Issues of conservation and reconstruction in archaeological sites: The example of the Palace of Minos at Knossos

Extract

[...] It is clear that Evans followed his own perception and expectation of the palace of Knossos in the reconstruction. Thus, he named the chambers along with his interpretation: he saw the building as a royal palace from the beginning[21]. For instance, he saw the East wing as the “domestic quarter” of the palace (where the royal family lived), and he decided, because of some frescoes, that women and men were separated. Hence, he named the hall of the double axes “King's Hall” and the hall connected to bathrooms “Queen's Hall”. [...]

[...] Thirdly, I will show that other means of conservation and reconstitution can be used for both preserving the authenticity of the site and present an enjoyable representation of the past to the public. First of all, it is important to look at the context of the excavations at Knossos. Excavations began on March Sir Arthur Evans was assisted by Duncan Mackensie and David Hogarth, who was the director of the British School of Athens at that time[3]. Indeed, the British School of Athens was very involved in Knossos[4]. [...]

[...] Thus, in order to reconstitute the palace of Knossos, he used a technique called “architectural stratigraphy”: he documented each stratum, recording the depth at which each object was found and established a chronology of successive strata of the palace[12]. He also used a lot of workforce (around 180 men), which let him to be efficient in excavations. Besides, for a long time, scholars supported Evans' reconstruction. One of the most famous is James Graham who wrote that “restorations add much to the interest of the ordinary visitor because he is helped to understand”; “un-restored buildings are often quite as misleading as over-restored”[13]. [...]

[...] Indeed, it is now clear that the presentation of the past can never be done objectively, so experimental archaeology let us deal with the responsibility of presenting a specific and personal interpretation of the past to the public. It is a fine balance between instructing and entertaining[34] without damaging the original site and without misleading the public. It is both scientific and educational. To sum up, in this paper I argued that Evans did his excavations of Knossos at the very beginning of the 20th century when techniques of archaeology were less developed; nevertheless, he was very cautious about details. [...]

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