Hagia Photia Cemetery I : The Tomb Groups and Architecture

The Hagia Photia Cemetery takes its name from the nearby village on the notheast coast of Crete, 5 km east of modern Sitcia. This large Early Minoan burial ground with over fifteen hundred Cyladic imports was discovered in 1971. A total of 263 tombs were excavated as a rescue excavation in 1971 and 1984. Among the 1800 artifacts ar some of the earliest known Cretan discoveries in several categoris, including hundreds of complete vases, crucibles with copper inside them, long daggers with central midribs, pendants made in the lost-wax process, multiple vases called kernoi, bird-shaped vases, marble dishes of Cycladic shape, and many other items. The grave goods come mostly from the Kampos Group, an assemblage of artifacts known mainlyu from the Cyclades. In Cretan terms, the cemetery's main body of material comes at the interface between the end of Early Minoan land the beginning of Early Minoan IIA. The tombs represen an architectural style and a series of burial customs that are foeign to Crete but familiar from elsewhere within the Agean. In fact, the cemetery has such close parallels from the Cyclades that it has often been regarded as a cycladic colony. The burial contents are an extremely interesting body of evidence for the study of the formative phases of Minoan Crete.