Sharon Stocker

• University of Cincinnati

In 2015, an exquisite ivory pyxis lid was discovered in the grave of the Griffin Warrior at Pylos. The lid, carved in high relief, depicts in great detail a combat in which a lion defeats a griffin. The modeling and carving of the ivory are of exceptional quality. Here, we first consider the specific context and circumstances of discovery of the li...

The Grave of the Griffin Warrior is the name that has been attached to the un-looted Mycenaean Warrior burial that was discovered by a team from the University of Cincinnati to the northeast of the Palace of Nestor at Ancient Pylos, Messenia, Greece. The grave contained the remains of a single male individual who was approximately 1.7 m (5′6″) tall...

Although the Mycenaean civilization of the Greek Bronze Age was identified 150 years ago, its origins remain obscure. Jack L. Davis, codirector of excavations at the Palace of Nestor at Pylos, takes readers on a tour of the beginnings of Mycenaean civilization through a case study of this important site. In collaboration with codirector Sharon R. S...

This article is a case study in doing new things with old data. In 1953 Lord William Taylour directed the excavation of a monumental vaulted tholos tomb known as 'Tholos IV' at the site of ancient Pylos, Messenia, Greece. The excavation was conducted over two months, during which detailed notes were recorded in three notebooks now kept in the Archi...

This chapter presents the results of a recent reexamination of the Late Bronze Age tombs excavated in the area of the Palace of Nestor at Pylos by Carl W. Blegen: three tholoi, seven chamber tombs, and one cist grave. New light can now be shed on the chronology of the construction and use of each. The various tombs range in date from MH III/LH I to...

Messenia is one of the most thoroughly investigated areas of Mycenaean Greece, in large part because of a tradition of archaeological survey and the systematic excavation and full publication of two significant Mycenaean sites: the Palace of Nestor and Nichoria. Excavations revealed a remarkably long history of settlement, beginning in the Final Ne...

This article presents two newly-discovered fragments of Linear B tablets from recent excavations at the site of Ano Englianos, Bronze Age Pylos, along with a third possibly inscribed object.

The Late Helladic II burial of the so-called Griffin Warrior, discovered at Pylos in 2015, yielded hundreds of precious artifacts. One find surpassed the others and exemplified the difficulties of the excavation: an elaborate gold necklace with two beads of agate and one of faience, the faience bead perhaps an Egyptian import. We describe the neckl...

This paper offers new high-resolution oxygen and carbon isotope data from Stalagmite S1 from Mavri Trypa Cave, SW Peloponnese. Our data provide the climate background to the destruction of the nearby Mycenaean Palace of Nestor at Pylos at the transition from Late Helladic (LH) IIIB to LH IIIC, ~3150–3130 years before present (before AD 1950, hereaf...

Dating points and uncertainties from selected paleoclimate records from the central and eastern Mediterranean around 3200 yrs BP. Renella Cave [58]; Shkodra Lake [84]; Mavri Trypa (this study); Sofular Cave [75,76], and Jeita Cave [65]. The δ18O record from Nar Gölü [85] is not represented in this graph because the chronology is based on the counti...

U-Th dating chemistry and results table. Uranium and thorium isotopic compositions and 230Th ages for stalagmite S1 by MC-ICPMS, Thermo Electron Neptune, at HISPEC, NTU. (DOCX)

Archaeological background to the Palace of Nestor at Pylos and the area around Pylos. (DOCX)

More detailed information about the setting of the cave where speleothem S1 was collected. (DOCX)

More detailed information about the results of the analyses presented in this paper. (DOCX)

Extended discussion: Potential impacts of climate variability on Mycenaean society. (DOCX)

Selected high-resolution stable isotope records from eastern and central Mediterranean compared the δ18O record from Mavri Trypa (this study). Bold black lines for each record represent a running average. The running average was selected for each individual record to filter the average resolution to ~30 years, the lowest resolution in any record in...

Stable oxygen (δ18O) and carbon (δ13C) isotopes from stalagmite S1 plotted vs. age. Thicker black line represents 5-point moving average. Note inverted y-axes. (PDF)

More detailed information about the material and methods. (DOCX)

Stable oxygen and carbon isotope data for stalagmite S1. (TXT)

The Pylos Combat Agate, in our view a Cretan work of Late Minoan I, may be the finest example of glyptic art yet discovered in a Minoan or Mycenaean context. It was found in 2015 in the grave of the so-called Griffin Warrior at Pylos. The face of the sealstone bears a representation of combat that draws on an iconography of battle scenes known from...

