Visible and commemorative structured deposits. Keeping the memory of communal social practices at Minoan palaces’ in E. Borgna, I. Caloi, F. Carinci, R. Laffineur (eds.), (AEGAEUM 43), Leuven-Liège 2019, 115-120.

In the Aegean the best-known examples of structured deposits are the foundation deposits, which are plentiful in Minoan Crete.1 These deposits usually consist of objects that were intentionally deposited in a ‘structured’ manner on the ground or in a shallow pit, and buried beneath a new wall or floor in order to inaugurate the new feature. Beside them, the Bronze Age site of Phaistos, overlooking the Mesara plain in South-central Crete, provides a fair number of a new type of structured deposit that occur especially in the so-called First Palace, dating from the 19th to 17th cent. BC, i.e. the Protopalatial period. These structured deposits are here called ‘filled-in bench and platform deposits’. They mainly consist of complete or fragmentary ceramic vases, as well as occasionally other objects (e.g. animal bones, stone vases and/or loomweights), that are placed in a ‘structured’ way, with which I mean that have either been positioned vertically and/or horizontally and sometimes include stacked cups.2 These deposits have attracted the attention of the first excavators of Phaistos (i.e. Luigi Pernier and Doro Levi) and of other scholars because they are similar to foundation deposits,3 but actually they are not buried under the new architectural features, instead are contained in structures that remain visible and functional after their sealing. The characteristics of these structured deposits are the following: (1) deliberate and intentional deposition of material in a structured manner (vertical or horizontal deposition of vases, with also handleless conical cups in stacks); (2) the sealing up of the deposit, which implies the choice of removing the selected objects from circulation; (3) the intentional deposition of objects that reflect a not normal event, whatever feasting or non-ordinary (i.e. ritual) communal action; (4) the visibility of the deposit or of the ‘container’ of the deposit.