Page - 5 -Scan 11 of 38
Continued from scan 10
… suffer and be delayed by such a misinterpretation of the stratigraphical evidence concerning the mainbuilding and the main building period of the town as a whole.
Room XIV. Floor IV and later floors. Howw the situation presents itself, clear and impossible to interpret in an opposite way, as in the former case, is shown by Dikaios observations concerning floor IV. Here too, he found a rather high proportion of pre-LCIII fragments, but at the same time a considerable quantity of sherds of undoubtedly MYcen. III C kind, which proves unmistakably that floor IV is indeed of postmycenaean or LC III (= early Iron) period (p.116,17).
Higher up , as it should be, this admixture of earlier wares is diminishing and between floors II and I and on I, these admixtures afe practically nil.
Room X (p.121). According to Dikaios, the stratigraphical evidence in this room is complicated, but he thinks: "presently it does not conflict with the chronological scheme shown by the previous rooms = XIV (p.121). I am afraid the contrary is the case, and Dik. is here already blinding himself against the evidences hostile to his theory, which happens when one is running into an error and does not like facing reality.
What did he in factobserve in room X? Associated with the lowest floors V-VII, he found here only middle and late Bronze Age pottery and he dates therefore the building in connection with these floors to a period "which is much earlier than our LC III building" (p.122). But the building containing room X is the same as that which contains room XIV, where he postulates a LC III date for the mainbuilding period (his account of the layout, p.11 ss. and in particular p.12 and pl.X,1 and XI,1).
He touched here the right interpretation when he says (p.123): "If this evidence (pottery before LC III) is confirmed by more extensive excavations in the deposit underlying this part of our building, we would be justified in attributing the wall uncovered and floors V-VII connected with it to LC I A, i.e. the XVI-XVth c. B.C." That is indeed the right conclusion. Why did D. not take this important evidence into proper account? He should have, since he is reporting a few lines further, p.124, that even the layer between floors V and IV "the earliest associated with our building", is according to the pottery entirely LC II A (= after Sjöqvist to whom he refers 1400-1350 B.C.) We are far away from a XIIth c. date!
Even floor IV (same page 124), which Dikaios qualifies as the "first associated with our Main building", whereas everywhere else, he says it is floor V, shows similar evidence
65 figures hard to readstruck struck outadded written in above” jug ditto, and what it repeatsword reading not certain