Archaeology Lecture with Jim Wright

Professor Emeritus Jim Wright will join us to speak on "Kommos as an Iron Age harbor in the territory of Gortyn (Crete)". Refreshments will be available from 12-12:30.

This lecture will not be available to the public on Zoom. If you are a student or BMC affiliate, please email Jennie Bradbury for Zoom Registration.

Lecture abstract:

About 1020 BC the ruined walls of a massive building stood out from the sand dunes that covered the abandoned harbor at Kommos. Locals remembered when Phaistos ruled the region and erected a small shrine over the remains. Boats began again to shelter here. Seeking their way to the west in the 10^th c. Phoenicians used the harbor and by the 9^th c. established in the shrine a typical tri-pillar altar. Cretans and Greeks met up at the harbor and enlarged the small sanctuary. In the 7^th c. a long building housed goods, likely for provisioning the Greek colonies at Cyrene and Tocra, a night’s sail across the Libyan Sea. Sailors traded stories as they drank wine together. Phoenician amphoras and jugs were left behind from the 9^th through 7^th c. some with inscriptions. Many drinking cups carry Greek abecedaria. Kommos was one of many places where the alphabet was developed. Cosmopolitan conviviality surely loosened sailors’ tongues as they shared stories and sang songs of adventure and catastrophe. As Gortyn grew into the main city of the region, Homer related how Odysseus fared returning from Troy. Poseidon sent a storm to scatter Menelaus and his ships until they rounded the headland off the nearby coast and found shelter “at the farthest edge of Gortyn”. This was Kommos. After 600 BCE the harbor fell into disuse. The center of gravity shifted to the Mainland as Corinth directed traffic to the west, invented the trireme and then gave way to Athens. Kommos ceased to be a port but its shrine continued to be a place of worship down into the Roman empire. Around 175 CE it was once again abandoned and covered by the sands of time, only to be recognized in 1926 when Sir Arthur Evans identified it as the harbor of the Bronze Age palace at Phaistos.