Athena Review Image Archive ™
Linear A tablets from Khania
Linear A tablets from Kastelli Hill, ca. 1450 BC (photo: Khania Museum).
The
Minoan settlement at Khania spanned the entire Bronze Age, lasting
for nearly 2500 years. The earliest findings in the Kastelli
Hill and the Splantzia Quarter date back to the Early Minoan
period (3500 BC). The Minoan settlement lasts down to the end of the
Late Minoan IIIC phase (1100 BC).
Evidence that Khania had
a Minoan "palace" complex includes a relatively large archive of Linear
A documents. The
Khania settlement is second (after Hagia Triadha) among the Minoan
centers in the quantity of Linear A tablets, and first in
terms of the
number of roundels.
The Khania Linear A archive consists of 97 pieces of clay tablets, 122 roundels, and 28 nodules, inscribed with Linear A syllabograms and ideograms. They contain lists of agricultural products and censuses of people and animals, and attest to the functioning of an advanced administrative system connected with the centralized economy of a powerful society.
.[Source: Metaxia Tsipopoulou, "Discoveries at Khania in Western Crete" in Athena Review, Vol.3, no.3, 2003 (pp.44-51).]
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