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Human Bones from A Late Minoan IB House at Knossos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

S. M. Wall ,
J. H. Musgrave  and
P. M. Warren
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Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to make available the full osteological record of the human bones found in a small room of a late Minoan Ib house at Knossos (Stratigraphical Museum site), of which about a third bear knife marks suggesting that flesh had been cut from them. It presents the physical situation, finds, and their contexts. Part I describes in detail the stratigraphy and distribution of the finds, II sets out the osteological record, III analyses in more detail the skulls and mandibles and their evidence for age, IV summarizes reasons for the treatment of the bodies and bones, and considers the condition of the human individuals at death, and V concludes with some comparative evidence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 81 , November 1986 , pp. 333 - 388
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1986

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References

1 For a preliminary report on the house, Warren, P. M., ‘Knossos: Stratigraphical Museum Excavations, 1978–80. Part I’, AR 1980–1981 79–92Google Scholar (hereafter ‘Knossos Part I’).

Excavation in the Room of the Children's Bones was supervised by Dr K. Boreland and Dr D. Evely (1979), Miss S. Mossman (1980) and Dr Boreland (1981), with Miss Wall collaborating in the planning and removal of the bones. The final plan tracing of the building (Fig. 1) is by Mr D. Smyth. The section at Fig. 2 was drawn in its original version by Dr Evely. Drawings of bones (Figs. 5–11) are by Miss Wall. Photographs of the skulls and mandibles are by Musgrave, with one or two by Wall; microscope photographs of bones (Plates 32a, d, 33b, d, 35d, 37b–d) are by Dr Evely; the other photographs ar by Warren. They are printed by Mr G. Kelsey, Head of the Faculty of Arts Photographic Unit, University of Bristol.

Section I is by P. W., with bone identifications by S. W., II is by S. W., III by J. H. M., IV and V by P. W., though all authors have read and commented on all sections.

2 Table 2 (p. 374) shows that seventy-nine bones out of a minimum number of 199 identified bones bear cut marks. If one subtracts from seventy-nine the eight limb bone fragments which could possibly belong to identified limb bones, and so takes seventy-one as the minimum number of identified marked bones, the marked percentage is 35.7. This is the maximum percentage. The best minimum is 21.7 per cent, calculated from the catalogue total of fragments after joins were made (327) and the minimum number of marked bones (71). The percentage of all marked bones among all fragments, seventy-nine out of 371, is 21.3.

3 ‘Knossos: Part I’, figs. 54–63. See also Warren, , ‘Minoan Crete and Ecstatic Religion. Preliminary Observations on the 1979 Excavations at Knossos’, in Hägg, R. and Marinatos, N. (eds.), Sanctuaries and Cults in the Aegean Bronze Age (Skrifter Utgivna av Svenska Institutet i Athen 4° xxviii) (1981) figs. 10, 12–19Google Scholar, including drawings by Wall; Knossos, : ‘New Excavations and Discoveries’, Archaeology 37 (1984) col. figs, at pp. 49, 52.Google Scholar

4 See n. 3 above.

5 The site datum (12.96 m) was the south-west corner of the pavement surround of the Stratigraphical Museum. For site depth measurements (mostly lower than 12.96 m) the lower the figure the lower its absolute depth. Thus a find at 10.50 m is 0.50 m below one at 11.00 m.

6 ‘Knossos: Part I’ 74; Catling, H. W., AR 1981–1982 53.Google Scholar

7 ‘Knossos: Part I' fig. 52; ‘Minoan Crete and Ecstatic Religion.…’, op. cit. (see n. 3 above) fig. 10.

8 For a trephined skull from Mycenae, Circle B, tomb Γ, together with comparative Aegean evidence, see Angel, J. L. in Miyonas, G. E., Ὁ ταφικός κύκλος τῶν Μυκηνῶν (1973) 380 and pl. 249.Google Scholar For wider evidence, Brothwell, D. R., Digging up Bones, 3rd edn. (1981) 120–5.Google Scholar

9 If the ceiling had been at the point where the north-south timber lay on the south wall, at 11.30, the basement would have been only 1·32 m high (from the floor at 9.98). It could thus only have been a cupboard. Now the bones could with difficulty have been thrown into such a cupboard, that is thrown up to 1.85 m back from the entrance to the west wall and into a space only about 0.74 m high, the conical cup level already having filled the area up to a height (maximum) of 0.58 m. This seems improbable. Even more so would have been the use of such a low space for the conical cup level itself, the vases having the appearance of an uneven floor/use deposit, as noted, and not of any kind of store or still less rubbish area.

10 Marinatos, S. and Hirmer, M., Crete and Mycenae (1960) pl. xiii.Google Scholar

11 ‘Knossos: Part I’ fig. 45.

12 Ibid. fig. 48; ‘Knossos, New Excavations and Discoveries’, op. cit. (see n. 3 above) fig. at p. 48.

13 Cf. the prominent spur on orchis flower heads.

14 ‘Knossos: Part I’ 80–4 and figs. 20–41.

15 Ibid. fig. 20.

16 Information given by Mr Georgios Tsimbragos of Mone, Maleviziou. For a similar recipe, in this case gargantuan, see Bosanquet, R. C., Letters and Light Verse (1938) 82Google Scholar, in Seteia. I thank Miss Edith Clay for this reference. There were also many snails of a species smaller in size than the It is not yet known whether these are edible. Both species are being studied for identification.

17 ‘Knossos: Part I’ fig. 26.

18 Ibid. figs. 16–17.

19 The two skulls, the main bones with knife cuts and the two sheep vertebrae are now stored in Herakleion Museum, the remaining bones being stored in the Stratigraphical Museum at Knossos. The bones in Herakleion are shown in the catalogue by the numbers in [ ].

