Κύθηρα: Το μινωικό ιερό κορυφής στον Άγιο Γεώργιο στο Βουνό. Vol. 4, Κεραμεική της Εποχής του Χαλκού

This is the fourth report from the excavation of a Minoan-type peak sanctuary by the church of Ayios Georgios sto Vouno (St. George on the Mountain) on Kythera, on the hills above the long-lived (and for most of the time Minoan) settlement by the sea at Kastri. The first two reports (Y. Sakellarakis, Κύθηρα: Το μινωικό ιερό κορυφής στον Άγιο Γεώργιο στο Βουνό. Vol. 1, Τα προανασκαφικά και η ανασκαφή. Βιβλιοθήκη της εν Αθήναις Αρχαιολογικής Εταιρείας 271 [Athens 2011]; E. Sapouna-Sakellaraki et al., Κύθηρα: Το μινωικό ιερό κορυφής στον Άγιο Γεώργιο στο Βουνό. Vol. 2, Τα ευρήματα. Βιβλιοθήκη της εν Αθήναις Αρχαιολογικής Εταιρείας 276 [Athens 2012]) present the context and the bronze figurines and other nonceramic prehistoric finds, and they were reviewed last year in the AJA (G. Cadogan, “Patronage and Prehistory: Recent Publications on the Bronze Age Aegean and Cyprus,” AJA 118 [2014] 191–92). Readers of this review may wish to have a look at that earlier one for a brief overview of the site. Also in English are three invaluable articles, one by Sakellarakis (“Minoan Religious Influence in the Aegean: The Case of Kythera,” BSA 91 [1996] 81–90), and the others by Tournavitou (“Does Size Matter? Miniature Pottery Vessels in Minoan Peak Sanctuaries,” in A.L. D’Agata and A. Van de Moortel, eds., Archaeologies of Cult: Essays on Ritual and Cult in Crete in Honor of Geraldine C. Gesell. Hesperia Suppl. 42 [Princeton 2009] 213–30; “LM IB Pottery from the Colonies: Hagios Georgios sto Vouno, Kythera,” in T.M. Brogan and E. Hallager, eds., LM IB Pottery: Relative Chronology and Regional Differences. Monographs of the Danish Institute at Athens 11 [Athens 2011] 117–40). The volume under review, like its two predecessors, is in Greek and does not have a summary in any language. It does, however, have an index—unlike those predecessors.

We should also mention the third report on Ayios Georgios, which has not been reviewed in the AJA, and which I have not seen (A. Alexandropoulou et al., Κύθηρα: Το μινωικό ιερό κορυφής στον Άγιο Γεώργιο στο Βουνό. Vol. 3, Τα ευρήματα. Βιβλιοθήκη της εν Αθήναις Αρχαιολογικής Εταιρείας 282 [Athens 2013]). It presents the Byzantine, early Venetian, and later evidence from the site.

In the volume under review, Tournavitou has produced a massively detailed, virtually hyper-comprehensive, record of the Bronze Age pottery from Ayios Georgios sto Vouno: 196,010 pieces, almost all of them sherds, were counted and 1,322 catalogued. The book is rich in descriptions, drawings, statistics, and footnotes (2,041 of them) and fills in the details for her two more general accounts of the Late Minoan (LM) I pottery (Tournavitou 2009, 2011). Readers unable to read modern Greek will find these articles helpful for understanding the book, which also has plenty of photographs (which are absent in the articles) and a full set of drawings that are larger and easier to follow than those in the 2011 article. The catalogue numbers are the same in all three publications.

This definitive account of the Ayios Georgios pottery presents the evidence as fully as possible, setting a standard for other scholars of Minoan pottery. Tournavitou’s presentation will be a benchmark for pottery yet to be published from peak sanctuaries in Crete itself, while also providing comparanda for the pottery from the settlement at Kastri and other sites on the island identified by the Kythera Island Project (www.ucl.ac.uk/kip). Nearly all the pottery is LM I, a little of it distinctively LM IB. If the principal types are conical cups and tripod cooking pots, the deposit demonstrates the wide range of shapes (and decorative motifs) used in an offshore Minoan shrine.

A very small amount of the pottery (620 sherds, or 0.31% of the total) is Pre- or Protopalatial, valuable chiefly for showing use of the site from the late Prepalatial period (well after the first occupation at Kastri), and it is not necessarily connected with cult: throughout the book, Tournavitou reveals a masterly skepticism about ritualistic interpretations of the material. Ayios Georgios also has some LM/Late Helladic IIIA2–B pottery (but with nothing to suggest continuity of worship from LM IB) that should be connected with the contemporary reoccupation of Kastri.

Noteworthy also are: small amounts of pottery in the Alternating, Marine, and Palace Styles; two pictorial pieces (K1321, K1322) that Tournavitou sees, with some hesitation, as Minoan; a base (K1034) that seems to be an early (LM I) example of a tubular stand for offerings, of a type known more widely in LM III, when they are often (and often erroneously) called “snake tubes”; a cooking pot base (K782) that appears to have the impression of a vine leaf; and a cup fragment (K270) with relief “horns of consecration” and, between them, a vertical “leaflike stem,” according to Tournavitou.

Although the principal audience of this formidably thorough report will be devotees of Aegean prehistoric pottery, there is much here for all interested in early Aegean religion and the nature of Cretan expansion in the Aegean. Tournavitou deserves many congratulations for a job well done and for her modesty and restraint in interpreting material about which we still have much to learn. An unexpected bonus is that the book is a great help for improving one’s Greek technical vocabulary (e.g., for “tortoise shell ripple,” or “carinated”) in an area where English terminology has tended to dominate.

Gerald Cadogan
geraldcadogan2@gmail.com