From Archive to GIS: Recovering Spatial Information for Tholos IV at the Palace of Nestor from the Notebooks of Lord William Taylour

This article is a case study in doing new things with old data. In 1953 Lord William Taylour directed the excavation of a monumental vaulted tholos tomb known as 'Tholos IV' at the site of ancient Pylos, Messenia, Greece. The excavation was conducted over two months, during which detailed notes were recorded in three notebooks now kept in the Archives of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. The formal publication of Tholos IV, however, contains only a basic narrative of the excavation, offering neither precise detail on stratigraphy, object find spots, nor even a complete inventory of small finds. The present study goes back to the original notebooks kept by Taylour and combines the data contained in them with a new digital survey of Tholos IV to produce a comprehensive and accurate 3D GIS model for the excavation. Furthermore, the GIS has been produced in such a way that its dataset is compatible with new excavation data currently generated in the ongoing Palace of Nestor Excavations (PONEX) project, bringing together two excavation campaigns conducted under very different circumstances, methodologies, and recording protocols. Discussion follows on how the production of this GIS deepens our understanding not just of the legacy excavation, but also of the site and its wider landscape.

WINGLESS GRIFFINS AMONG PAPYRUS PLANTS FROM NEOPALATIAL KNOSSOS? A RECONSTRUCTION PROPOSAL OF THE SEAL IMPRESSION CMS II8, 321

This paper offers a new interpretation of the motifs preserved on the fragmentary Late Minoan (LM) I seal impression from Knossos CMS II8, 321, proposing a reconstruction of the original scene as two couchant overlapping griffins without wings among papyrus plants. If correct, the combination of all these elements is quite exceptional, since this scene would provide a unique reflection in glyptic art of the famous Throne Room decoration of Knossos, with its imposing wingless griffins immersed in a lush landscape of papyrus-reeds. Although a well-known ivory plaque from Mycenae displays a similar composition with a single, ‘classical’, winged griffin, no seal image seems to show also the wingless beast and the overlapping pose of two couchant griffins. The present investigation explores several parallels not only for this rare, yet well-attested, compositional scheme in Aegean art, but also for the figure of the wingless griffin. Both will be found in the Pylian palace decorative programme, which offers further griffins without wings – even in glyptic art – a meaningful parallel, since the interconnections between the Palace of Nestor and the Palace of Minos provide some of the most intriguing material in the study of Aegean imagery.

Late Bronze Age Tombs at the Palace of Nestor, Pylos

This chapter presents the results of a recent reexamination of the Late Bronze Age tombs excavated in the area of the Palace of Nestor at Pylos by Carl W. Blegen: three tholoi, seven chamber tombs, and one cist grave. New light can now be shed on the chronology of the construction and use of each. The various tombs range in date from MH III/LH I to LH IIIC late, although it appears that the tholos tombs and chamber tombs were not used intensively at the same time. Grave goods point to more wealth being invested in burials during MH III/LH I to LH II, less in LH IIIA. Most nonceramic imports in the tombs date to LH I–II; there are few ceramic imports with burials of any period. The object of the study was to examine burial customs in the context of social and political developments at the Palace of Nestor itself. Innovations in burial ritual reflect changes that occurred in the course of the Late Helladic period in the way that power was defined and expressed in the community associated with these graves.

Two new Linear B tablets and an enigmatic find from Bronze Age Pylos (Palace of Nestor)

This article presents two newly-discovered fragments of Linear B tablets from recent excavations at the site of Ano Englianos, Bronze Age Pylos, along with a third possibly inscribed object.