The Late 13thc BCE Crisis in The East Me

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The Content
This collection of papers explores whether a meaningful distinction can be made in the archaeological record
between migrations in general and conflict-induced migration in particular and whether the concept of
conflict-induced migration is at all relevant to understand the major societal collapse of Bronze Age societies in
the Eastern Mediterranean in the late 13th c. BCE. Helped by modern perspectives on actual and recent cases of
conflict-induced migration and by textual evidence on ancient events, the different areas of the Mediterranean
affected by the Late Bronze Age events are explored.
The authors
The volume includes an introduction by Jan Driessen and a postscript by Eric Cline as well as a series of papers
discussing recent situations of forced migration (Sandra Dudley, Dimitris Dalakoglou, Maja Gori, Martina
Revello Lami, Jean-Pierre Legendre) or historical cases (Robert Garland, Elena Isayev, Johanne Garny, Jan
Tavernier, Stephanie Martin). Most other contributions concentrate on the crisis years in the Mediterranean
from an Aegean (Krzysztof Nowicki, Leonidas Vokotopoulos, Sophia Michalopoulou), Italian (Reinhard Jung,
Bartek Lis), Egyptian (Shirly Ben-Dor Evian, Rachel Mittelman) or Levantine perspective (Aaron A. Burke, Ann
Killebrew, Stefania Mazzoni, Assaf Yasur-Landau).
An Archaeology of Forced Migration

An Archaeology
of Forced Migration
Crisis-induced mobility and the Collapse
of the 13th c. BCE Eastern Mediterranean
The series AEGIS (Aegean Interdisciplinary Studies) attempts to make the results of new archaeological
research on Aegean and especially Minoan societies available to the scientific and wider public at a rapid
pace. Monographs, PhD dissertations, proceedings of scientific meetings and excavation reports complete Edited by Jan Driessen
each other to offer a general view of this time frame which is of primary importance to understand the
ancient world and its historical, political, symbolical and social sequences.
97672 XXXX €
An Archaeology of Forced Migration.

An Archaeology of Forced Migration.
Edited by Jan Driessen

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This volume is dedicated to the collective «Hébergement Plateforme Citoyenne»
Contents
1. An Archaeology of Forced Migration – Introduction 19

Jan Driessen
2. The Corporeality and Materiality of Involuntary Exile 25

Sandra H. Dudley
3. From Lampedusa to Trieste 31

An Archaeological Approach to Contemporary Forced Migrations and Identity Patterns
Maja Gori
Martina Revello Lami
4. Vestiges of the Spanish Republican Exodus to France 55

An Archaeological Study of the Retirada
Jean-Pierre Legendre
5. Camps and Ruins 75

Materialities and Landscapes of the 2015 Refugee Crisis
Dimitris Dalakoglou
Photos: Yannis Ziindrilis
6. Tracing Material Endings of Displacement 83

Elena Isayev
7. The Kurustama Treaty 95

An Example of Early Forced Migration?
Johanne Garny
Jan Tavernier
8. Involuntary Displacement in Livy Books 1-5 101

Robert Garland
9. Forced Migration after Natural Disasters 107

The Late Bronze Age Eruption of Thera
Stéphanie Martin
10. The Late 13th c. BCE Crisis in the East Mediterranean 117
Why the case of Crete matters ?
Krzysztof Nowicki
11. Megali Koryphi on Aegina and the Aegean Citadels of the 13th/12th c. BCE 149
Leonidas Vokotopoulos
Sophia Michalopoulou
12. Towards an Archaeology of Forced Movement of the Deep Past 177

Assaf Yasur-Landau
13. The Levant in Crisis 187

The Materiality of Migrants, Refugees and Colonizers at the End of the Bronze Age
Ann E. Killebrew
14. In Search of a Land 203
The Age of Migrations, Exoduses and Diaspora across the Eastern Mediterranean (13th-11th c.
BCE)
Stefania Mazzoni
15. Egyptian Historiography on the Mobility of (Sea) People at the End of the Late Bronze Age 219
Shirly Ben-Dor Evian
16. The Decline of Egyptian Empire, Refugees, and Social Change in the Southern Levant, ca. 1200-
1000 BCE 229
Aaron A. Burke
17. Determining Libyan Influence in Egypt during and after the Late Bronze Age Collapse 251
Rachel Mittelman
18. Potters in Captivity? 261

An Alternative Explanation for the Italo-Mycenaean Pottery of the 13th century BCE
Bartłomiej Lis
19. Push and Pull Factors of the Sea Peoples between Italy and the Levant 273
Reinhard Jung
20. Inching Ever Closer 307

