Sacred Darkness: A Global Perspective on the Ritual Use of Caves

4. Landscapes of Ritual, Identity, and Memory: Reconsidering Neolithic and Bronze Age Cave Use in Crete, Greece

59 4 The island of Crete, lying on the southern border of the Aegean Sea, is rich in caves and rockshelters. One estimate, probably conservative, places the total at around 2,000 (Davaras 1976, 42), of which approximately 10 percent have produced material dating to phases of the Neolithic (ca. 7000–3100/3000 BC; Tomkins 2007b) or Bronze Ages (hereafter, Minoan; ca. 3100/3000–1100 BC; Warren and Hankey 1989) (see table 4.1, figures 4.1, 4.2, 4.3). The majority of these, including all Neolithic examples , host types of material culture, such as coarseware and fineware ceramics, that are essentially the same as those found at contemporary open-air sites. As a consequence, the default interpretation of Cretan prehistoric caves has been to treat them as domestic sites, whether refuges (Faure 1964, 30) or the seasonal homes of farmers or transhumant pastoralists (Davaras 1996, 93; Dickinson 1994, 37; Faure 1964, 189–97; Manteli 1993a, 191; Marinatos 1928, 100; 1950, 256; Nilsson 1950, 56; Papathanassopoulos 1996b; Pendlebury 1939, 384; Pendlebury, Pendlebury, MoneyCoutts 1935–1936, 23; Sakellarakis 1989, 88; Tzedakis 1996; Watrous 1982, 10; 2001, 162–63). Exceptions to this rule are so-called “burial caves,” defined by the presence of human skeletal material and mainly of Early Minoan (EM; ca. 3100/3000–2000 BC) date, or “sacred caves” of Middle Minoan (MM; ca. 2000–1600 BC) or Late Minoan date (LM; ca. 1600–1100 BC), the definition of the latter varying greatly in terms of stated degrees of certainty (Rutkowski and Nowicki 1996, 4–5). Although the incidence of their usage varies from period to period across Crete and the wider Aegean, caves are always a rare site-type when compared to open-air sites and especially to the total number of caves available for use. Even though caves dominate the list of known Neolithic sites in certain regions (e.g., western Crete), this is an artifact Landscapes of Ritual, Identity, and Memory ReconsideringNeolithicandBronzeAgeCaveUseinCrete,Greece Peter Tomkins Table 4.1 Chronological table (after Tomkins 2007b, table 1.1). Phase Absolute Date Range Mesolithic ca. 8700–7000 BC Initial Neolithic (IN) ca. 7000–6500/6400 BC Early Neolithic (EN) ca. 6500/6400–6000/5900 BC Middle Neolithic (MN) ca. 6000/5900–5500/5300 BC Late Neolithic I (LN I) ca. 5500/5300–4900 BC Late Neolithic II (LN II) ca. 4900–4500 BC Final Neolithic IA (FN IA) ca. 4500–4200 BC Final Neolithic IB (FN IB) ca. 4200-3900 BC Final Neolithic II (FN II) ca. 3900-3600 BC Final Neolithic IIII (FN III) ca. 3600-3300 BC Final Neolithic IV (FN IV) ca. 3300-3100/3000 BC Early Minoan I-III ca. 3100/3000–2000 BC Middle Minoan I-III ca. 2000–1600 BC Late Minoan I-III ca. 1600–1100 BC Peter Tomkins 60 Figure 4.1 Neolithic sites mentioned in the text. of methodologies of investigation in which caves were prioritized for investigation by early field workers (e.g., Faure 1964; Marinatos 1928, 1950; Taramelli 1897, 1901). Structuring interpretations of function has been the presumption that domesticity represents the natural and self-evident interpretation of prehistoric cave usage—a belief held most strongly for the Neolithic period. In this way the onus of proof is placed firmly on those seeking alternative, usually ritual, interpretations. In this chapter I argue that this presumption should be reversed, that Neolithic and Minoan cave use on Crete was primarily if not entirely ritual in nature and, moreover, that Middle and Late Minoan cave sanctuaries developed directly out of an earlier tradition of ritual usage during the Neolithic and Early Minoan periods. Key elements of this argument have been developed in detail elsewhere with specific reference to Neolithic caves in the Aegean (Tomkins 2009). In this chapter the focus is on cave use on Crete during the Neolithic and Early Minoan periods and the transition to Middle Minoan (ca. 7000–2000 BC). Figure 4.2 Early Minoan sites mentioned in the text. Landscapes of Ritual, Identity, and Memory 61 Domesticity Reconsidered One of the reasons that domesticity has seemed such a safe and uncontroversial interpretation is that it accords with the popular myth that prehistoric people, but particularly those of the Stone Age, were cave dwellers by preference. In fact, during the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic in the Aegean, both cave and open-air dwelling coexisted as logical parts of a strategy of seasonal foraging where specific caves...