New Perspectives: A Fresh Look at Minoan Peak Sanctuaries
William Megarry
Supervisor: Dr Alan Peatfield
Funded by: IRCHSS Government of Ireland Post-Graduate Scholar
Abstract
My research hopes to shed new light of the emergence, function and role of Peak Sanctuaries in Bronze Age Crete. While much research on Peak Sanctuaries has been undertaken on a Pan-Cretan or regional level, few scholars have ever addressed the specific role of the sanctuary within its local community. Questions remain about the origins of individual sanctuaries with differing dates suggesting the diffusion but localised adaption of a popular and rural cult, centred on the site of Juktas in Central Crete, at the end of the Early Minoan (EM) and beginning of the Middle Minoan (MM) periods. While sites share similarities, they also differ significantly in the range, style and function of votive artefacts deposited suggesting specialised cults centred around small communities in the Protopalatial period. My initial research has shown a connection between the origins of these sites in East Crete in the early MM period and the populating of previously unsettled and agriculturally unexploited areas, further supporting their role as popular rural cults.
Fig. 1 The Peak Sanctuary of Petsophas as seen from the contemporary settlement at Roussolakkos Palaikastro.
My research is centred primarily on the acquisition of spatial data and its analysis within a Geographical Information System (GIS) addressing spatial questions like site-catchment analysis and distribution mapping as well as looking into more phenomenological concerns, recreating the personal aspect of the landscape using cumulative viewshed analysis (CVA) and least-cost modelling.
Fig. 2 3d Image showing least-cost routes between Middle Bronze Age settlements in the Agios Vasilios valley and the contemporary Peak Sanctuary at Atsipadhes Korakias