Gournia,
Archanes and Ayia Triada: Palaces or Not?
by Ioannis Georganas
GOURNIA
b) Interpretation
As we have already mentioned,
a palace primarily serves an economic function. It is therefore
necessary to have storage areas, workshops, and an administrative
centre. In the case of Gournia, storage areas are available.
Most of the rooms on the basement can be easily identified as
storerooms and this is confirmed by the pithoi found in Rooms
4-9. In addition, Room 23 on the main level also falls within
this category. Still other rooms where pithoi are not found can
be identified as storerooms on the basis of their location next
to storerooms (Rooms 24a, b, c). These rooms are all easily reached
and their disposition on either side of Room 25 is of great importance.
In order for someone to have access to most of the storerooms,
it is necessary to pass through that room. Soles (1991:70) has suggested that this room may
have been used as a place to control the movement of commodities
into and out the palace. This room shows many parallels to Rooms
26/27 and 54/55 from Villa A at Ayia Triada, which contained
large amounts of Linear A cretulae (Watrous 1984). Therefore, it may have been
the administrative centre of the palace, though no Linear A material
was found. Workshops can be positively identified as Rooms 1-3,
and possibly Rooms 27, 29, 30 and 34. A bronze axe and saw found
in Room 1 suggest that carpenters used to work here (Soles 1991:70).
As far as the religious function
is concerned, most of the evidence derives from the architecture
of the building. As we have already seen, the west facade was
provided with a window of appearances. Hägg (1987:129-34) has argued that in the case
of Knossos, a sanctuary (a Tripartite Shrine) was located behind
that window, permitting worshippers in the West Court to share
in the ritual carried out in the shrine. This may be possible
also for Gournia; a stone rhyton found nearby clearly points
to a sacred character. If we move to the south wing we can easily
identify four different shrines where different ceremonies could
be performed. As we have already seen, the North Portico was
some kind of Tripartite Shrine, the North Portico was another
shrine (identified by its horns of consecration), and of course
is the baetyl on the west side of the south wing (with the Paved
Corridor designed to lead in its direction). All these shrines
could be easily used for public religious ceremonies.
As we can see, the building
at Gournia meets almost all of the "palace requirements",
both in terms of function (economic, religious) and monumentality
(ashlar masonry and so forth). The only deviation is that its
great court is not central. However, most of the "central"
courts in the other palaces are not so central either (Soles 1991:72).