Towards a Better Understanding of the Archaeology of Forced Migration
Eric H. Cline
10. The Late 13 th c. BCE Crisis in the East
Mediterranean
Why the case of Crete matters ?
Krzysztof Nowicki
Introduction
The aim of this paper is to analyse two complex archaeological problems, related to one of the key chapters
of East Mediterranean history – which are usually, and in my opinion unjustifiably – discussed separately1.
These are 1) the dramatic changes of settlement patterns at the turn of the 13th c. BCE in Crete, and 2) the
contemporary disturbances in Cyprus, South Anatolia and the Levant, which may have been connected with
large-scale migrations (Gitin et al. 1998; Oren 2000; Fischer & Bürge 2017)2. The latter problem is among the
most controversial points in the explanation of the East Mediterranean 1200/1177 BCE collapse, but despite
of decades of fierce discussion, different sides of that dispute are far from being resolved (see e.g. Knapp
2008: 250-258; Hitchcock & Maeir 2016a; for the most recent thorough analysis of the collapse see Wiener
2017; Middleton 2017). Some scholars defend a major role for maritime migrations in those disturbances, at
least in the coastal regions (Karageorghis 1984; Karageorghis & Demas 1984; Karageorghis 1998; Killebrew
1998: 166; Bunimovitz 1998: 109; Karageorghis 2000; Killebrew 2005: 231; Yasur-Landau 2010: 335-345),
others reject this entirely (Sherratt 1998; Knapp 2008: 258). The first group wants to reconstruct the process
of the 1200 BCE collapse in relation to the historical phenomenon of the so-called ‘Sea Peoples’ (referred to
in a series of contemporary Syrian, Anatolian and Egyptian written sources), and sees possible links between
the collapse of the Mycenaean political and social order and the appearance of new features in material and
spiritual culture in Cyprus and the Levant (Dothan & Dothan 1992: 13-28; Drews 1993: 48-72; Niemeier
1998; Dothan 1998; Oren 2000: 45-49; Barako 2003; Hitchcock & Maeir 2016b). Their opponents regard
the very concept of a population movement and its reconstruction on the basis of archaeological evidence, as
‘narrow and outmoded’ historical approach to the field3. Yet, can research approaches be valuably classified
as either ‘fashionable’ or ‘outmoded’? Does the term ‘history’ not cover a complexity of all aspects of human
life, including social, economic and political processes: is it limited to ‘politico-military’ aspects, with events
marked by dates and names only (Sherratt 1998: 293: n. 3)?
A narrow understanding of the term ‘history’, and thus a negative attitude to any historical interpretation of
archaeological facts, are among the major obstacles to communication between scholars representing different
approaches here. It is particularly striking that the opponents of historical interpretation of processes and events
concluded from archaeological evidence, also categorize contemporary written sources as unreliable, being
the result of ‘elite propaganda’ more than reflecting the historical reality (Muhly 1984: 55; Dickinson 2006:
1 My fieldwork in Crete was possible due to the kindness of the Greek archaeological authorities, the Ministry of Culture and
Archaeological Service of Crete: the Ephorates of East, Central and Western Crete, and last but not least thanks to the help, assistance,
hospitality and friendship of an immense number of ordinary Cretan people. For the last 25 years it has been generously supported
by grants from the Institute for Aegean Prehistory. The most recent fieldwork related to the subject of this paper was possible thanks
to the grant of National Science Centre (NCN, Poland) n° 2015/19/B/HS3/02137.
2 Even those articles, which include the Aegean element in the East Mediterranean collapse often ignore settlement changes, briefly
mentioning destructions and abandonments only. Much attention has been focused instead on pottery, bronze items and architecture;
the Mainland is usually dominant in the discussion. Cretan settlement and its changes shortly before 1200 BCE have been usually
ignored in those analyses; see for example Deger-Jalkotzy 1998; Sherratt 1998; Betancourt 2000; Jung 2017; Mountjoy 2017;
Stockhammer 2017; Whittaker 2017; see also the paper by Knapp & Manning (2016), in which the authors in the context of the 1200
BCE collapse mentioned only one site on Crete, that of Haghia Triada!
3 Knapp in Comments to Knapp & Manning (2016, Open Forum) described it as the “lack of intellectual rigour embraced by much
of world archaeology over the past half century”, “narrow and outmoded theoretical approach”, and further on as “the literalism,
purported granularity and historical particularism”. The relevance of a comment on the missing or ignoring of important categories
of archaeological evidence in the analysis of historical problems to a “lack of intellectual rigour” is not quite clear to me.
10. The Late 13th c. BCE Crisis in the East Mediterranean
47). However, texts relevant to the late 13th and early 12th c. BCE in the East Mediterranean are of different
origins (Hittite, Syrian and Egyptian) and character (rulers’ and governors’ correspondence, administrative
letters, monumental inscriptions), and should be analysed together. Even if some of them are contaminated
with ‘propaganda’, the latter was usually built up around some real historical circumstances, events and facts
(O’Connor 2000: 100; Redford 2000: 12-13). There is no reason to regard the entire group of these texts
as unreliable and exclude it from the joint analysis of archaeological evidence in the context of the 1200
BCE collapse. Combined use of written sources and archaeological evidence in the studies of Roman history,
especially its later periods, helps us enormously in understanding material culture changes, including the
interregional distribution of particular items, in relation to small or large scale population movements, and in
differentiating the peaceful, economically stimulated influence from the results of invasions and wars. Although
conflicts and migrations did not determine all the changes in ancient peoples’ lives, they were important factors
in their history – as can be learnt, for example, from the royal Near Eastern correspondence of the Bronze Age
(e.g. Singer 1983; Bryce 2003). Certainly, one has to be careful when looking for links between destroyed or
abandoned towns and villages in one region and written testimonies regarding wars, invasions and migrations
in neighbouring lands. Yet, questioning archaeological evidence without examining it4, rejecting a priori any
historical context of analysis, and referring to the latter as “the tyranny of history” (Muhly 1984; Sherratt 1998:
293; Knapp 2013: 450) seem unfruitful avenues of approach.
The political, social, economic and cultural ‘collapse’ seen in the Aegean at the turn of the 13th c. BCE is, in
my view, a real historical problem (Muhly 2011: 45), and not just archaeological (as proposed by Haggis 2001:
43), which consists of various aspects illuminated, however, by different types of archaeological evidence.
Depending on the relevance and reliability of this evidence, some problems regarding the 1200 BCE collapse
are better understood than others. This paper will deal mostly with one broad category of archaeological
evidence, important in the above-mentioned collapse – namely settlement patterns and their changes. The
settlement analysis presented here is based on a representative and systematically researched sample of relevant
sites, and not, as was unfortunately sometimes previously the case, on a more or less subjective selection of the
best-publicized sites (Dickinson 1994: 45-94; 2006: 84-93). Here, one remark regarding the methodology used
in my research seems to be necessary.
For several decades, it has been a common opinion among Aegean archaeologists that the reconstruction of
settlement patterns has to be built on the results of intensive surveys (Keller & Rupp 1983; Whitley 2001: 47-
51; Cunningham & Driessen 2004). My approach to the subject is somewhat different and in general follows
the remarks on the limitations of intensive surveys expressed already in 1983 by Hope Simpson (1983). Without
neglecting, in general, the value of this kind of fieldwork, I have pointed elsewhere to several weak points of
noncritical acceptance of intensive survey results: at the same time, I stressed the importance of other types of
field work in the process of data collection (e.g. archaeological reconnaissance, topographic studies, targeted
searching for sites of particular types). This work either can be complementary to intensive surveys or, in
the case of particularly difficult landscapes, which are often avoided by intensive surveys, can be a valuable
substitute for them. The close and long-lasting relationship between the researcher(s) and the investigated area,
including knowledge of landscape, interviewing local inhabitants and repeated visits to archaeological sites,
4 As for example Dickinson’s questioning of the dating of LM IIIC sites in Crete: “When so much depends on the interpretation of
texts that are either fragmentary, unclear, or of questionable reliability, and on archaeological evidence from a series of sites whose
relative and absolute chronology is debatable, it is necessary to resist the seductively plausible accounts like that of Nowicki”
(Dickinson 2006: 47, my italics). Dickinson never pointed out which site, out of over one hundred, was debatable. Middleton
(2010: 70-71), following Dickinson’s simplified view on the accuracy of sites’ dating on the basis of surface pottery, questioned
as well the reconstruction of settlement patterns during the post-collapse period. However, the dating of the surface pottery from
unexcavated sites is of a more complex character than that questioned by Dickinson and Middleton (without seeing the evidence).
Firstly, it is never, a single individual item or even individual feature which determines a site’s dating: rather, it is the frequency of
occurrence of a series of features shown; secondly, the analysis of dating features is undertaken in a broader context of unexcavated
and excavated sites. Some features are long-lasting, other appear for a short time; only the consideration together of all characteristic
features can give us relatively narrow and secure dates for the investigated site. A good example of accurate chronological distinction
(established before excavations) within one period (LM IIIC), was the pair of sites at Monastiraki: Katalimata and Chalasmenos
(Haggis & Nowicki 1993; Nowicki 2008). Despite Gaignerot-Driessen’s recent objections (2016: 62), the dating of the LM IIIB/C
phase of Katalimata, and its chronological relation with the neighbouring LM IIIC settlement at Chalasmenos, is based on reliable
and representative evidence.
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allows understanding not only of the environmental determinants, but also of the historical circumstances
associated with the particular site’s origin, development and collapse. Such an analysis can be more reliable
than that offered by intensive surveys, which usually have limited one-time duration and are carried out by
people of a widely varied experience concerning the landscape, material culture and settlement history in the
region through all researched periods.
Publications of intensive surveys often treat archaeological sites as dots on maps and statistic numbers in
tables, which are used then as the starting point for reconstructing settlement models in non-surveyed areas
(e.g. Whitelaw 2015: 43). ‘Processual’ treatment of intensive surveys data has been orientated towards ‘killing’
the individual history, individual events and very individual human-related factors, and replacing those with
a linear processual development, related to environmental, social and economic factors. It would be nothing
wrong if those two factor groups were joined together, unfortunately that has rarely been the case. In most of
processual and post-processual studies, there was no place for ‘historical’ phenomena like wars, invasions,
interregional or inter-tribal conflicts, and migrations (Haggis 2001: 52-55). However, any substantial relocation
of habitation places, with the stress on a natural and/or a manmade defensibility, must have been caused by
security problems arising from conflicts between different groups of people rather than by natural or economic
factors. The problem is how to identify these different groups and how to reconstruct their role in the process
of settlement changes. The number of sites included in the analysis of these problems matters very much, as
well. The more evidence regarding settlement patterns we have the more plausible such a reconstruction can be.
When looking for the character of the conflicts between different groups of people we have to take into
account first and foremost settlement organization and its changes. A house, a village, and even more a town,
formed family/community assets, representing an enormous labour investment of several generations. Their
abandonment must have been caused by very serious reasons, even more so when the abandonment was sudden,
fast and irreversible. On the other hand, every new settlement foundation, especially on virgin ground, should be
carefully analysed in broader geographical and historical contexts, including the context of regional settlement
patterns immediately before, during, and after the new foundation. This remark is especially important in the
context of the problem addressed in the present paper. Missing out these contexts, and focusing on the data
supplied by single-site excavation or regional intensive surveys only, has led to frequent misunderstandings
of the individual sites’ place in regional and inter-regional settlement history (e.g. Karphi [Nowicki 1995]
and Myrtos Phournou Koriphi [Nowicki 2010]). As a result, most archaeological surveys in Crete have not
identified several key processes or events, which determined settlement changes during the Neolithic and
Bronze Age, and even such an obvious dramatic shift of settlement to defensible places as occurred at the end
of the 13th and early 12th century BCE has been explained from very varied social and economic perspectives5.
Similar issues surround the settlement changes around 1200 BCE on Cyprus, with two sites – Maa Palaeokastro
and Pyla Kokkinokremos – isolated from broader settlement analysis (Steel 2004: 188; Knapp 2008: 238;
Nowicki 2015).
When studying various aspects of settlement in Crete, I have encountered frequent conflicts between the two
kinds of hypothesis construction, one created mostly on the basis of some theoretical approaches, with little
regard to archaeological evidence, and the second built on a reliable data-base with substantial new evidence
identified as the result of targeted field searching, related to the research problem. This latter procedure –
considering elements of different theoretical approaches and not following only a ‘fashionable’ one – is
especially important in studies of settlement patterns and their changes. Two chronologically distinct examples,
taken from my own research, show how important is a representative database when interpreting the causes of
settlement changes.
1) As late as the 1990s, the transition between the Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age in Crete, with two
clearly defined phases in the Final Neolithic, was analysed based on a maximum of 10 open-air sites. All
sites possibly relevant to the subject identified by intensive surveys were given a very broad chronological
range (usually between LN and EB I), which did not allow their use in a more precise analysis of settlement
changes. No intensive survey ever recognized substantial differences in pottery, chipped stone industry and
settlement patterns between the early and late phase of the Final Neolithic period, a fact that can now not be
5 See for example the discussion concerning the papers by Mook & Coulson 1997 and Prokopiou 1997; also Haggis 2001.
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denied. My search for new evidence after the discovery of an FN deposit at an extremely defensible site of
Monastiraki Katalimata, resulted in a gazetteer of over 170 open-air habitation sites (which is now extended
to over 220 sites) (Nowicki 2014), a number of which were discovered within the areas earlier covered by
intensive surveys. This research proved that the results of intensive surveys cannot be treated as complete
and reliable regarding sites’ identification and precise chronology. There is no theoretical approach which can
replace such a substantial amount of missing evidence in the research process, especially when considering the
possible role of large-scale migrations during this period.
2) The second, similar example is even more relevant to this paper’s subject and concerns the 1200 BCE
crisis in South Aegean settlement. The crisis itself is better known in the Aegean as the end of the Mycenaean
civilization, centralized palatial states and the Bronze Age hierarchical societies (at least in some regions).
Much less attention has been paid to the regional varieties of response to the total collapse of the security
system or systems, which not only eliminated most of the old power centres (a subject of greater interest
to many archaeologists), but first and foremost demolished the basic security rules which shaped the life of
common people for the previous at least two centuries. Although excavations in the early 20th century revealed
the phenomenon of so-called refuge sites (which I prefer to call defensible settlements) on the hilltops of
Vrokastro, Karphi, Palaikastro Kastri, and above Kavousi, research on the subject – which would include a
precise chronology, as well as evaluation of the scale of the relocation and the continuity/discontinuity with the
previous settlement systems – has not progressed much when I started my field work in the early 1980s. Only
a few sites had been added to the list of LM IIIC settlements after Pendlebury’s excavation at Karphi, in the
late 1930s. More interest was paid to tombs, but those were usually found accidentally as the result of building
activity or illegal digging. The production of site distribution maps without primary research on the entire
settlement pattern, including first and foremost habitation sites, was not just of little use, but also misleading.
The chronology of the settlements (whether excavated or identified by surveys) was muddled all the time, and
the relation between the LM IIIB and IIIC settlement patterns was and still remains the darkest part of this so-
called ‘Dark Age’ (see, for example, the most recent summary of the chronological problems of this phase in
Langohr 2017). Different types of sites, representing different groups of people and different responses to very
dynamic changes of political situation around 1200 BCE, were commonly discussed within a single category
of defensible ‘Dark Age’ settlements. This was well illustrated by the most thorough archaeological synthesis
of the LM III period (including LM IIIC) published by Kanta (1980).
My studies of LM IIIC settlements in Crete have been limited neither to one particular period of interest, nor
even to the periods immediately before and after; rather I cover a long sequence of settlement history, from ca.
4000 BCE to the tenth century CE (Nowicki 2008: 71-91). Hence, the changes between ca. 1230 and 1150 BCE,
discussed in this paper, can be seen in their wide chronological perspective and thus better understood. They
reveal not only human adaptation to the natural environment during some periods, but also the role of human
factors, especially competitions between different groups of people, continuous or occasional inner conflicts,
invasions with the aim of settling down or sea-raids of more or less piratical nature. Sometimes several of
the above factors were combined together. Conflicts between groups of people could lead to long distance
migrations or forced relocations within the same valley or plain, from open and easily accessible places to
defensible (by nature) or defensive (by fortifications) locations. The character and length of troubles, caused by
human factors, determined the choice of geographic zone, the scale and distance of relocations, and the chosen
topographic characteristics of new settlements. It is very meaningful that many topographic characteristics of
late 13th-early 12th c. BCE defensible sites in Crete were similar to those seen at Early Byzantine defensive
sites. Was, therefore, the character of the hypothetical enemy similar, active on the sea around, but camping
on the Cretan coast rather than settling? On the other hand, another group of contemporary sites (early LM
IIIC) shares the location and characteristics of some of coastal Hellenistic sites; were they orientated towards a
similar kind of piratical activity? Are the historical texts regarding the Hellenistic and Early Byzantine periods
a valuable source for research on the 1200 BCE collapse?
However, despite the fact that so many new sites were identified and published in the 1980s and 1990s, the real
influence of archaeological evidence on theoretically orientated debates on the late 13th and early 12th centuries
crisis in the Aegean is still minimal or none, with a few exceptions (Wallace 2010; Gaignerot-Driessen 2016).
Why so? One reason is that the complex results of fieldwork concerning numerous aspects of the phenomenon
120
of settlement relocations in Crete are commonly simplified to only one conclusion, summarized as follows:
‘there were many defensive sites in Crete founded around and after 1200 BCE’. This simplified and not always
correct conclusion was the only point taken from the very rich and detailed data-base concerning the period in
question by O. Dickinson in his discussion of settlement (Dickinson 2006) and recently by B. Knapp and S.
Manning (Knapp & Manning 2016).
Why does Crete matter?

