About time. Rehabilitating chronology in the interpretation of settlement in east Crete between the Neolithic and Early Minoan I', Creta Antica

Recent decades have seen a transformation in the evidence for early settlement in east Crete through surface survey and targeted excavation. In a recent synthesis, drawing on earlier theories and lines of argument, Nowicki has argued that just before the beginning of the Bronze Age Crete was overrun by a mass migration of settlers, originating in the east Aegean, transforming the settled landscapes of east Crete. This migration is held to have ended a long period of isolation between Crete and the outside world, stretching back into the sixth and fifth millennia BC, and to have set in train a cultural transformation that led to the emergence of Bronze Age societies. This paper reviews the empirical basis for this thesis with specific respect to chronology and its employment in the interpretation of Neolithic-EM I settlement in east Crete. The chronology developed by Nowicki to understand this period of Crete’s past will be reviewed against the chronology based on the long excavated sequence from Knossos and since applied to other excavated sites across the island. Recent developments in phasing at Knossos, Kephala Petras and Phaistos will be summarised and their relevance to our understanding of Neolithic-EM I settlement in east Crete discussed. In the process, the paper will attempt to address a series of questions. How much of the excavated or collected Neolithic pottery currently known from East Crete can be meaningfully dated through comparison with the Knossos sequence? What are the implications of this, both for Nowicki’s chronological scheme and for his interpretations regarding settlement development and transformation in east Crete during the FN-EM I transition? What patterns of activity and settlement emerge in east Crete when a central Cretan Neolithic chronology is applied? What might a future chronological framework for Neolithic east Crete look like? What sequence of phases might define the transition from the Neolithic to EM I in this region? How might we best articulate this sequence, and the changes that occur, in the chronological terminology that we employ?