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… erection and of the use of the main building, including the South and North building with ashlar masonry and original floor V in the Late Bronze Age (LC II) instead, as he proposes, in the early Iron Age.
To make a last effort to convince him of his mistake and in order also to continue the analysis of his discussion of the position in room VI, I include here a schema summing up the stratigraphy [handwritten: of] this room.
To end this chapter, I am sorry to have to expose in Dikaios' conclusion of the pottery evidence in room VI (p.154 ss.) another attempt to prove what cannot be[handwritten: proved] with the help of the evidence as it stands: He says here "...floor V, which is the first floor properly so called, unfortunately produced but a terminus postquem at the end of the XIIIth century is provided for it by the late Levanto-Helladic Mycenaean bowl fragments in the underlying fill." Now, p. 149, Dikaios,who makes all efforts to find evidence for the latest dates and uses here the Swedish chronology, could not bring down the date of fill under floor V below the XIIIth c. So the destruction of the floor V building falls at latest in the XIIIth c., (what I personally do not think is yet confirmed), but in any case in the late Bronze Age - LC II and not in LC III, that is to say early Iron as meant by Dikaios throughout his interpretation of the stratigraphy and chronology of the compound.
It is here not a quarrel about 50 or 25 years at the end of one and the beginning of another period. It is the dividing line between two civilisations: LC II is the late Bronze Age or Mycenean period, LC III is the totally different early Iron Age world. The question is: the mainbuilding of Dikaios' dig has it to be attributed to the former or does it already belong to the later Iron Age period with its newcomers: Philistines and other foreigners. The Date given to the erection and lifetime of the mainbuilding [handwritten: dig] Dikaios is valid for all the ashlar buildings in the neighbourhood found by me, that is to say for the town with this architecture as a whole. We will see now what far-reaching conclusions Dikaios is drawing of his dating in the XIIth C. of the erection of the main building.
Summary and Conclusion (pp.166ss.) It begins with a statement which to me seems not really warranted by Dikaios observations. He says: the continuous occupation from the earliest to the last floor, was "little if at all interrupted by two disasters."
What are the facts? p.39 he refers to the conflagration on floor V destroying most of the northern part of the compound and damaging the remainder, followed by general clearance, after disaster; p.40, the level of the street was raised of all a sudden, possibly as a result of piling debris which was removed after the fire from floor V; p.46ss., he says, following the conflagration not only was the damaged masonry removed from the walls, but also … continues
65 figures hard to readstruck struck outadded written in above” jug ditto, and what it repeatsword reading not certain