The above introduction concerning the reliability of archaeological evidence (in respect of settlement), and
the way in which this evidence is interpreted, is essential for a further analysis of the settlement changes in
Crete and their possible links with the historical processes and events related to the 1200 BCE collapse in the
East Mediterranean (Fig. 10.1). The title of this paper was provoked by my discussion with Bernard Knapp
regarding the aforementioned article by Knapp & Manning published in the American Journal of Archaeology
(2016). In the introduction to this paper, the authors suggested that this ‘article reviews the current state of
the archaeological and historical evidence’, and in the Open Forum, linked to the paper, I expressed my
reservation to that statement. In my comment, I wrote:
“Unfortunately, this is yet another paper which entirely ignores the most important part of archaeological
evidence relevant to the subject, namely settlement patterns, settlement changes and relocations of habitation
sites, which took place in the coastal regions of the east Mediterranean around the time of the 1200 BC collapse...
Please look at the dramatic changes of settlement patterns in the South Aegean if you want to understand the
historical backgrounds of Maa Palaeokastro and Pyla Kokkinokremos”.
Fig. 10.1 Map of the Aegean, West Anatolia and Cyprus (by the author)
121
The following discussion between Knapp and myself, however, went far beyond this problem and focused
instead on the issue of theory versus hard archaeological evidence in the understanding of the past, when only
poor and often non-direct written sources are available. Here, therefore, I want to return to the core of the
above discussion, namely the importance of settlement patterns and their changes, as the major category of
archaeological evidence in the reconstruction of historical events and processes, which should be analysed in
their broad chronological and geographical contexts. This paper’s aim is to explain how the settlement changes
in the period in question in Crete can be linked with the roughly contemporary movements of people around the
Aegean and farther to the east. Two questions should be addressed. The first is about the character of the people
on each side of the problem: the authors of the disturbances and their victims. The distinction between these
two groups in the settlement pattern is not always easy, but some categories of evidence are more valuable than
others. The second question relates to the dynamic of the political and social changes at the turn of the 13th c.
BCE, and the regional, as well as interregional consequences of these changes. Crete, holding a very strategic
geographic position in the East Mediterranean, has much to contribute to these problems.
Research on the settlement collapse in Crete around 1200 BCE has been the focus of my field investigations
for over thirty years. This research was not conducted in order to explain the political collapse of Aegean
states, but to reconstruct some elements of it and to shed light on the direct consequences of this collapse.
The dramatic changes, which started in Crete between ca. 1240 and 1230 BCE and culminated around 1200
BCE, enormously influenced the life of all groups inhabiting the island at that time. The unprecedented abrupt
relocations of the most of the island’s population, showing extreme concern about security, cannot be interpreted
as a response to climatic changes, internal social unrest or economic modifications (e.g. Haggis 2001: 52-55).
All those factors might had stimulated some shifts between different geographical zones, but not an almost
universal relocation of villages to defensible places, and, especially at the beginning of the process, to extremely
defensible ones. Rather wars, invasions, freebooting, piracy, kidnapping for slavery, should be considered as
a consequence of the late 13th-c. crisis and the direct causes for this scale of settlement change. It was obvious
that such a historical background was not restricted to the sea around Crete, but must have affected, perhaps
with some delay, other regions of the eastern part of the Mediterranean, as well. Therefore, Knapp’s comment,
quoted below, about the lack of relevance between the disturbances in Crete and Cyprus is difficult to defend.
“We note that numerous but nearly all extremely small and mainly inland ‘defensive/defensible’ sites noted
by Nowicki would offer an interesting issue for the long-term settlement history of Crete, but we do not
see how they [changes of settlement locations and the roughly contemporary crisis and collapse in the East
Mediterranean] are actually directly relevant — as to cause, versus a secondary result, perhaps — to the rather
different situation in the East Mediterranean, nor to the issues of connectivity and associated transformative
processes that seem to be a key point”.
Before any comment on Knapp’s conclusion is made, first the facts should be corrected. It is not true that
“nearly all [LM IIIC sites] are extremely small and mainly inland”. Many are large settlements (villages), in
the Cretan context, covering an area between two and three ha and housing probably up to 100 families. They
were often larger than earlier, LM IIIA–B rural settlements in the same regions (Nowicki 2000: 233). LM IIIC
Karphi and Erganos are larger than any LM I or LM IIIA–B village in the Lasithi Plateau; the population of LM
IIIC Kritsa Kastellos substantially outnumbered any earlier settlement in the Kritsa–Lakkonia region, the LM
IIIC defensible settlements on the southern slopes of the Lasithi Mountains, such as Anatoli Sochores, Mythoi
Kastello and Zonari, Loutraki Kandilioro and Arvi Fortetsa are as a rule larger than LM I–IIIB settlements
scattered within the same region. Similarly, the hilltop sites above the southern coast of West Crete, such as Frati
Kephali, Myrthios Kirimianou and Kolokasia Kastri were larger than their predecessors. Also, the information
that the sites are mainly located inland calls for comment. Coastal sites were very numerous, not only in Crete,
but also on other South Aegean islands, especially during the transition between LM IIIB and IIIC, and this
aspect of the 1200 collapse – obviously relevant to the problem analysed in Knapp and Manning’s paper – I
have discussed on several occasions (Nowicki 2000; 2001: 25; 2011: 441). Including two wrong essential facts
in one short and very decisive statement does not create the right starting point for a further debate. Here, I will
propose, therefore, the evidence-based explanation of how settlement crisis and collapse on Crete, at the end
of the Bronze Age, can be read together with the 1200 BCE collapse in the East Mediterranean, as recorded in
written texts and indicated by archaeological evidence, for example such as that from Maa Palaeokastro and
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Pyla Kokkinokremos, on Cyprus. The analysis will focus on a few sites, belonging to three or four different
types with different topographic characteristics, which are especially relevant to the subject of this paper, but
have rarely been discussed by scholars working in other East Mediterranean regions.
As remarked above, in this paper I will not discuss the origins of the crisis itself within the Mycenaean/
Aegean world, but I will try to reconstruct the political and social background to the extreme concern for
security on the part of the inhabitants of Crete by putting this case study in the broader East Mediterranean
historical context, with Cyprus being particularly relevant, as an island comparable to Crete in size and
landscape characteristics. Being located within the Near Eastern and Egyptian sphere of intensive contacts,
Cyprus appears frequently in written sources; Crete, situated beyond the edge of the then ‘historical world’ was
not. The case of Crete, however, because of a much more advanced research on settlement during the period
in question, gives us a unique opportunity to understand ‘the historical reality’ of the crisis, in other words,
to reconstruct the plausible origins and character of the people on different sides of the conflicts. It can also
illuminate other related problems such as the aggressors’ intentions and hypothetical destinations, and how long
the particular phase of the process lasted.
The late 13th c. BCE disturbances in the South Aegean did not cause the 1200/1177 BCE crisis and collapse
of the East Mediterranean states, but they may have contributed to it by the elimination of an important element
of the entire security system (based on mutual agreements between the main political players) on its western
flank, which had been more or less stable (which does not mean peaceful!) during the previous century. These
well-attested settlement changes reflected an early phase of the crisis and perhaps the beginning of the domino
effect of political disintegration, with the following population movements, which soon afterwards affected the
regions east of the Aegean.
Earlier discussions on the problem of defensible settlements in Crete around 1200 BCE were usually limited
to the then-excavated sites (Karphi, Vrokastro, Kavousi and Palaikastro Kastri) and a few unexcavated ones,
randomly selected from old reports (Desborough 1964; 1972; Snodgrass 1971; Kanta 1980). However, each of
these sites existed in its wider chronological and geographical contexts, interacting with its suburbs, periphery,
hinterland, and other landscape elements. The inhabitants of neighbouring regions were affected by the same or
similar historical circumstances. The lack of these additional elements of archaeological evidence was among
the most serious problems concerning the interpretation of the origins of LM IIIC defensive sites and the
character of their inhabitants.
Some of these problems were addressed by two American projects, intensive surveys and excavations focused
on the areas around Kavousi and Vrokastro, initiated in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Hayden 1983; Gesell
et al. 1983; 1985; Day et al. 1986; Haggis 1993; 2005). Yet, the projects were geographically restricted only
to the southern coast of the Mirabello Bay, and the defensible settlements located in this region represented
only a small sample of sites related to the problem of settlement changes around 1200 BCE. To get a more
representative picture, it was necessary to undertake field investigations in other regions of Crete. These were
carried out during the 1980s and 1990s and brought to light a large number of new archaeological sites related to
the problem and representing the same historical phenomenon of the security system collapse. Identifications of
many new extensive settlements with architectural remains clearly visible on the surface (e.g. Kritsa Kastello,
Haghios Ioannis Katalimata, Mirthios Kirimianou, Kolokasia Kastri), in the areas which were not far from very
intensive archaeological activities, or even within the borders of intensive surveys, have enormously changed
our concept of the settlement collapse, its causes and consequences. Among the most important results of this
latter work were: 1) the reconstruction of the complex chronological sequence of the changes between ca.
1240/30 and 1100 BCE, and 2) the differentiation of various types of sites, suggesting different types/activities
of their inhabitants.
The problems around the identification of the broader settlement context for LM IIIC defensible settlements
in Crete indicate that one cannot rely solely on the results of intensive surveys and excavated site data when
dealing with special aspects of settlement history. Therefore, I do not believe that sites such as Maa Palaeokastro
and Pyla Kokkinokremos on Cyprus are unique of their kind without any parallels (Karageorghis 2001: 1-4;
Georgiou 2012). Both represent two different types, which can also be identified on Crete. The first is a very
coastal defensive installation, which must have been heavily linked to sea activity, with a rather cautious
relation with the inhabitants of the land in front of it. The second represents a very large community, well-
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disciplined and coordinated by some ruling authority, more integrated with the regional settlement pattern,
and a little withdrawn from the coast, but nevertheless probably active on the sea as well. Both sites are very
important for the understanding of the beginning of the disturbances in Cyprus, and they certainly have lots to
offer for the ‘historical’ reconstruction of the process, as was rightly underlined by Karageorghis (1984: 19).
The weak point, however, is that, in contrast with the Cretan defensive sites, the settlement context of Maa and
Pyla sites is very poorly understood. Knapp’s attempt to explain the origins and functions of these sites does not
contain any proper settlement analysis. In his opinion, the sites were founded for internal social and economic
reasons, but why this establishment took place at that very moment, and why their lives were so short, was
not explained (Knapp 2008: 238-239). What does it mean that a settlement of the size and topography as Pyla
Kokkinokremos, was built “to facilitate the movement of traded goods from coastal ports to inland settlements”
(Knapp 2013: 358; Sherratt 1998: 300)? Which ports and which inland settlements, and in which way did it
facilitate the movement of goods? Why, at that very moment, and neither before nor after? Was Kokkinokremos
defensively orientated or not? The information that there were other coastal sites in the vicinity, without
proper topographic studies or studies of their chronological and functional relationship with Kokkinokremos,
is basically useless. Such an extremely ‘processual’ interpretation of settlement changes is, in my opinion,
justifiably criticized recently by Karageorghis who points to several essential problems exposing the above