Mycenaean society of the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1675–1050 B.C.) Aegean world is well known as a hierarchical culture from its archaeology, mortuary patterns, and dietary structure. In particular, Mycenaean culture featured complex heterarchies in terms of class, sex, and gender. Skeletal remains from the major site of Pylos reveal some of the biocult...

In May 2015, a University of Cincinnati team unexpectedly discovered a large stone-built tomb of Late Helladic IIA date near Tholos Tomb IV on the first day of renewed excavations at the Palace of Nestor, Pylos. Hundreds of artifacts of gold, silver, bronze, ivory, and semiprecious stones were found with the body of a single male, 30-35 years old,...

Published archaeological, palaeoenvironmental, and palaeoclimatic data from the Peloponnese in Greece are compiled, discussed and evaluated in order to analyse the interactions between humans and the environment over the last 9000 years. Our study indicates that the number of human settlements found scattered over the peninsula have quadrupled from...

This paper reviews the methodological and practical issues relevant to the ways in which natural scientists, historians and archaeologists may collaborate in the study of past climatic changes in the Mediterranean basin. We begin by discussing the methodologies of these three disciplines in the context of the consilience debate, that is, attempts t...

The burnt sacrifice of bare (defleshed) bones, described in Homer's Odyssey and well documented from Archaic and Classical Greece, is now clearly attested by burnt faunal remains from the 'Palace of Nestor' at Mycenaean Pylos. This evidence is of great importance for understanding both the historical role of sacrifice in Greek religion and the sign...

In 1958 and 1959 Marion Rawson explored medieval remains in the area of the Northeast Gateway in the Early Mycenaean fortifications at the Palace of Nestor. A substantial number of cooking pots, glass vessels, tiles, a small amount of glazed wares, and a few miscellaneous objects dating to the late 12th or early 13th century were associated with a...

Little was known until recently about regional patterns of early prehistoric occupation in Albania, making it difficult to situate the Albanian record within existing, general models of early prehistoric landuse. An intensive regional survey, the Mallakastra Regional Archaeological Project (MRAP), carried out in the Fier region of central Albania f...

The authors interpret two joining pieces of a brightly colored wall painting found at the Palace of Nestor in 1939. The fragment, removed from the walls of the palace prior to its final destruction, represents part of an archer, probably female. Alternative rcconstructions are offered. Artistic methods and constituents of the plaster and paint are...

The authors interpret two joining pieces of a brightly colored wall painting found at the Palace of Nestor in 1939. The fragment, removed from the walls of the palace prior to its final destruction, represents part of an archer, probably female. Alternative reconstructions are offered. Artistic methods and constituents of the plaster and paint are...

Provenience studies provide insights concerning trade in various goods, such as millstones. This is the first attempt to source millstones from Albania. Thirty-one vesicular volcanic millstones, predominately from the Greek and Roman periods, were obtained from two sites, 21 from Apollonia and ten from Butrint. The purpose of this study was to dete...

In the Balkans archaeologists until recently have neglected Pleistocene and early Holocene remains in open-air contexts in favor of excavations in caves. As a consequence, they have reconstructed patterns of settlement and land use that in many areas are misleading. The authors of this paper suggest that a systematic examination of Palaeolithic and...

The contexts of burned faunal assemblages from Blegen's excavations at the Palace of Nestor are examined in this paper. Special attention is given to a deposit of bones found in a corner of room 7 of the Archives Complex. It is argued that these bones, from at least 10 cattle, probably represent the remains of a single episode of burned animal sacr...

In 1958 Lord William Taylour excavated the badly eroded remains of a small late Early Helladic III site at Deriziotis Aloni on the Englianos Ridge not far from the Palace of Nestor. This paper constitutes a detailed presentation of Taylour's results. Two apsidal buildings from the site are among the earliest apsidal structures known from Messenia,...

In the spring of 2001 the hilly uplands immediately northwest of the modern city of Durrës were for the first time investigated using the techniques of intensive surface survey. In total, an area of six square kilometers was explored and twenty-nine sites were defined, most of them new. Remains of Greek antiquity were plentiful and include unpublis...

This paper considers how the Communist dictatorship in Albania employed material symbols to help impose its ideological vision on the population. We illustrate the eventual demise of these strategies of domination, by describing what has become of some specific elements of Communist material culture (bunkers) in a post-Communist landscape, and by d...