This was a troubled time of transition, marked by a movement of population to inaccessible mountain refuge sites such as Karphi above Lasithi. There is evidence for some continuity of cult from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age provided by deposits of objects in sacred caves (such as the Idaian Cave on Mount Ida and the Diktaian cave above Psykhro) and a number of Iron Age settlements have traces of Late Minoan Ill occupation Gortyn, Praisos, and Vrokastro are examples. A rich cemetery near Prinias in central Crete was in continuous use from Late Minoan times to the Greco-Roman period. But in retrospect it can be seen that a new era was beginning. The cultural traits of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilisations lost their dominance, and gradually the elements emerged which would shape Crete in the Hellenic world.
Increasing familiarity with the technique of working iron, and its potential strength as opposed to bronze for agricultural tools and for weapons, were a basis for future economic development. At Knossos the appearance of new cultural influences had been marked by an abrupt break in tomb usage as well as in the non-Minoan features of the new Subminoan pottery. Late Minoan chamber tombs were methodically cleared before receiving the new burials. There was some local variation in burial practices across the island, but during the 10C cremation became the common rite, the urn containing the ashes often being placed in a rock-cut or stone-built family tomb which remained in use for several generations.
The detailed chronology of the Early Iron Age is still based on pottery sequences largely built up from cremation urns and the vases which accompanied them as grave gifts: outstanding examples are displayed in Herakleion’s Archaeological Museum (Rooms XI and Xll). The pottery decoration after which the Geometric period is named was based on increasingly elaborate arrangements of linear patterns and concentric circles. One Knossian workshop incorporated into its designs a range of fan-tailed birds with raised wing, and though Mycenaean pictorial decoration virtually disappeared there are rare but important portrayals of figures, such as the divinity known as the Mistress of Animals.
From around 850 B.C. there is evidence for intensification of foreign contacts, and pottery styles began to reflect influences from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. There grew up on Crete one of the earliest Orientalising cultures of the Aegean. The island’s geographical position on all east-west trade route was an important factor in shaping its cultural development.
This oriental influence is strikingly demonstrated in the metalwork of the period, for example in the figured relief work on beaten bronze for the votive shields from the Sanctuary of Zeus in the idaian cave: these remarkable pieces (also exhibited in the Herakleion Museum, Room XIX) are attributed to a guild of itinerant craftsmen from the Near East. The same technique is used for spectacular jewellery (in Room XII) from a tomb within the Knossos North Cemetery, and it has been plausibly argued that this was the goldsmiths’ family tomb. The characteristic burial urns of the fully developed Orientalising period were decorated with appropriate motifs in vivid polychrome of red and blue on a white ground.
Changes in social institutions were associated with the emergence of the polis or city-state. Homer speaks of the island’s mixed population, including Dorians from the mainland and Eteocretans. The latter adhered to Minoan traditions. and inscriptions show that their language was pre-Greek. At Praisos and Dreros an apparently peaceful assimilation can be traced.
The island was divided among a great number of small city-states, each built in an easily defendable position usually on a hill-top with a water supply and agricultural land available nearby. Territory was jealously guarded and feuds were common. The cities were ruled by the Kosmoi, a body numbering less than ten, elected annually as administrators and, if necessary, as leaders in war. By the mid 8C Dreros had an opera (or city-centre) and beside it a small temple, a sanctuary of Apollo Delphinios. In the following century an oath administered to the young men of Dreros lays down an exacting code of behaviour with the civic virtue of loyalty to the polis already pre-eminent.
In the late 7C archaeologists recognise an emphatic full stop in the Cretan record. All Early Iron Age cemeteries were suddenly abandoned: burial in chamber tombs ceased and with this the diversity of grave gifts which had contributed significant evidence about the societies of the Geometric and Orientalising period. Round about 750 BC a Semitic script was adopted for the Greek language and from this time inscriptions, as the earliest recorded history. arc a useful aid to archaeological interpretation.