mentioned weakness in the knowledge of regional settlement history (Karageorghis & Kanta 2014: 156). The
actual interpretation of these two Cypriot sites, in isolation from the whole settlement system in its dynamic
development at the turn of the 13th c. BCE, recalls the interpretation of Karphi, in Crete, until the 1980s. The
new excavation project, however, which started at Kokkinokremos in 2010, has several objectives including the
broader regional context of the site (Karageorghis & Kanta 2014; Bretschneider, Kanta & Driessen 2015). One
may expect, therefore that the origin and function of the site will be better evidenced and at last properly placed
within the problem of the 13th/12th c. BCE crisis and collapse in its broader geographical context, including the
South Aegean.
Historical background
I now move to the main point of this paper, which is the relevance of the settlement changes in Crete with the
contemporary 1200/1177 BCE collapse of the security system in the East Mediterranean. To illuminate this,
we have to focus on particular sites in a particular phase of the crisis years. Elsewhere I proposed a division
of the so-called ‘Dark Age’ period into five phases (Nowicki 2000: 223-247), of which only the two first ones
and the very beginning of the third are relevant to the problem discussed in this paper. These are 1) Phase One
– Crisis, covering the last four or three decades of the 13th c. BCE, 2) Phase Two – Collapse, covering the last
years of the 13th c. BCE and the first 30 to 50 years of the 12th c. BCE, and 3) Phase Three – Recovery, which
started somewhere around the middle of the 12th c. BCE and continued through the second half of the 12th and
11th c. BCE.
The first two phases are particularly important for our understanding of the historical processes, which
characterised the late 13th and early 12th c. BCE in the East Mediterranean. Whereas in the Aegean, their
chronology is established by pottery sequences and radiocarbon dates, in the Near East they can be also linked
to numerous written sources associated with ‘historical’ dates allocated according to particular rulers. Here,
I follow the most common absolute chronology for the South Aegean with ca. 1200 BCE as the end of the
LM/LH IIIB and the beginning of the LM/LH IIIC periods. However, such a strict exact date makes little
sense when talking about substantial changes in pottery production that must have been a process rather than
an event. Therefore, I defend here some kind of a transitional period, of a decade at least, during which the
elements of both pottery phases may have been contemporary not only in their use, but also in their production.
The limited presence of LM IIIB pottery at a site may indicate either LM IIIB survivals into the early LM IIIC
period or the very end of the transition between the periods, namely a date close to 1200 BCE. A substantial
amount of LM IIIB pottery suggests a somewhat earlier date, within this transitional period, perhaps in the last
decade or even two before 1200 BCE6. The foundation of the most defensible sites in Crete (e.g. Monastiraki
6 On the problem of the LM IIIB vs IIIC distinction, see also Kanta 2003. Recently Cunningham (2017) proposed to shorten the LM
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Katalimata, Anatoli Elliniki Koriphi, Koutsounari Karphi,Viannos Keraton and most of the mountainous
Lasithi sites) represents the first case, i.e. a limited amount of LM IIIB appears together with dominant very
early LM IIIC pottery. They can be dated, therefore, around 1200 BCE, about a decade before the wave of site
destructions in the Levant (Kaniewski et al. 2011). However, there are several sites where late LM IIIB pottery
is very frequent, and their foundations should be dated within the last two decades of the 13th c. BCE, therefore,
up to one generation before the Levant destructions. Kastrokephala Almyrou, Zakros Gorge Kato Kastellas,
Palaikastro Kastri (early stratum), Arvi Fortetsa, and Pefkoi Kastellopoulo can be securely dated to this latter
group.
The foundations of defensive/defensible sites at the end of LM IIIB and the very beginning of IIIC (1220/10–
1200 BCE) period is well evidenced in Crete, but the settlement pattern immediately before, covering perhaps
two or three decades (1240/30–1220/10 BCE), is the darkest phase of the late 13th c. BCE crisis. It is rather a
short period (one generation?) of decline, abandonment and destruction, which is still not well synchronized
between the different main political/administrative centres of the LM IIIA2 and early IIIB periods. Only the
strongest and most populous early LM IIIB towns/settlements survived through the late LM IIIB and early IIIC
periods, first and foremost Knossos and Chania, although occupation also continued in some of the low-lying
settlements in central Crete, such as Tylissos and Kastelli Pediada (Rethemiotakis 1997). Towards the end of
the LM IIIB period, there were substantial changes in the Mesara, with the abandonment of Kommos (Watrous
et al. 2004: 304). All along the southern coast, with only a few exceptions, the LM III presence was very
limited after the LM IB destructions and ended before the late phase of the IIIB period. Instead, more late LM
IIIB evidence is visible in upland areas, indicating an early retreat from the coast and moving to the regions,
which, during the LM IIIC period, became the main ‘refuge’ centres. A similar phenomenon can also be seen
in a part of the East Siteia Peninsula. The situation along the northern coast was more complex and depended
on the size and strength of the local population. Apart from aforementioned Knossos and Chania, there were
other ‘secure pockets’, which continued through the latest LM IIIB and the very early IIIC occupation in the
coastal zone. Even here, however, short-distance relocation took place from less to more defensible hills, as
was the case for the coastal sites of Khamalevri and Petras. The Malia plain was abandoned (Farnoux 1997), but
in the neighbouring Milatos plain there was a strong late LM IIIB and early IIIC presence around the ridge of
Kastello (Nowicki 2000: 170-171). Similar process of settlement decline during late LM IIIB can be observed
in the Mirabello Bay, Siteia Bay and in the region of Palaikastro (MacGillivray 1997: 196; Tsipopoulou 1997:
235-248; Soles 2008: 205).
Much has been written on the causes of the late 13th c. BCE crisis on the Greek mainland (e.g. Shelmerdine
2001: 372-376; Middleton 2010; Wiener 2017), with climatic, seismic, economic and social factors being the
most frequently mentioned. This paper, however, deals only with the consequences of the Mycenaean collapse
(and not its causes) on Crete and some of the South Aegean islands, which are the most visible in sudden and
dramatic changes of the settlement patterns. The changes in settlement patterns between LM IIIB late and
the beginning of IIIC strongly suggest that the security problems, which forced people to look for defensible
places, came from the sea and started already in the LM IIIB late period and not, as often earlier argued, in LM
IIIC7. This early dating of the security problems has recently been supported by excavations in the Aposelemis
Gorge, close to the northern coast, west of Chersonissos (Kanta & Kontopodi 2017). Because the enemy of
those late LM IIIB early IIIC ‘refugees’ is not clearly visible in the archaeological evidence, two hypotheses
should be considered. One is that the enemies represented the people of the same origin as their victims (Cretan
or South Aegean inhabitants), characterized by the same material culture. Such a thing would be possible only
after a complete break of the interregional Mycenaean political security system, which guaranteed relative
safety along the Cretan coast until some point in the early second half of the 13th c. BCE (1240/1230 BC?). In
this scenario, regional chieftains would no longer need to be afraid of the punishments commonly implemented
IIIB period by moving the beginning of the LM IIIC period about 20 years earlier. To accept such a modification, more well-stratified
and well-dated deposits are needed and secure concordances with the neighbouring regions established. However, a simple moving
backwards or forwards of the dates for the beginning of the LM IIIC period, without the recognition that there was a transitional
period during which the pottery features characteristic for the both periods (LMIIIB late and IIIC early) coexisted in their production
and not just in their use, does not solve the problem of an artificial gap in the settlement sequence in late 13th c. BCE Crete.
7 For a more detailed discussion of this problem, see Nowicki 2000: 224-228.
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(and known from numerous contemporary Near Eastern texts) for unauthorized raiding and looting of vassal
countries. That such a security system worked, but not perfectly, is indicated by differences between the post-
LM IB settlement revival along the northern and southern coasts, with the latter less safe than the former.
The second scenario can be supported by the character of settlement changes along the southern coast when
compared with the later historical (Early Byzantine) evidence. In this case, the Cretan coast, and especially the
southern one, with fewer and weaker population centres, may have been more or less frequently raided by ‘sea-
people’, coming from further away (as, for example, Southern Italy and Southern Anatolia) already in the LM
IIIA-B periods, as it was by different groups representing the emerging Arab empire during the late seventh and
eight centuries CE. It seems that in Phase I – Crisis – both patterns appeared together, with the southern coast
more affected by the second and the northern coast by the first.
This reconstruction of the historical background of the late 13th c. BCE crisis and its hypothetical chronology
corresponds well with that suggested by contemporary written texts and especially those of the Hittite rulers,
starting with the letter of Tudhalias IV (1237-1209 BCE) (Bryce 2005: 309), known as the ‘Šaušga-muwa
treaty’ and dated to the mid-1230s. The erasing of the phrase ‘the king of Ahhiyawa’ indicates that the central
authority of the Ahhiyawa ‘confederation’ had ceased to exist or at least was regarded by the Hittite ruler as
non-existent, shortly before the letter was written. This fact, as well as the later absence from the Hittite texts
of a recognized senior ruler on the western flank of the Hittite sphere of influence, may indicate that some
substantial changes took place within Aegean political structure in the 1230s. As the result, Mycenaean political
influence on West Anatolia was seriously weakened, at least as long as the Hittite state remained functional.
Such a historical turn must have had its impact on the relationship between different elements of the Mycenaean
world within the Aegean as well.
The ‘Šaušga-muwa treaty’ approximately coincides with the beginning of the LM IIIB late period, when
settlement in Crete entered a somewhat obscure phase of collapse, disturbance, destruction and abandonment.
The process continued the next few decades, but archaeological evidence for this ‘dark’ phase is rather poor
and historical sources non-existent. We are on better grounds again in the last decade of the 13th c. BCE when
security problems in the area bordering the South Aegean can be deduced from the texts of Suppiluliuma
II (1207-? BCE). The Hittite king was heavily involved in campaigns against southwest Anatolian people
(Fig. 10.1), including those in Lycian territory – next door to the Dodecanese and Crete – in the early years of
his rule, at the very end of the 13th c. BCE (Bryce 2005: 325-333). Then, Suppiluliuma also fought enemies on
the sea between Anatolia and Cyprus and on the latter island itself, probably shortly before the fall of Ugarit ca.
1194-1190 BCE (Kaniewski et al. 2011: 5). Suppiluliuma’s texts suggest a very intensive collision between the
Hittite kingdom and somewhat enigmatic, but probably multi-ethnic enemies, very active on the sea between
Lycia and Cyprus and expanding into the former Hittite sphere of influence (including Cyprus) presumably
from the west. Maa Palaeokastro and Pyla Kokkinokremos had already been settled by then.
These struggles on the southwestern border of the Hittite kingdom were contemporary with two settlement
phenomena on Crete: the first was the foundation of sophisticated fortified ‘citadels’, the construction of which
must have been carried out by military-orientated communities, supervised by some kind of authority. These
evidently had a strong interest in sea-activity, but the territories they controlled were geographically much more
restricted than those of LM IIIA2-B early periods. The second was a general relocation of a substantial part of
the Cretan population to mountainous defensible sites. These ‘refuge’ communities do not show any trace of
social hierarchy, and their economy was based mostly on farming and herding (Nowicki 1999). The location
and detailed topography of these ‘refuge’ settlements indicate their close ‘defensive’ cooperation against an
outer enemy rather than internal competitions between individual defensible sites and regions, at least during
the first phase of their existence (the 12th c. BCE). The first group of (fortified) sites may have originated
even earlier, during the last years of Tudhaliyas IV, and may have represented dispersed groups of former
Mycenaean warriors led by high- or middle-rank chieftains, who lost/cut their links with earlier ‘patrons’ –
declining/collapsing Mycenaean states. They may have become independent, although the political and social
circumstances may also have forced them to look for their own territory away from the former ‘patron’ land.
Sites of this type are known not only from Crete, but also from other Southern Aegean islands (e.g. Sifnos,
Paros, Astypalaia).
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The archaeological evidence

