Annuario della Scuola Archeologica di Atene e delle Missioni Italiane in Oriente, Supplemento 5. Forme del sacro. Scritti in memoria di Doro Levi

Technical Information

As he recalled several times, in Iasos Doro Levi sought evidence of the contacts between the Minoans of Crete and the coasts of Asia Minor. In the issue of the Art Bulletin which, in 1985, collected various studies on Iasos, on the sidelines of these discoveries, he still wrote:
"Thus, for the first time in Asia Minor, not only fragments of Mid-Minoan pottery were found, which are added to the only ones discovered so far in Miletus, but also remains of buildings of a distinctly Cretan character, which somehow confirm the tradition of the thalassocracy of Minos. The layer with remains of the Middle-Minoan age continues towards the East… and towards the North under… ruins that must be removed before reaching the layer that is of particular interest to us ».
If the method with which the excavation was conducted guaranteed and guarantees the results - although the frame of reference then assumed a different historical articulation and although today it is observed with some reservations that the oldest was sometimes sought and brought to light in at the expense of the most recent - the area of polis become now in the classical age it still raises questions for the role it had in the development of the settlement, both in the "very distant" (are the pottery that emerged, very abundant, in the deepest trenches together with the water table?), and in the "more close "(in what period and in what form did he regain possession of it after the late geometrical / high archaism, when he was buried there with rituals that reveal the complexity of the social body? Or: how long and what changes did it take for the phenomenon to end? on the contrary, that from the Christian basilica and the dense burial ground that surrounded it, covering it, led to the fortification of the isthmus to defend what remained of the settlement from attacks coming "from the ground"? Above all, what remained of the latter?).
Even other finds on the peninsula, although research on the ground have marked the pace, await new readings.
For the studies collected here twenty-five years after the death of Doro Levi, it seemed almost natural to receive the baton from a theme (the sacred) that has seen so many recent and illuminating contributions touching epigraphic and architectural issues, but that has many others in front of it. objectives to be achieved, in the urban environment and in cry.

Faith Berti