Life in the Cyclades seems to have continued much as it had in the Early Bronze Age. Yet, apart from signs scratched or painted on pottery from Phylakopi in Melos, there is little evidence of acquaintance with writing or the use of seals. Some time after the beginning of the period of the Early Palaces in Crete, Phylakopi was defended by a massive wall. Cretan Kamáres ware was exported to the islands of Melos, Ceos, and Aegina and to Lerna and a few other coastal sites on the mainland, and mainland Minyan ware found its way to the islands and to Crete. The trade may partly reflect the trade in Melian obsidian, which may still have been in demand for cheap knives and razors, although metal ones were already in use in the Aegean area from the Early Bronze Age onward. Chamber tombs cut in the rock at Phylakopi appear to go back to this period, but burial in slab-lined cists continued elsewhere in the islands. At some point the fortified settlement at Khalandrianí on Syrus was destroyed by fire and abandoned, but Aegina, Ceos, and other fortified island towns flourished.
Period of the Late Palaces in Crete (c. 1700–1450)
Various disasters occurred in Crete about the turn of the 18th and 17th centuries bc. The palaces at Knossos and Mallia were damaged, while that at Phaistos and a building that may have been the residence of a local ruler in a large settlement at Monastiráki west of Mount Ida were destroyed by fire. The palace at Phaistos had been so violently burned that an enormous layer of almost impenetrable vitrified mud brick formed an underpinning for the new palace built on top of it; it is a vivid testimony to massive destruction. What caused these destructions is uncertain. Accident, internal warfare, or foreign invasion are among possible agents. The damage at Knossos might have been caused by one of the many earthquakes that afflict the area. It has been suggested that Crete was first conquered by Greeks during this period or by people from Anatolia speaking another Indo-European language called Luwian and related to Hittite. There is, however, no strong evidence for an invasion of Crete at this time.
The two or three centuries following these disasters were indeed the most flourishing of the Aegean Bronze Age, during which Cretan civilization reached its zenith. The palaces at Knossos, Phaistos, and Mallia were restored with greater splendour than before.
From the dimensions of the new and entirely rebuilt palace at Phaistos, it has been possible to calculate the unit of length used by the Cretan architects: a foot only a fraction shorter than the standard English foot. In plan, the later palaces were basically the same as the earlier ones, with agglomerations of rooms clustering around long, rectangular central courts oriented roughly from north to south either for ritual or for catching the best of the winter sun. Many parts of these palaces were two or three stories high. A section on the eastern side of that at Knossos, built into a cutting in a steep slope below the level of the central court and housing the royal living quarters, may have had five stories. Large areas of the palaces, especially at Knossos, were possibly reserved for cult. It is difficult to explain otherwise the beautiful ceremonial steps at Phaistos leading up to a blank wall; although there is no entrance, a personage could make a sudden appearance from the side and speak or show something to an assembly in the open space in front. The palaces often had a conjunction of grand facades and storage quarters, perhaps for the first fruits of the harvest to be blessed in passing.
Wide, paved squares flanked the palaces, and around them spread extensive towns, which by this time if not earlier seem to have been unwalled. Unfortunately, a complete town around a palace has never yet been excavated, and the comparative wealth or population is not known. Cobbled streets with raised central paths of smooth squared blocks for the convenience of pedestrians ran through the towns. Surface water was carried away by covered drains, and skillfully jointed clay water pipes were found in the palace at Knossos.
The only settlement of this period that has been entirely excavated is a small town at Gourniá in eastern Crete. This was built on the slopes of a ridge overlooking the sea, on top of which stood a little “palace” with a small open court in the centre and a public square beside it on the sheltered landward side. Down the ridge from the palace toward the sea was a small shrine facing the end of a path that led to it from the main street. Even in a small town such as that at Gourniá, many of the houses were evidently two stories high, and houses with three stories are depicted on faience inlays from the palace at Knossos assignable to the 17th century bc.
Palaikastro in eastern Crete is another important town with blocks of houses marked by coloured stone foundations, narrow streets with drains, and pottery of exceptional quality. Another town of great potential interest is Arkhanes near Knossos, where palace facades, early tholos tombs and later shaft-grave burials, and shrines have been discovered scattered through the countryside. Pyrgos, a controlling villa, and Kommos, a commercial town with fine architecture, roads, and ship sheds, also are indicative of power and wealth; the road and watchtower system is beginning to be better known.
In palaces as well as houses, the lower parts of walls were still normally built of rough fieldstones held together with mud, the upper stories being continued in mud brick. Carefully squared and fitted blocks of limestone, however, were employed for some important facades. Now, as earlier, walls were often tied together with a framework of timbers set vertically and horizontally and joined by crossbeams running through them. There was also an extensive use of timber for columns and pillars and for the rafters supporting upper floors and roofs, which, it seems, were usually flat. Pictures of wooden columns show them with a characteristic downward taper, which may reflect an original custom of placing tree trunks upside down. The lower parts of the walls inside the palaces and great houses were often clothed with large slabs of attractively veined gypsum, a soft crystalline stone that outcrops in the region of Knossos and Phaistos. Gypsum was also much employed for pavements, but a hard lime plaster was more commonly used for coating walls and floors. Plastered walls were decorated with brightly coloured pictures, which may be an innovation of this period, since they are not yet attested for certain earlier in Crete. These pictures are described as frescoes because they were normally painted while the plaster was still damp. Lines impressed with string in the wet plaster helped to guide the artists. White, red-brown, or blue were usually chosen as a background, while yellow and black were among the other basic colours used. Many of these pictures, especially those from the palace at Knossos, were concerned with religion; they show elaborately dressed goddesses, together with sacred dances and ceremonies, such as bull leaping, which appears to have had a religious or magical basis. Yet scenes such as a frieze of partridges and hoopoes adorning a room in what seems to have been an inn for strangers opposite the palace at Knossos look entirely secular. Monkeys, imported from Egypt, are depicted more than once, along with native wild goats and extraordinarily lifelike flowers—rose, ivy, saffron crocus, lily, and papyrus—but often imaginary hybrids. Some frescoes may represent permanent magic gardens. The pictures ranged in scale from those with life-size figures, which might occupy most of the wall surface, to panels and friezes, including a class of miniatures with figures of men and women two to three inches (five to seven centimetres) high. Parts of some wall pictures at Knossos were in relief, and plaster reliefs of this kind are occasionally found elsewhere in Crete. Floors and ceilings might also carry painted decoration.