One of the crucial, but most difficult points in the reconstruction of the late 13th c. BCE settlement crisis
on Crete is the identification of the type of enemy (not necessarily its ethnic origin) that caused the security
problems and eventually the final abandonment of most low-lying towns and villages for many centuries to
come. This can be achieved through a detailed analysis of the location, topographic characteristics and the
history of the below-presented sites, which represent several different types. The following questions are
especially important. 1) Who were the inhabitants (were they of local, regional or foreign origin)? 2) What
was their link with the previous settlement system of early LM IIIB date? 3) What was their economic base
(farming, farming/herding, trade, etc.)? and 4) What was their fate?
The few sites presented below do not belong to the ‘standard reference list’ of Cretan LM IIIC defensive
settlements for one or more of the following reasons: they are either 1) relatively late discoveries, or 2) difficult
to get to, or 3) unexcavated, or 4) regarded as of “debatable dating” (e.g. Dickinson 2006: 47). As a consequence,
unfortunately, they are also absent from the analysis of the 1200 BCE crisis discussion in a broader East
Mediterranean context, such as the above-mentioned article by Knapp and Manning (2016).
The first, and probably the most important Cretan site in the context discussed here is Kastrokephala, a rocky
ridge (ca. 350 m asl) rising on the northern side of the Almyros Gorge, at the southwest corner of Heraklion
Bay (Fig. 10.2:1), about 1 km west of the coast. Although the impressive fortification wall here (Fig. 10.3) was
already noted by Mariani (1895: 232), the site remained forgotten until the 1970s, when it was briefly described
by Platakis (1970: 511-514) and investigated by Alexiou (1973: 900-901); a few rooms were excavated on the
ridge’s very summit by Kanta (Kanta 1980: 19; Kanta 2001: 14-15; Kanta & Karetsou 2003: 145). The initial
dating and interpretation of the site suffered from a lack of detailed studies of the pottery and the small size of
the excavated area. There was also a controversy regarding the dating of the site’s foundation, which varied
between LM IIIA and LM IIIC early (Nowicki 2000: 43). Since then, however, some consensus has been
reached, with the founding now placed at the turn of LM IIIB and the earliest LM IIIC. Although the most
recent dating by Kanta points to early LM IIIC (Kanta 2003: 180), numerous pottery fragments, visible on the
surface, as well as those published (Kanta & Karetsou 2003; Kanta 2003; Kanta & Kontopodi 2011), represent
the late LM IIIB period. I therefore defend my earlier dating of the site’s foundation – close to the end of LM
IIIB, with a continuation through LM IIIC early (Nowicki 2000: 43; 2001: 26).
Fig. 10.2 Map of Crete with the sites mentioned in the text: (1) Kastrokephala, (2) Iuktas, (3) Zakros
Gorge Kato Kastellas, (4) Elias to Nisi, (5) Vrokastro, (6) Kritsa Kastello, (7) Palaikastro Kastri,
(8) Myrsini Kastello/Ellenika, (9) Liopetro, (10) Anatoli Elliniki Koriphi, (11) Koutsounari Karphi,
(12) Arvi Fortetsa, (13) Viannos Kerato/Vigla, (14) Rotasi Koriphi/Analipsi, (15) Frati Kephali,
(16) Mirthios Kirimianou, (17) Kolokasia Kastri, (18) Vrysinas, (19) Anydroi Prophitis Elias (by
the author)
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Fig. 10.3 Kastrokephala: the fortification wall (by the author)
Earlier topographic descriptions of the site now require substantial revision. There is as yet no proper detailed
plan of the entire site, which combines topographic details and all architectural remains. The earliest sketch, that
by Platakis (1970), with minor later modifications (Hayden 1988: 5; Nowicki 2000: 43), was very schematic and
inaccurate, especially considering the layout of the fortification wall and the citadel’s gates. It was much improved
when Kanta and Karetsou published a thorough paper on the site’s location, excavated architecture and pottery
(2003: 146). The sketch presented at the time suggested the existence of a main (only?) gate close to the western
tower/bastion, and such a reconstruction seems to be supported by the topography of the hill and the arrangement
of the fortification wall. It is possible, however, that there existed a secondary gate close to the eastern tower/
bastion. Kanta’s most recent ‘plan’ of Kastrokephala (Kanta & Kontopodi 2011: fig. 2) is still a sketch rather than
a proper topographical plan (Fig. 10.4), with some important natural and architectural features missing.
The earliest excavation by Kanta (in the 1970s) unearthed several buildings in the highest southwestern part
of the site (Building complex I, Figs 10.4, 10.5 and 10.7:A). Later on, in 2006 and 2007, the excavation on the
summit was resumed and more structures were unearthed lower down to the north, close to the western end of the
fortification wall (Building complex III, Fig. 10.7:B) (Kanta & Kontopodi 2011: 130). Apart from the excavated
houses along the western edge of the ridge, all investigators mention other LM IIIC remains in the lower part
of the citadel, northeast of the summit. No one mentioned, however, that at least part of this lower settlement
was arranged in a series of long lines of row-houses, which are clearly visible on satellite photos (Fig. 10.6). To
better illustrate this arrangement, I present a sketch of the site made directly from the satellite image (with all the
inaccuracies which may result from this). It shows two lines of row-houses (although there were probably more),
clearly visible as running roughly parallel along the east-west axis (Figs 10.6 and 10.7:D and E). The location
of Kastrokephala, its topographic characteristics and the above mentioned house planning, together with other
architectural elements reported by Kanta, such as casemate walls along the steep slope on the western side of
Building complex I (Kanta & Kontopodi 2011: 129), support Kanta’s claim about similarities between this site and
Pyla Kokkinokremos on Cyprus. The military character of Kastrokephala is also beyond doubt. Its fortification
wall, 485 m long, 1.5-2.0 thick, and at least 3.5 to 4.0 m high (Mariani 1895: 232; Platakis 1970: 512), could not
have been built without a supervision of somebody who was familiar with similar constructions, and could fulfil
its function only if defended by a substantial contingent of warriors. Recent excavations by Kanta have brought
yet another direct evidence of warriors’ presence at the site – a Naue II type sword found in Building complex III,
a rather rare discovery in a regular house context (Kanta & Kontopodi 2011: 130).
Despite the fact that there is no distinct building that may be identified as a ruler/chieftain’s house, the community
of Kastrokephala must have preserved some hierarchical organization, most probably in a simplified military-like
version. The sophisticated fortification, as pointed above, could not be the work of combined local egalitarian
groups of farmers and shepherds. The same remark applies to other defensive constructions of this period,
discussed below. Therefore, Kastrokephala was either founded by a large group of immigrants (at least several
hundred souls) of mixed Aegean origin, including a substantial Cretan element, as a new base for sea activity, or
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built by Cretans, with some foreign elements, as a coastal outpost of the declining Knossos state. The latter may
have tried to maintain still some authority within its shrinking territory, as probably was also the case of an equally
impressive fortification wall on the summit of Iuktas (Fig. 10.2:2).
Fig. 10.4 Kastrokephala: plan (after Kanta & Kontopodi 2011: fig 2)
Fig. 10.5 Kastrokephala: Building Complex I (by the author; photo of 1980s)
Fig. 10.6 Kastrokephala: satellite image (Google Earth)
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Fig. 10.7 Kastrokephala: sketch after the satellite image, Google Earth (by the author)
The second site, which belongs to the broadly defined group of fortified coastal strongholds founded in the last
decades of the 13th c. BCE, is Kato Kastellas in the Zakros Gorge, East Crete (Fig. 10.2:3). This site is even more
obscure than Kastrokephala, and all information comes from surface investigations (Vokotopoulos 1997-1998;
Nowicki 2000: 46-48). No excavation has yet been reported and no proper site plan exists. I illustrate its location
here with a satellite image and a sketch based on this (Figs 10.8 and 10.9). Kato Kastellas is located on a naturally
defensible ridge (Fig. 10.10), in the middle of the Zakros Gorge, hidden from the sea, at a distance of about 20
minutes walk from the coast and a further 30 to 40 minutes climbing up a steep and narrow ravine. A fortification
wall (Fig. 10.11), two to three metres thick and about 250 m long, closes off the northern side which offers the only
relatively easy access (Fig. 10.9: FFF). The other sides are defended by a cliff over 100 m high. The area encircled
by the wall and cliff is about 250 by 60 to 80 m. There was probably a gate protected by a kind of tower or bastion,
similar to the one identified at Kastrokephala (Fig. 10.9: G?). There may have been another narrow opening in the
wall, further to the east. Remains of inner constructions, probably houses, are few and the best-preserved structure
can be seen on the saddle between the two pieces of high-ground (Fig. 10.9: A), but there are also walls on the
western elevation (Fig. 10.9: B). In general, the fortified space was left mostly empty or at least devoid of stone-
built houses. LM III pottery on the surface is rather scarce – sherds of FN II-EM I early date are more frequent
– and dates to the short transition between LM IIIB late and IIIC early (Nowicki 2000: 47). Probably there was
never a permanent settlement on Kato Kastellas. The site looks more like a short-lived ‘citadel’ – either the first,
temporary refuge site for the inhabitants of Zakros Bay, who later moved to the site of Pano Kastellas/Ellinika,
further up the Zakros Gorge (Fig. 10.12:3), or the well-protected and hidden base of sea-active people, probably
newcomers from elsewhere in Crete or even from beyond it. It may have been a group similar to that responsible
for the construction of the wall on the promontory of Elias to Nisi, below Vrokastro (Hayden 2001), but probably
smaller than that occupying Kastrokephala.
Fig. 10.8 Zakros Gorge Kato Kastellas: satellite image (Google Earth)
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Fig. 10.9 Zakros Gorge Kato Kastellas: sketch after satellite image, Google Earth (by the author)
Fig. 10.10 Zakros Gorge Kato Kastellas: view from east (by the author)
Fig. 10.11 Zakros Gorge Kato Kastellas: the fortification wall (by the author)
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Fig. 10.12 Zakros Gorge and Zakros coastal plain: satellite image, (1) Kato Zakros EB-LB settlement, (2)
Kato Kastellas, (3) Ellinika (Google Earth)
The case of the promontory site at Elias to Nisi (Fig. 10.2:4) is even more difficult to analyse. This does not mean
that the site should be ignored in the discussion. Hayden convincingly argued that the fortification wall closing
the access to this large promontory from the ‘mainland’ (Fig. 10.13: WW) was probably constructed in the LM
IIIC period, although the surface pottery covers a wide time span, ranging from LM III to Geometric (Hayden
2001: 76). The location of the site on a promontory (Fig. 10.14) closely resembles the topography of the fortified
settlement at Maa Palaeokastro on Cyprus. The remains of houses on Elias to Nisi (Fig. 10.13: A-F) and especially
their dating and relationship with the fortification wall, are difficult to interpret since none has been excavated.
They may represent any episode within the period defined by the surface pottery and can be contemporary with
the occupation of the summit of Vrokastro nearby (Fig. 10.2: 5). The Vrokastro settlement, situated immediately
above Elias to Nisi, was founded during the same transitional phase of the latest LM IIIB and the beginning of IIIC
periods, and was still inhabited during the Protogeometric and Geometric periods, although it is not certain if the
occupation was continuous or whether there was a gap within late LM IIIC. The construction of the fortification
wall at Elias to Nisi, with its two outer faces and cross-walls forming boxes filled with rubble, resembles, according
to Hayden (2001: 75), the impressive fortification wall closing the only accessible side of the large LM IIIC
settlement at Kritsa Kastello (Fig. 10.2:6 and Fig. 10.15) in the same Mirabello region (Nowicki 2000: 120-123).
The latter site’s foundation can be securely dated to the end of the LM IIIB or the transition between LM IIIB and
IIIC periods. Kritsa Kastello, however, unlike the above discussed coastal sites, represents a process of withdrawal
from the sea, in favour of inland upland sites, which in some regions started already after the LM IB destructions,
in other regions only at the end of the LM IIIB early period.
The next important site to be considered is Palaikastro Kastri, situated on the eastern coast of Crete, facing
Kasos and Karpathos in the Dodecanese. Its foundation represents the same transitional period between late LM
IIIB and the beginning of LM IIIC, probably the last decade or even two of the 13th c. BCE (Sackett et al. 1965:
278). The settlement continued to be occupied throughout the first decades of the 12th c. BCE, although with two
phases separated by a destruction episode, probably around or shortly after 1200 BCE. The site, contemporary with
Kastrokephala and Zakros Gorge Kato Kastellas, represents a different type. It occupied the flat summit and higher
slopes of a naturally defensible rocky ridge right on the coast (Fig. 10.16). The main difference, however, is that
Kastri was not protected by walls comparable to the fortifications of Kato Kastellas and Kastrokephala. Instead,
the settlement was probably defended by less impressive walls which may have been integrated in the layout
of houses and/or terraces. Badly destroyed remains of such walls can be seen on the high slope on the western
side of the ridge (Fig. 10.17). The poor preservation of these defensive structures is due to substantial erosion
of the steep slopes of Kastri. Similar walls, now also badly eroded, defended a contemporary and neighbouring
LM IIIC settlement at Plakalona Kalamafka and a topographically identical coastal settlement at Arkasa Moulas
(Fig. 10.18), on the western coast of Karpathos (Nowicki 2001: 29).
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Fig. 10.13 Elias to Nisi: plan (after Hayden 2001: fig. 6)
Fig. 10.14 Elias to Nisi as seen from Vrokastro (by the author)
Fig. 10.15 Kritsa Kastello: the fortification wall (by the author)
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Fig. 10.16 Palaikastro Kastri from south (by the author)
Fig. 10.17 Palaikastro Kastri: remains of a fortification wall (?) (by the author)
Fig. 10.18 Karpathos Moulas from northwest (by the author)
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Both sites, Palaikastro Kastri and Arkasa Moulas, belong to a group of short-lasting (one- to two-generations)
defensive coastal settlements, which appeared on the South Aegean islands at the turn of the LH IIIB and the
beginning of IIIC periods, during the general retreat of the population from the coast to upland regions. Most of
these settlements were small, probably one ha or even less. It is possible, however, that they did not represent
the entirety of an inhabited area, but only defensive coastal bases/outposts. The character of the inhabitants
of these sites, who must have been heavily related to sea activity, can perhaps explain such a ‘risky’ exposed
coastal location in this turbulent period. The location, individual topographic characteristics of the sites, and
rather small sizes, exclude agriculture and herding as the main component of the economy, although part of
the population may have been engaged in farming and animal breeding. The efficiency of regular trade would
be also questionable, considering the general changes in social and economic aspects of potential partners and
neighbours. Such hypothesis does not indicate, as suggested by Dickinson, that these people “lived entirely by
raiding” (Dickinson 2006: 47), but as I suggested earlier, a substantial part of their economy may have been
based on sea-raiding and thus the social structure of these communities might differ from that in a contemporary
regular settlement of a similar size (Nowicki 2001: 30).
The inhabitants of Palaikastro Kastri and Arkasa Moulas, similarly to those who erected defensive settlements
at Haghios Ioannis Kastro, on Astypalaia (Hope Simpson & Lazenby 1973, 163) and Koukounaries, on Paros
(Schilardi 1984), were, on the one hand, the victims of the collapse of the Mycenaean states and the following
