Letter from Schaeffer to Megaw on Dikaios's workClaude Frédéric-Armand Schaeffer

Continued from scan 15

… of the floors V and IV in rooms XIII and IX-X is "strange" (p.125) and the explanation he ventures to submit has, as he notices "a weak point" (p.129).

It is no surprise that his summary of the conditions in room X (p.133-135) is astonishingly rich in statements which contradict themselves: That he is out the wrong path here is indicated by the fact that his struggle against the evidence hostile to his theory of date of floor V and manhandling, has to go on in the next chapter, dealing with room III.

Room III. Here Dikaios reports (p.143) that on the first good floor of the south building, floor V, which is approximately at the level of floor V in the main building, he found only pottery of Mycenaean styles II and III (= XIVth-XIIIth c.B.C.) How does he explain this? He simply brushes away this important evidence by saying that it recalls intrusive fragments of LC II date above the hearth of LC III time on floor V in room XIV. Well, that is of course, no argument and besides, we said at the beginning of our analysis, that it was with the interpretation of this hearth's relationship to floor V and to the building contemporary with the establishment of this floor that Dikaios' fateful mistake started. On the other hand, to be intrusive, fragments need to be in contact with later ones. Here they are in contact with only contemporary sherds of late Bronze Age. They cannot be called intrusive because they lay on floor V, for they have to date this floor, not the floor has to date the sherds!

It impresses me here again, that Dikaios did not try to correct himself after examination of the fill between floors V and VI of room III. Here, he notices (p.142) and reproduces (pl.XLIX) a good quantity of base-ring II, white slip II and so-called Levanto-Mycenaean ware (pl.XLIX). He is aware that the proportion of these late Bronze Age sherds is rather high, but instead of listening to this warning, he again throws it away by selecting in this great bulk of pottery four not very characteristic pieces (713 e, e; 716 e, e, pl.XLIX), which he labels Myc. III C.1, whereas they can perfectly well be late Bronze and in my opinion, certainly are LC II not III, especially the fragments 713 e and 716 e.

There was a third warning against Dikaios' interpretation he disregarded: p.142 he reports the fact that the fill, here simply referred to as "twelfth century fill", is "in almost immediate contact with a floor or deposit containing a Mycenaean II B fragment of the ending XIth c.". To find a explanation which seems to neutralize this disturbing occurrence, he refers to a hiatus observed by me between the Middle Bronze and the earliest Late Bronze Age levels of Enkomi (p.143). It is impossible for me and probably for any stratigraphist to understand how the one … continues