566 EXCAVATIONS AT GOURNIA, CRETE. 



seen in Cretan roads to-day. Where the roads ascend we find flights 

 of steps as in modern Naples; the longest flight is in the road that 

 climbs the east slope. 



Gournia houses are superior to any homes of bronze age people 

 found on the Greek mainland. Their loAver courses are of rubble, 

 but often considerable care is taken in the choice of stones, and 

 they are roughly aligned. The size of stones varies greatly — cer- 

 tain walls on the east slope of the hills l)eing sufficiently massive to 

 have suggested on lirst discovoi-y fortiflcation walls, but as further 

 digging disclosed massive and weak walls side by side, we came to 

 the conclusion, in Avhich all who have visited the site agree, that 

 the heavier construction belongs simply to the better-built houses 

 and that the place is unfortified. The width of the house walls 

 varies from 50 to 90 centimeters, GO centimeters being the average. 

 That the upper walls of many of the houses are of brick is abun- 

 dantly proved. These bricks average 10 by 30 by 10 centimeters, 

 and seem to be fire baked. Before Ma}^, 1901, only sun-baked bricks, 

 or those accidentally burned by conflagration had been found in 

 bronze age settlements in the ^-Egean ; but almost simultaneously 

 at Zakro at the extreme east end of the island, where Mr. Hogarth 

 was conducting successful excavations, at Avgo, and at Gournia 

 fire-baked bricks came to light in May, 1901, and they have since 

 been found at Palaiokastro. The clay is coarse and unevenly baked, 

 but the bricks retain their shape well. Bricks were used not only 

 in upper walls, but also in partitions — ahvays on a stone base. In 

 a house on the east slope we found partition walls made of mud, 

 which, after drying in the sun, was overlaid with plaster, a careless 

 construction not uncommon in modern Greek villages. The marvel 

 is that such flimsy work should have remained sufficiently intact for 

 thirty-five hundred years to be immediately recognized and preserved 

 b}^ the workmen who dug it out. 



Plaster is employed extensively on the door jambs and on the 

 walls, both outer and inner, overlaying stone and brick. It is of 

 several varieties, a coarse white kind and a gray pebbly sort being 

 commonest. In some instances a coarse plaster covers the wall and 

 a second finer layer covers this, the color of the finer layer being 

 usually a very light bluish gray, although we have a few precious 

 bits of brighter stucco of a shade someAvhat deeper than the Pom- 

 peian red. In one of the western storerooms of the palace we found 

 two small curiously molded pieces of stucco, one shaped as a thun- 

 derboh and the other as a swallow; these have one flat surface, 

 as if they might have formed (U'uaments in relief on the wall. 



Doorways are carefully made with stone sills and bases for the 

 jambs, which were in rare instances of stone covered with plaster, 

 sometimes of wood, often of brick clay plastered over. A shapeless 



