Sector 5

Joachim Bretschneider, Greta Jans & Anne-Sophie Van Vyve

Sector 5, located on the southeastern lobe of the summit plateau, has been the focus of intensive excavations by the Ghent University team under the direction of Prof. Joachim Bretschneider. This area comprises over 55 rooms organized into seven complexes, featuring partially well-preserved architecture, with some walls standing until a meter high, complemented by an impressive array of significant artifacts.

Architecture and Layout

The sector is characterized by interconnected complexes of rooms, with a layout and content that suggest a combination of residential, storage, and workshop spaces. These were constructed along an outer wall located at the edge of the plateau atop the narrow promontory. The overall planning of the buildings seems well-defined and resembles the layouts observed elsewhere on the site. Similarly, the outline of the rooms in Sector 5 relates to the ones found in the other sectors, with corridor-shaped spaces, well-plastered floors, and hyposkafon areas.

A notable architectural element in this sector is the presence of deep bedrock-cut shafts. These shafts, whose precise functions are still under investigation, are particularly prominent features of the rooms near the outer wall. The shafts vary in shape and depth, ranging from shallow, circular cuts (1-2 meters deep) to rectangular ones exceeding 3 meters.

Significant Features, Ceramics and Stone Recipients

The in situ finds in Sector 5 are particularly remarkable for their quantity and quality. Mycenaean pottery (Kostopoulou & Jung 2023), both locally produced and imported, is prevalent and often found alongside alabaster and other stone vessels in nearly every house unit.

Despite the general lack of household installations such as hearths (only in very few cases have hearths been attested) or rubbish pits and the absence of animal bones or tombs, the floors of the rooms reveal a different narrative. They are littered with broken pottery and shattered stone basins, often distributed across multiple rooms within a single house unit. For example, in Space 5.19, a heavy stone basin seems to have been deliberately thrown into a bedrock-cut shaft.

Highlights of the Bedrock-Cut Shafts

The largest shaft discovered so far is located in Space 5.6, measuring approximately 2.2 by 2.3 meters and reaching a depth of 3.5 meters. The lower levels within the shaft revealed significant finds, such as a large, smashed jar lying on an oval stone structure. Beneath the stones, a 30 cm-thick ash layer yielded a complete Plain White Handmade jug, an Egyptian small/ medium-sized ovoid jar, and an inverted open terracotta basin filled with burnt organic material. Preliminary analyses of the organic remains identified cereals and cedar wood, with carbon dating placing them in the 12th century BC (Kaniewski 2019).

Other shafts in Sector 5 have also produced intriguing discoveries. A double shaft yielded a beautifully decorated Egyptian calcite-alabaster drop jar, likely dating to the 19th or 20th Dynasty, adorned with incised motifs such as a garland, lotus flowers, and papyrus leaves (Crabbé & Bretschneider 2021). Another smaller shaft, nearly 3.5 meters deep and located in a room with a plastered floor, contained finds such as a fragmentary Mycenaean painted plate, part of a copper ingot, and a plaster ball. Within the plaster ball, conservators uncovered a folded sheet of gold.

Specialized Artisanal Activities

Evidence points to specialized artisanal activities in this sector, including metalworking and textile production. In Room 5.31, dozens of copper alloy slag fragments were neatly piled next to a pithos (Porta 2023), while Room 5.2 contained an assemblage of 29 metal objects, including chisels, drills, and a socketed spear or javelin head. Room 5.21 yielded over 100 bronze fragments, ranging from earrings and rings to scrap metal, likely intended for recycling.

Textile production is suggested by finds in Space 5.35, where stone loom weights - some perforated and others not - were either produced or stored.

A Unique Discovery: The Figurine-Seal

One of the most extraordinary artifacts uncovered in Sector 5 is a figurine-seal made of greenish stone. Shaped like a reversed "L," it depicts a long neck ending in an animal head. The object is intricately decorated with incised designs, including lines, rounded concavities, and crescent marks, and features a hole drilled through its shorter segment. It is hypothesized that the object functioned as a seal, rotated along its vertical axis (Hermon et al. 2018).