vacuum in the political/military control of the Aegean Sea. On the other hand, they were the raiders and
freebooters who forced most of the inhabitants of the coastal zones to abandon their villages and towns, and to
look for security in naturally defensible places in the mountains. Evidence of destructions and dramatic ends
for some of them (Palaikastro Kastri and Koukounaries) confirm that these sites, including the earlier-discussed
fortified citadels of Kastrokephala and Kato Kastellas in the Zakros Gorge, were outcomes of the political
turbulence during the last decades of the 13th and early 12th c. BCE. Their foundations and end recall the short
history of the contemporary fortified promontory of Maa Palaeokastro on Cyprus (Karageorghis & Demas
1988), which probably represents a similar phenomenon of more or less aggressive movements, conflicts,
opportunistic cooperation and the coexistence of mixed communities. They were in part newcomers (also from
the Aegean) and in part natives, looking for a new ‘home’ both in the territorial and social sense. This kind of
multi-ethnic groups, with a social composition different from ‘a standard’ community of a Late Bronze Age
village or town, was proposed by Hitchcock and Maeir for the identification of some (at least) ‘Sea Peoples’
of the 1200 BCE collapse (Hitchcock & Maeir 2014). Their thorough analysis of the ‘piracy’ problem in the
Late Bronze Age geographical, social and economic contexts, corresponds much better with the archaeological
evidence of settlement changes in the South Aegean than Dickinson’s rejection of the ‘pirate’ idea based on his
simplified, (not to say wrong) understanding of this very term (Dickinson 2006: 47).
Palaikastro Kastri, despite its short history and intrusive place in the contemporary settlement pattern of the
region, which is in general more characterised by a withdrawal from the coast to inland uplands, has more
parallels in the Cyclades and Dodecanese than on Crete itself. This said, the northern coast of East Crete,
between the Mirabello region and Siteia, has more sites that reflect the phenomenon of the foundation of new,
defensive and sea-orientated settlements, as illustrated by Palaikastro Kastri. These are Vrokastro, Myrsini
Kastello/Ellinika and Liopetro (respectively Fig. 10.2:5, 8 and 9), all settled in the same period, the LM IIIB/C
transition. Unlike Kastri, however, they were not abandoned in the 12th c. BCE, but continued throughout
the Protogeometric and Geometric periods, although it is uncertain whether occupation was continuous or
interrupted in the later phase of LM IIIC. The latter seems to be plausible for Vrokastro (Nowicki 2000: 108)
while Myrsini and Liopetro must await excavations to clarify their status in the entire LM IIIC settlement
sequence (Nowicki 2000: 101-104). The above-mentioned sites are situated on very defensible rocky ridges
(Fig. 10.19), much higher than Palaikastro Kastri (300-400 m versus 70 m asl), dominating coastal plains which
were the main residential areas before the LM IIIB/C retreat. The earliest ‘Dark Age’ surface pottery is usually
restricted to the highest and most defensible parts of the ridges. No fortifications like those of Kastrokephala
and Zakros Gorge Kato Kastellas have been identified, but one should not exclude the possibility of a defence
formed by walls similar to those observed at Karpathos Moulas or Palaikastro Kastri. Natural harbours are
situated immediately below the rocky ‘citadels’, but apart from the pair Vrokastro/Elias to Nisi, the other
mentioned sites cannot be associated with contemporary coastal installations. The question arises whether
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Liopetro, Myrsini Kastello and Vrokastro can be classified in the same group, together with Palaikastro
Kastri and Karpathos Moulas, which, as I argued above, represent new installations, founded by newcomers
in the process of looking for convenient bases in the coastal areas, abandoned by their former inhabitants.
Alternatively, the sites may have been settled by local people from the coastal plains below, who unlike, most of
their neighbours, desperately wanted to maintain their sea activity, despite the dramatic socio-political changes
around Crete. To get closer to the answer, we have to tackle a problem that has not yet been discussed in the
context of LM IIIB/C settlement changes.
Fig. 10.19 Myrsini Kastello and the coastal plain east of Mochlos from west (by the author)
The phenomenon of defensible/defensive settlements in Crete is well recognized, though its interpretation
varies between different authors (Nowicki 2000: 224-235; 2001; 2008: 82-85; Haggis 2001; Wallace 2010: 52-
72; Gaignerot-Driessen 2016: 56-63). Whatever our explanation of this site-type (which in fact includes several
different types), it is unquestionable that at some point during the last decades of the 13th and the beginning of
the 12th c. BCE people abandoned their low-laying villages and built new ones in hardly accessible places. The
relocation of settlement places was then followed by a similar, though postponed relocation of burial places and
other structures essential for the further life in a new environment. However, the earliest phase of this relocation
was less “planned” than suggested by Wallace (2011: 56).
In the reconstruction of this historical process, there is one category of sites, certainly directly related to the
same disturbances, which has been curiously omitted from the previous discussion of the 1200 BCE settlement
collapse. It is the type of site that can be called ‘refuge areas’ or ‘refuge mountains’. The difference between
this type and all other types of defensible/defensive settlements is that here the ‘refugees’ used the place as
a temporary habitation without any organized relocation of an entire ‘village infrastructure’ to a new, more
secure place. In these cases, a very extensive area, (considerably larger than the largest LM IIIC settlements)
is irregularly covered with LM IIIB late/IIIC early pottery, and sometimes a few, rough stone constructions are
visible. Usually, there is no later Early Iron Age pottery and we may assume that the sites were only occupied
in the earliest phase of the settlement collapse, during a relatively short time, without any intention to build a
proper village. People may have lived here temporarily and/or occasionally, in shelters or houses constructed
of perishable material. If stone structures were built, they did not form an organized village-like plan, but were
loosely scattered over a large area of ‘a refuge mountain’. Sites of this type have been identified on the most
distinctive and highest mountains in several regions, rising steeply above the lowland. The best examples are
perhaps Vrysinas, south of Rethymnon, Viannos Kerato/Vigla (Fig. 10.20 and Fig. 10.2: 13), Rotasi Koryphi/
Analipsi above the Mesara (Fig. 10.21), Kophinas in the Asterousia Mountains, and Frati Kephali in the
Rethymnon Isthmus (Fig. 10.22). Some of those ‘refuge mountains’ were abandoned but others may have
developed into proper settlements, after a few years or decades, and one may wonder if that is what Pendlebury
meant when describing the first phase (of shelters) of the occupation at Karphi, on the ridge itself and its eastern
steep rocky slope (Pendlebury et al. 1937-1938: 82). Such an evolution from an initial ‘refuge mountain’ to a
proper defensive village can also be reconstructed for Viannos Kerato, where the very extensive ‘refuge area’,
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first covering the higher slopes of the mountain, may have been restricted at some point during the LM IIIC
period, to the most defensible rocky ridge, when a proper settlement developed. At Mirthios Kirimianou, on
the southern coast above Plakias (Fig. 10.2: 16), the process of transition between ‘a refuge mountain’ and a
defensible settlement was never completed: houses were loosely built on the slope facing the sea, but the place
seems to have been abandoned before it developed into a proper village. At Rotasi Koriphi and Frati Kephali,
the earliest ‘refuge areas’ were probably given up in favour of the neighbouring lower hilltops of Kephalas
(Fig. 10.22). This relocation, however, did not take place before the end of our second phase and may represent
the same process as observed elsewhere (Monastiraki Katalimata/Chalasmeno or Kavousi Kastro/Vronda, cf.
Nowicki 2008: 85).
Fig. 10.20 Viannos Kerato/Vigla from west (by the author)
Fig. 10.21 Rotasi Koriphi/Analipsi from east (by the author)
Fig. 10.22 Frati Kephali (1) and Frati Kephala (2) from east (by the author)
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The insecurity problems, which in the last decades of the 13th c. BCE forced the inhabitants of Crete to flee to
the mountains, was most serious along the southern coast. The explanation of this may lie in the geographical
characteristics of this very part of Crete, with relatively isolated coastal micro-regions (allowing exploitation
by small communities), as well as in its broader geographical position in the Eastern Mediterranean (allowing
uncontrolled sea-raiding from various directions). A similar insecurity problem again touches this area during
the Early Byzantine period with a response of the inhabitants similar to that of the 1200 BCE refugees. The
most defensible mountains or ridges were reinforced with defensive walls of various quality, becoming refuge
strongholds for the population living around (Nowicki 2008: 85-88). A similar model can be reconstructed for
the late 13th to early 12th c. BCE crisis. The southern coast version of the 1200 BCE relocation, although rarely
discussed in this context (presumably because of the difficult locations of the sites!), is one of the strongest
arguments against questioning an external cause for the settlement changes in Crete (e.g. Haggis 2001). Most
of the sites are situated in places with splendid view on the coast (Fig. 10.23) and the best natural defence from
the same direction. They did not, however, offer the same advantages in the case of conflicts with regional
competitors, nor for the exploitation of new land after the collapse of the central regional administrations of
LM IIIA-early IIIB date. They were ‘dead ends’ in the sequence of Late Bronze settlement history and that
is why most of them were abandoned as soon as the worst time of insecurity coming from the sea was over.
The best examples of this pattern are the already-mentioned sites of Frati Kephali and Mirthios Kirimianou
(Fig. 10.24 and Fig. 10.2: 16), but also Kolokasia Kastri (Fig. 10.25 and Fig. 10.2: 17) and Anydroi Prophitis
Elias (Fig. 10.2: 19).
Fig. 10.23 Kolokasia Kastri: the highest part of the site and the view to the coast between Frankokastello
and Chora Sphakion (by the author)
Fig. 10.24 Mirthios Kirimianou from south (by the author)
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Fig. 10.25 Kolokasia Kastri: view from Frankokastello (by the author)
Kolokasia Kastri, covering about three ha, was the main early LM IIIC defensible settlement above the
Frankokastello plain. It was well defended by cliffs, but wherever the latter could be climbed, it was reinforced
with sections of a fortification wall. This kind of defensive construction was very different, however, from the
earlier discussed fortifications of Kastrokephala and Zakros Kato Kastellas and could be achieved by local people
with little or no military experience. The preserved surface remains of houses that can be observed within the
defensible borders of Kastri do not resemble the regular and undoubtedly planned layout of Kastrokephala or Pyla
Kokkinokremos (on Cyprus). The attitude to regional geography was also different. Whereas the Kastrokephala
and Palaikastro Kastri locations indicate an intention to maintain intensive links with the sea, Kolokasia Kastri,
as other South Cretan sites of this type, was chosen for its remote location, withdrawn from the coast, often above
arable land and close to vast mountainous pasturage. We may, therefore, conclude that if some of the late LM
IIIB-early IIIC inhabitants of Crete were involved in sea-born raids against other coastal regions of the Aegean
(and beyond), this did not apply to those who lived along the southern coast. On the contrary, these people were
the victims of the late 13th c. BCE collapse, who had to adjust their life and economy to insecure conditions, which
followed this collapse.
The episode of the mentioned ‘refuge mountains’ was not only contemporary with the earlier discussed fortified
citadels and coastal defensive outposts, but also with yet another category of sites that are the extremely defensible
habitation places located on cliffs or rocky knolls. The best examples of this type of sites are Monastiraki Katalimata,
Koutsounari Karphi (Fig. 10.26 and Fig. 10.2: 11) and Anatoli Elliniki Koriphi (Fig. 10.27 and Fig. 10.2: 10),
all in the Ierapetra region, within walking distance from the sea (30-45 minutes). At Katalimata and Koutsounari
Karphi, proper stone-built houses were constructed in the early phase of the LM IIIC period or in the LM IIIB/C
transition, but after a few decades (one generation?), the sites were abandoned. The ‘precise’ dating of these sites
(at the very beginning of the LM IIIB/C relocation process) has been confirmed through detailed examination
of the surface or stratified evidence (Nowicki 2008: 57-63). At Elliniki Koriphi, the dating of structures visible
on the surface is uncertain, since the ridge was also occupied during the Byzantine period. Among the recorded
pottery are MM II, LM I and LM IIIB/C sherds, but nothing which could be regarded as representing the late
LM IIIC to Protogeometric periods. These extremely defensible places offered excellent security, but the life of
their inhabitants was unimaginably difficult. The communication between the economic hinterland and the village
in each case required enormous effort and was dangerous. Transport of water and food, as well as the safety of
children and daily hygiene conditions, presented some of the most challenging problems. The foundation of those
sites was the response to extreme security conditions caused by human factors and not by earthquakes or social
and economic changes following the collapse of the earlier Mycenaean model of administration and production.
Since sites of this type are contemporary with other categories, discussed above, they should not be isolated from
the analysis of the collapse problem, or simply ignored, as has sometimes been the case. An analysis of the Kavousi
or Vrokastro clusters of the LM IIIC sites makes little sense without consideration of Monastiraki Katalimata.
The discussion on the foundation of Kato Chorio Prophitis Elias should be joined with an explanation of the
origin and end of Agios Ioannis Katalimata and Koutsounari Karphi (Watrous et al. 2012: 69-75). The roots of the
Males-Kalamafka cluster cannot be understood without including several inaccessible sites around Anatoli and
near Mythoi in the analysis. All these sites belong to a more numerous group of extreme ‘refuge habitations’, still
poorly recognized, which complements the picture of disturbance, destruction and abandonment of late LH/LM
IIIB settlements. They also indicate an under-researched direction of the 1200 BCE collapse, not only for Crete,
but also for other mountainous, coastal regions of the Eastern Mediterranean.
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Fig. 10.26 Koutsounari Karphi from north (by the author)
Fig. 10.27 Anatoli Elliniki Koriphi from north (by the author)
Conclusions
Following this brief review of a few selected defensive sites of which the foundation and/or existence can be
securely dated between the end of LM IIIB and the very beginning of LM IIIC (ca. 1220/10–1190 BCE), and thus
contemporary to the earliest phase of the Late Bronze disturbances in the Eastern Mediterranean, I will attempt
to explain how this evidence can be relevant to the collapse elsewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean, first and
foremost on Cyprus. To avoid another misunderstanding, such as that in the above quoted criticism by Knapp, I
have to stress here that the word ‘relevant’ does not suggest a direct causal relation between the settlement changes
in Crete and the disturbance and foundation of new sites on Cyprus. The settlement changes in Crete represent one
element of the same process during which similar groups of people were involved, acting in a similar way, having
similar intentions and with similar responses. ‘Similar’ does not mean ‘the same’. The coastal and especially insular
environments with similar landscape variations that are characteristic for Crete and Cyprus make such comparisons
more relevant than a comparison between Cyprus and selected regions of the Greek Mainland or between Crete and
the Levantine coast. Moreover, the settlement evidence is much more relevant for such interregional comparisons
