in the Annual of the British School at Athens. Of the extent of the
great building the view opposite, showing its remains from the East, and the
' Tell' on which it stood, will give the best idea. It embraced fully six acres
of ground.
But to the excavators, entering on what was then in fact a wholly
unexplored world, the true relationships of the vast mass of new materials
there brought to light could only be gradually elucidated. The finds in many
cases necessarily came out piecemeal, and the lacunas in them were often
only filled in after intervals of years. The ground-plan of the Palace itself
and its successive stages could only be laboriously traced out by means of the
cumulative results of successive campaigns. Every step forward was in the
dark. There was no existing building of the class to serve as a guide, and
logically consecutive exploration was impossible. It became evident, more-
over, that, marvellously rich in materials as was the Palace Site of Knossos,
its full story could only be told with constant reference to the supplementary
light supplied by the parallel excavations which the discovery of the ' Palace
of Minos' had called forth on other Cretan sites.
It seemed to be highly desirable, therefore, that at least a summary
presentment of the results obtained by the excavations at Knossos should
be set forth in a systematic fashion, as part of a single story and in close
relation to the evidence obtained from these other sources. As a preliminary
step, however, to any such undertaking it was necessary to elaborate
a system of archaeological classification which should cover the vast field
occupied by the prehistoric Cretan civilization. W ith this object I had already
submitted to the Anthropological Section of the British Association, at
its Cambridge Meeting in 1904, a preliminary scheme for classifying the
successive phases of the prehistoric civilization of Crete, and for which I then
ventured to propose the term 1 Minoan'. An outline of this scheme, by
which this Minoan Civilization was divided into three main Sections—■