The Tekke Hoard (also spelled Teke) refers to two ceramic vessels discovered buried in the floor of a looted tomb in an Iron Age cemetery northwest of the Minoan palace of Knossos on Crete. The tomb is a tholos tomb, built in the Late Bronze Age, but the interments are dated to the Iron Age, between the end of the 9th to the beginning of the 7th century BC. The two vessels are proto-Geometric B in style and thus, the materials are believed to have been deposited between about 840-810 BC, near the end of the Greek Dark Ages.
Fragments of pottery in the tomb, and the form of the structure itself, suggest it was built during Middle Minoan times and reused in the Geometric period. At least 19 burial urns have been identified in the tomb. The tomb was partly dismantled in the 3rd century for its building material, and the interior has been quite disturbed by ancient and modern looting.
Contents of the Tekke Hoard
The 44 artifacts within the hoard included finished jewelry and raw material for making jewelry. Some of the pieces are elaborate, including a necklace with a rock crystal inlay, and a brooch decorated with human heads and birds. The artifacts are of gold, ivory, faience, amber in the form of ingots, bars and unworked pieces.
Some of the pieces have a distinctive Near Eastern style to them. Filigree, stamping, inlay and granulation techniques were used to decorate the necklace and brooch. The brooch in particular uses a Near Eastern motif in a Knosson manner. A thin gold sheet stamped diadem has two mirror images of lion slayers, on which a lion is a rendering of a image from the rock relief at Carchemish. Extensive description and discussion of the artifacts from the hoard can be found in Hoffman's Imports and Immigrants.
Interpretations of the Tekke Hoard
On the basis of the collection and its presence in a tholos tomb, excavator John Boardman argued that the Tekke tomb belonged to a Syrian jeweler who had emigrated from Syria to Knossos in the late 9th century and established a gold workshop at Knossos. Boardman believed that the hoard was a Near Eastern style 'foundation deposit'--purposefully buried to rededicate the structure. Gail Hoffman argued that the hoard could just as easily have been from an elite patron of the Tekke workshop. Antonis Kotsonas' recent work comparing the Tekke contents to other Knossian tombs and the origins of each of the objects, appears to support Hoffman's opinion.
The Tekke Hoard was discovered in 1940 during excavation of the tomb by Hutchinson and Boardman.
Also known as: Khaniale Tekke hoard, Teke hoard
Sources
See the About.com Guide to Workshops and Craft Specialization for more information.
Hoffman, Gail. 1997. The Tekke Tomb Reconsidered. Chapter 4 in Imports and Immigrants: Near Eastern Contacts with Iron Age Crete. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.
Kotsonas, Antonis 2006 Wealth and status in Iron Age Knossos. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 25(2):149-172.
This glossary entry is part of the Dictionary of Archaeology.