than various individual elements of material culture, such as pottery, metallurgy, burials, architectural features,
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ivory, etc. (Voskos & Knapp 2008). Settlement and its changes represent the complex response of a population of
a particular region to conditions of life, influenced by internal and/or external conditions, shaped by natural and/
or human factors. Settlement changes are much more representative of historical processes, especially dramatic
ones, than the kinds of individual elements of material culture mentioned above. The settlement evidence of late
13th and early 12th c. BCE date, known from Crete, with a large number of sites studied and excavated, and with
well differentiated phases which form a reliable historical sequence (from a crisis, through a collapse, to a more or
less synchronized recovery), is certainly worth a thorough analysis in its broader Eastern Mediterranean context.
However, this evidence must be selected with good knowledge of the sites, their history and chronology, and not
just by picking randomly a few much-publicized sites, as unfortunately has been the case. Although sites such as
Karphi, Vrokastro, and the group of settlements around Kavousi, yielded enormous amount of data concerning the
so called ‘Dark Ages’ on Crete, they are not representative for all the phases and all the aspects of the settlement
crisis and collapse. When analysed in isolation from other sites, even neighbouring ones, they may lead to the wrong
conclusions on the historical background of their foundations. Once again, I want to stress an important point which
is commonly ignored by those who tackle the problem of the 1200 BCE settlement changes in the South Aegean
(and beyond it): the so called ‘defensible sites’ of the latest Bronze and Early Iron Ages should not be analysed as
a single group (Haggis 2001). Chronologically and typologically, they belong to several different categories. They
represent, therefore, different phases of changes and different groups of people. The coexistence of four site-types,
characteristic for the LM IIIB/C transition and the earliest phase of LM IIIC, indicates how complex this settlement
collapse was. It illustrates different trajectories of different people responding to the main problem of the analysed
crisis: the disappearance of an old security system, which covered the South Aegean until the middle of the 13th c.
BCE.
The conclusions of the analysis can then briefly be summarized:
1. Three phases can be differentiated in the Southern Aegean, which are relevant to the late 13th/early 12th c. BCE
crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean. The first phase – ‘crisis’ – can be placed during the generation that immediately
preceded the disturbances on the Levantine coast. It lasted approximately 20 to 30 years (ca. 1240/30-1220/10
BCE) and was characterised by the collapse of the security system within the Aegean, which soon after affected
a much broader region, including the coastal regions east of the Aegean. The most visible effect of the earlier
security system’s breakdown was a series of destructions, disturbances and abandonments in most of the Cretan
habitation sites. The breakup of the political organization of the Mycenaean word opened new opportunities for its
re-modelling, and one of the most visible effects was a large-scale movement or rather movements of people. This
must have created all kinds of problems between different groups, who not only had different objectives, but were
also of different strength. After the collapse of the political hierarchy, the aggressive objectives of strong groups
(professional or semi-professional warriors) were no longer restricted by law or mutual agreements between political
units, which earlier had protected the common people, whoever the latter were (farmers, shepherds, craftsmen, etc.).
Villages and towns must have relied on their own defence. There was no senior ruler who would send them any
reinforcement. Therefore, the strongest centres, such as Knossos and Chania survived, more or less with minor
disturbances. Most of other settlements, however, did not. In this way, the phase of ‘crisis’ was followed by a phase
of ‘collapse’. The settlement model, which developed after the destructions of the LM IB palatial system, came to
its definite end. Migrations and all other kinds of population movements (such as dislocations or relocations) now
intensified. Among the new settlements are those that suggest a strong involvement in sea-activity. These can be
important fingerprints of the hypothetical migrants, their origins, social structures and economic backgrounds. It
seems that, at the beginning of the collapse phase, the native ‘refugees’ had some confidence in the temporality of
their problems and hoped for a return to their old homes. Years and decades passed, however, and the new model(s)
of political and territorial organization did not restore the old security system. The ‘refugees’ had to adapt to the new
situation, making compromises. Crete entered the third phase of the transition between the Bronze and Iron Ages
– here labelled ‘recovery’, which started around the end of the most turbulent events of the collapse as recorded in
the Levant, i.e. after 1170 BCE.
2. The variety of new sites, all of them with defensible/defensive characteristics, indicates that different groups
of people responded to the problems in different ways. Some of them were the authors of disturbances, other their
victims. Some continued, for a short time and to some degree, the earlier social organization, but others completely
broke their links with the previous system and started to build a new social model. The physical strength and size
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of an individual family may have been factors that are more important in this phase than in the earlier period.
Some communities were able to construct impressive fortifications while others had to rely entirely on the natural
defensibility of the location chosen for ‘a refuge village’. Some groups founded coastal bases for what must clearly
have been maritime activities, other fled to the highest points of the agricultural zones with obvious economic
consequences of such a relocation. Often the people whose entire life was focused on activities in coastal plains
suddenly had to adapt to the conditions of high mountains, with the old economic hinterland situated at a long
distance from the new habitation sites. The choice was between long daily journeys to the previously cultivated
fields and groves or the relocation of many elements of the old economic hinterland closer to the new village. This
latter process (lifting up the economic hinterland) may have started with some delay and its completion took several
generations. Here, we are only concerned, however, with the early phases of the ‘collapse’ when the economy of
the mountainous ‘refugees’ was certainly an economy of survival, whereas the economy of the fortified and coastal
sites, such as Kastrokephala and Palaikastro Kastri, remains unclear. A few families at least, scattered over the
countryside near these ‘citadels’, must have practised agriculture and herding. This may have been complemented
by fishing. However, freebooting and ‘piracy’ must also be considered as an important part of these sites’ economy8.
A very similar economic and social character can be proposed for Maa Palaeokastro on Cyprus, which may have
been even more isolated from the mainland than Kastrokephala on Crete, and may thus have relied even more on
sea-activity by its inhabitants.
3. The sudden appearance of defensive coastal settlements in the Southern Aegean islands and their short life
indicate substantial population movements within the Aegean. The distribution of these sites does not indicate any
intension to create a defensive system put in place by a particular kingdom or kingdoms, but rather a pattern of
small independent communities looking for a convenient and easy to defend coastal basis, with no (or very weak)
links with the hinterland. If such sites were bridgeheads of the groups, which formed a part of the social/ethnic
background of the so-called ‘Sea Peoples’, cannot be proven, but such hypothesis should not be rejected altogether.
I agree with Knapp and Manning (2016: 135) that the Sea Peoples were “a symptom, not a cause” of the Late
Bronze Age collapse in the East Mediterranean. Likewise, the here discussed coastal defensive sites in the Southern
Aegean were ‘a symptom’ and not a cause for the collapse of the Mycenaean political control of the region. It should
be stressed, however, that what was ‘a symptom’ in one region could be a cause in another. Coastal settlement in
Crete could be demolished by the groups of sea-raiders who were the symptoms of the collapse of the Mycenaean
states. It is difficult, however, to blame those relatively small, north Cretan coastal sites, and those known from other
Southern Aegean islands, for the scale and character of the relocation that can be seen along the southern coast of
Crete. One has to assume that there were many more and larger groups, consisting perhaps of hundreds rather than
dozens of ‘sea-raiders’, and probably also with other, non-Aegean origins (Southern Italy?), who frequently raided
that part of the island. What happened to those people, where did they come from, where were they heading to, what
kind of temporary base did they have? These are questions to be addressed in the entire context of the 1200 BCE
collapse, and these questions relate directly to the contemporary disturbances on Cyprus.
Knapp and Manning argued that there was “no evidence to support the presence of Philistines or other Sea Peoples
in the Late Bronze Age archaeological record of Cyprus” (2016: 134). I will not touch the case of the Philistines
here, but the lack of evidence for foreigners in some territory cannot be regarded as a decisive argument to argue
that they were not present in that region or, at least, in the region surrounding it. The well-documented settlement
changes along the south coast of Crete suggest an involvement of some archaeologically ‘invisible’ aggressors not
only during the late 13th BC crisis and collapse, but also during the Early Byzantine period, when the Arab ‘sea
raiders’ are likewise invisible although their role in the late seventh century CE ‘refuge’ phenomenon is certain.
Related to this problem of ‘archaeological visibility’ of migrants is another controversial statement by Knapp and
Manning. They write that “demographic realities and available transport infrastructure alone render implausible
most extreme migration hypotheses” (Knapp & Manning 2016: 134). I do not know what the authors mean by
“most extreme migration hypotheses”, but there is no problem regarding the “demographic realities or available
transport infrastructure”. These would have allowed, in the late 13th c. BCE, the movement of tens of thousands of
people across the sea and this over a distance of several hundred kilometres (the distance between Crete and Cyprus
8 ‘Piracy’ of a kind described by Ormerod (1924: esp. 60-61) and Hitchcock & Maeir (2014), which means targeting first and foremost
coastal regions (people, animals and other goods) and not only other ships.
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being ca. 600 km), during a period lasting several decades. There was no ‘transport problem’ between the mainland
and the islands since such a regular traffic was not extraordinary either before or after the crisis. The second factor,
‘demographic realities’ suggests a scenario that is rather different from that proposed by Knapp and Manning.
The sudden appearance of new, sometimes large, coastal defensive settlements indicates a regional increase of
population, however brief, that must have resulted from migrations.
Who were the people responsible for the foundation of these new fortified citadels and promontory sites in the
Southern Aegean, and what was their fate? The maritime orientation of their sites suggests that their subsistence
heavily relied on sea-activities. But what kind of sea-activity attracted these groups during a time when most
low-lying settlements were abandoned and their inhabitants had retreated from the coast? It is not ‘an outmoded’
speculation, stimulated by ‘the tyranny of history’, but an identification based on carefully studied archaeological
evidence, to see these coastal sites as bases for piratical activity, carried out by ‘marauders’ – ‘epigones’ of the
warriors from the disciplined troops, which earlier formed essential elements of the Mycenaean states. The character
of their maritime activities and the precise geographic range of their movements cannot be identified but there can
be no doubt that these groups of people were a decisive factor behind the dramatic changes we observe in the
settlement patterns on Crete.
As pointed out, these groups of people probably did not form a single homogenous (ethnic/linguistic) unit, nor
were they completely isolated from the native populations who may have been of a same, related or entirely different
linguistic group. Kastrokephala on Crete shows that the material culture of these people was of mixed character,
with Cretan elements dominating, but associated with Mycenaean and even Southern Italian elements. Considering
the structure of the pre-collapse Mycenaean political confederation, we should not expect a pure ‘ethnic’ character
of these people either. The Mycenaean mainlanders, the Cretans, the islanders from the Dodecanese and other East
Aegean islands, some already mixed with coastal Anatolians, may have joined on an occasional basis and acted
together as unified groups already in the 13th c. BCE. They must have become even more ‘multi-ethnic’ on their
migration routes. The farther they moved from their place of origin, the more ‘diluted’ their original ethnic features
became. Similar groups from all over the Aegean, and other Mediterranean regions, may have constituted a major
part of the large-scale sea-migrations heading also eastwards, with Cyprus as one possible target. Such a ‘historical’
reconstruction is coherent with the available written sources from the Near East.
The settlement changes, here analysed, indicate that groups of potential ‘sea-people’ became very numerous
and very active along the coastal regions of the Aegean during the last decades of the 13th and first decades of
the 12th c. BCE. Some founded ‘citadels’ and remained in the Southern Aegean islands. Their settlements were
deserted, however, within one or two generations. The same phenomenon is also happening on Cyprus, as shown
by Maa Palaikastro and Pyla Kokkinokremos. How should we interpret these abandonments in the first half of
the 12th c. BCE? What happened to their inhabitants? The short occupation span of these sites and the absence
of equally sophisticated successors indicate that their social organization and ability for similar building projects
ended within one or two generations. In the case of Kastrokephala, A. Kanta has suggested that, after the destruction
of their citadel, people may have emigrated to the east, to Rhodes, then sailed to Cyprus to sites such as Pyla
Kokkinokremos, and eventually to the Levantine coast (Kanta & Kontopodi 2011: 133). Some correction to this
scenario is necessary, however. The inhabitants of Kastrokephala could not be those who built or settled at Pyla
Kokkinokremos – both sites were founded at more or less the same time. When Kastrokephala was abandoned,
Pyla Kokkinokremos was also evacuated. Yet, other similar contemporary ‘splinter groups’ of the aforementioned
regular Mycenaean warrior troops, perhaps much larger, and already mixed with people of Anatolian and central
Mediterranean origin, may have sailed further east, along the South Anatolian coast to Cyprus. They may have been
part of the problem faced by Tudhalias IV and Suppiluliuma II in the sea between Lycia and Cyprus. They may
have been the builders of fortified sites like Maa Palaeokastro, and to lesser degree involved in the construction of
Pyla Kokkinokremos. To call them Aegean, at the time of their landing on Cyprus is probably not quite correct, but
to deny the substantial Aegean component of those and similar groups of the so-called ‘Sea-Peoples’ would imply
neglecting all the results of studies on settlement changes in the Aegean. The here discussed Cretan sites, as well
as the entire process of settlement collapse on Crete in the late 13th c. BCE, are certainly much more relevant to the
contemporary crisis and collapse in Cyprus and the Levant than suggested by Knapp and Manning. However, to
use this knowledge properly, the subject should be treated thoroughly and not, as is often the case, by picking a few
(and usually the same) sites at random.
143
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An Archaeology of Forced Migration

