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Document Details : Title: The Lobby of the Stone Seat in the Mycenaean Palace at Knossos Subtitle: A Department for storing and recording olive oil and a redistibutive area Author(s): DUERMEIJER, G.C. Journal: BABESCH Volume: 81 Date: 2006 Pages: 1-12 DOI: 10.2143/BAB.81.0.2014421 Abstract : The Lobby of the Stone Seat (LSS), or the Room of the Column Bases, in the Mycenaean Palace at Knossos is the find place of the ‘Oil Tablets’. These tablets record the incoming and outgoing olive oil. The Lobby of the Stone Seat is a fairly large and easily accessible room, situated only a few steps from the Central Court. Along one of its walls a stone bench was constructed. The room itself and its surrounding rooms were storerooms for pithoi. Shallow basins for the collection of olive oil indicate that olive oil was stored in these pithoi. The amount of oil recorded in the Oil Tablets corresponds with the combined volume of these pithoi. Therefore, this article will argue that from the LSS the olive oil recorded in the Oil Tablets was distributed and that the oil the palace demanded from Cretans was, at least partly, stored in the LSS and the rooms surrounding it. After comparing the Lobby of the Stone Seat to other Mycenaean sites a redistributive function can presumably be ascribed to the room. |
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