Boyd couldn’t have come to Crete at a better time. During the years that she worked there at the start of the twentieth century, a new, uniquely Cretan, Bronze Age civilization was starting to be uncovered. In 1900, British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans had begun digging at the site of Knossos on the northeast coast of Crete and, within months, had discovered what he named the “Palace of Minos,” after the legendary king of Crete whose labyrinth was once believed to contain the half-man, half-bull creature known as the Minotaur. Evans later used the name “Minoan” to describe the civilization, a term that had first been employed by the German scholar Karl Hoeck in 1823 in his history of Crete.
Although his interpretation of Knossos as the palace of Minos, and indeed some of his characterizations of Minoan civilization, have been disputed or even disproved over the last century, Evans’ pioneering work in Crete and his recognition of Minoan culture as something distinct from the Neolithic culture that preceded it, or the various cultures, including the Mycenaeans, that followed, cannot be understated.
When Harriet Boyd went looking for that “best period,” then, she wanted to find Minoans. At Gournia, she discovered something of a completely different nature from Evans’ palace. Now, more than a hundred years after she began her search, a new team of archaeologists is continuing what she began, re-excavating some of the spaces she first uncovered, and digging completely new areas in order to add to the picture of a very ancient civilization that developed at the same time as the Great Pyramid and Stonehenge were built, and about which many questions remain.
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Source : www.archaelogy.org