The Early Minoan I Pottery From Kalo Khorio, East Crete, and Its Relationship to Wares from the Eastern Aegean

Recent Excavations at the north-coastal site of Kalo Khorio in eastern Crete have produced a series of habitation deposits from continuous phases of occupation in an Early Minoan (EM) I house. This paper presents an overwiev of this well-stratified pottery, while endeavoring to relate the assemblage to the Aegean in the Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze I. The argument presented here is that the formal features of EM I are more closely associated to a south-eastern Aegean sphere that to the Troad and Cyclades in the first phase of the Aegean Bronze Age.

Since our knowledge of EM I ceramics is based, to a large extend, on unstratified mortuary assemblages of mixed EM I-II date, this material from Kalo Khorio is of some importance in understanding EM I as a ceramic phase on Crete and the relationship of this material to the wider Aegean sphere. Studies of EM I pottery -- such as that of the palace well at Knossos, and the cemeteries at Aghia Photia, Siteia and Pyrgos Cave -- have led to fascinating hypotheses of cultural and economic exchange and migration in the Early Bronze Age Aegean. The paper considers the typological criteria used to define the period on Crete, and examines potential off-island synchronism's and broader issues of cultural interaction and exchange in the eastern Aegean.

On the evidence, the Kalo Khorio pottery should be placed in EM I earlier and eventually overlapping Trench FF at Knossos. Uppermost levels are probably contemporary with the north-coast cemeteries of Pyrgos and Ayia Photia, that is, Late EM IB. There are however, no signs of burning or significant destruction debris accompanying the final use of the Kalo Khorio building. Could such abandonment be symptomatic of social, economic, or demographic changes at the beginning of EM II, a period coinciding with the so-called "international spirit" in the Aegean that is most often represented by the cultural connections and ceramic koine within the Keros-Syros Cyclades, EH II mainland and Troy II Anatolians?