The Architecture of Building 1

Driessen, Jan [UCL]

This volume presents the results of the British School at Athens excavations into the complex stratigraphy in and around Building 1 from 1986 to 1989 that revealed a monument, unique at Palaikastro, perhaps ritual in function, and whose occupation history takes us from the Minoan Renaissance following the Thera eruption to the twilight of the Bronze Age. Erected in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Crete's coastal cities during the Thera eruption, Building 1, with its two-storeyed ashlar façades, must have been one of the finest at Palaikastro. Two conflagrations during the LM IB period largely obscured its original function and brought down much of the ashlar masonry. This was re-used in the substantial LM II and LM IIIA re-occupation phases, which ended with the widespread, perhaps natural, destruction that affected the entire town. The building's last incarnation in LM IIIB contains the strongest evidence for ritual at its core with industrial and domestic activities in adjacent rooms in an otherwise largely abandoned coastal town