Crisis-induced mobility and the Collapse

of the 13th c. BCE Eastern Mediterranean

Crisis-induced mobility and the Collapse

of the 13th c. BCE Eastern Mediterranean

Edited by Jan Driessen

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

Graphic design: Marie-Hélène Grégoire

Distribution: www.i6doc.com, on-line university publishers

1. An Archaeology of Forced Migration – Introduction 19

2. The Corporeality and Materiality of Involuntary Exile 25

3. From Lampedusa to Trieste 31

4. Vestiges of the Spanish Republican Exodus to France 55

5. Camps and Ruins 75

6. Tracing Material Endings of Displacement 83

7. The Kurustama Treaty 95

8. Involuntary Displacement in Livy Books 1-5 101

9. Forced Migration after Natural Disasters 107

12. Towards an Archaeology of Forced Movement of the Deep Past 177

13. The Levant in Crisis 187

18. Potters in Captivity?  261

20. Inching Ever Closer 307

Why does Crete matter?

The archaeological evidence

Fig. 10.3 Kastrokephala: the fortification wall (by the author)

Fig. 10.6 Kastrokephala: satellite image (Google Earth)

Fig. 10.13 Elias to Nisi: plan (after Hayden 2001: fig. 6)

Fig. 10.16 Palaikastro Kastri from south (by the author)

Fig. 10.18 Karpathos Moulas from northwest (by the author)

Fig. 10.20 Viannos Kerato/Vigla from west (by the author)

Fig. 10.21 Rotasi Koriphi/Analipsi from east (by the author)

Fig. 10.24 Mirthios Kirimianou from south (by the author)

Fig. 10.26 Koutsounari Karphi from north (by the author)

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1. An Archaeology of Forced Migration – Introduction 19

2. The Corporeality and Materiality of Involuntary Exile 25

3. From Lampedusa to Trieste 31

4. Vestiges of the Spanish Republican Exodus to France 55

5. Camps and Ruins 75

6. Tracing Material Endings of Displacement 83

7. The Kurustama Treaty 95

8. Involuntary Displacement in Livy Books 1-5 101

9. Forced Migration after Natural Disasters 107

12. Towards an Archaeology of Forced Movement of the Deep Past 177

13. The Levant in Crisis 187

18. Potters in Captivity? 261

20. Inching Ever Closer 307