20 Identifications were made with reference to Brothwell, D. R., Digging Up Bones, 3rd edn. (1981)Google Scholar, E. Schmid, Atlas of Animal Bones for Prehistorians, Archaeologists and Quaternary Geologists (1972), and to a modern child's skeleton kindly loaned by the Department of Anatomy, University of Bristol.

21 The animal bones will be more fully presented, together with the rest of the animal bones from the site, in a future report.

22 It has been suggested that small groups of cut marks, such as are found on these bones, are probably produced by use of stone as opposed to metal knives (Binford, L. R., Bones. Ancient Men and Modern Myths (1981) 105–6 and figs. 4.14, 4.15).Google Scholar

23 The nature of the marks on the children's bones, mostly sawing cuts, rules out weapon blows (and thus enemy attack). The absence of longitudinal scraping marks is against preparation of the bones for secondary burial, which the find contexts throughout the LM IB house in any case show to be a most improbable hypothesis (pace Branigan, K., Nature 299 (1982) 201–2).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Brothwell, op. cit. (see n. 8 above) 67.

25 In addition to those of the skulls A and B (cat. nos. 1–2) radiographs were made of mandibles cat. nos. 4, 5, clavicle cat. no. 212, scapulae cat. nos. 219, 221, humeri cat. nos. 223, 224, ilium cat. no. 257, femur cat. no. 270, fibula cat. no. 288, ulna cat. no. 230, radius cat. no. 235, five hand phalanges cat. nos. 242–3 and three others within cat. nos. 245, 247–52, and five metatarsals cat. no. 298 and four others within cat. nos. 296–7, 301–3.

26 Binford, L. R. and Bertram, J. B., ‘Bone Frequencies and Attritional Processes’, in Binford, (ed.), For Theory Building in Archaeology (1977) 90–4, esp. 94.Google Scholar For the physical details of carrying out a sacrifice in Classical Greece, see Durand, J.-L., ‘Bêtes grecques. Propositions pour une topologie des corps à manger’, in Detienne, M. and Vernant, J.-P. (eds.), La cuisine du sacrifice en pays grec (1979) 133–65.Google Scholar We thank Dr R. G. A. Buxton for the reference.

27 Warren, , Myrtos. An Early Bronze Age Settlement in Crete (1972) 83 and fig. 28Google Scholar; E. Sunderland and R. A. Cartwright, ‘Fragments of a Human Cranium’, in Warren, Myrtos 342.

28 Sakellarakis, J. and Sakellarakis, E., ‘Ἀνασκαφή Ἀρχανῶν’ PAE (1979) 331–92Google Scholar, at 347–92, and pl. 183 (pottery nearly all paralleled in large MM IIIB/LM IA deposit at lower level than and just to north of the LM IB house (P. W.)). Id. ‘Drama of Death in a Minoan Temple’, National Geographic 159 no. 2 (1981) 204–22, esp. vases at p. 212.

29 Platon, N., ‘Ἀνασκαφή περιοχῆς πραισοῦ’ PAE (1960) 296.Google Scholar

30 Seager, R. B., ‘Excavations on the Island of Mochlos, Crete, in 1908’, AJA 13 (1909) 273–303, at 301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Platon, , ‘Ἀνασκαφή Ζάκρον’ PAE (1965) 222.Google Scholar

32 Id., Zakros (1971) 120; PAE (1962) 162 (room Λ = XII), 163 (skull).

33 Hope Simpson, R. and Lazenby, J. F., in Coldstream, J. N. and Huxley, G. L., Kythera (1972) 62.Google ScholarMonaco, G., ‘Scavi nella zona micenea di Jaliso (1935–1936)’, Clara Rhodos 10 (1941) 41–183, at 82 3.Google Scholar

34 Heuck, S., in Hägg, R. and Marinatos, N. (eds.), Sanctuaries and Cults in the Aegean Bronze Age (Stockholm 1981) 212.Google Scholar

35 Monaco, op. cit. (see n. 33 above) 82 n. 1.

36 Cummer, W. Willson and Scholfield, E., Keos III. Ayia Irini: House A (Mainz 1984) 9–10.Google Scholar

37 Though the wider interpretation of the bones is not the purpose of this paper (see n. 3 above) some comparative data for contemporary sacrifice of human victims to divinities in adjacent regions of the Near East may be noted. For a general treatment, Green, A. R. W., The Role of Human Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East (American School of Oriental Research, University of Montana, Missoula, 1975).Google Scholar For human sacrifice by the Hittites and, in one case, cooking of human flesh for the gods, Kümmel, H. M., Ersatzrituale fur den hethitischen König (Wiesbaden 1967) 150–68Google Scholar, esp. 156–7 (text KBo XV 4). (For arguments against the presence of real historical information on eating of human flesh in other Hittite texts, Güterbock, H. G., ‘Die historische Tradition bei Babyloniern und Hethitern’, ZA 44 NF 10 (1938) 105–13Google Scholar (text KBo III 60).) We are grateful to Dr J. Crouwel for these references. For the sacrifice of numbers of children up to twelve to fourteen years of age in the Amman temple, Hennessy, J. B., ‘Excavation of a Late Bronze Age Temple at Amman’, PEQ 108 (1966) 155–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘A Temple of Human Sacrifice at Amman’, The Gazette. University of Sydney 2 no. 20 (Nov. 1970) 307–9; Ottosson, M., Temples and Cults in Palestine (Boreas 12, 1980) 103–4.Google Scholar We are indebted to Professor G. Korres and Dr R. Hägg for these references. For alleged human sacrifice in Crete in Iron Age times, Huxley, G. L., ‘Fulgentius on the Cretan Hecalomphonia’ CP 68 (1973) 124–7.Google Scholar