House X at Kommos: A Minoan Mansion near the Sea. Part 1: Architecture, Stratigraphy, and Selected Finds [Hardback]

House X is by far the largest and best appointed of the Minoan houses excavated at Kommos in south-central Crete, a Minoan harbor and settlement that later became the site of a Greek sanctuary. Situated on the seacoast of the western Mesara Plain, Kommos faces west toward the Libyan Sea. House X stands on the southern edge of the Minoan town, separated by a large slab-paved road from the monumental civic buildings built and used between the Protopalatial and Postpalatial periods. The description of the stratigraphic excavation of this elite house is published with numerous architectural plans along with the cataloged small finds and tables of data on the floral and faunal materials. The excavated fresco fragments are also discussed and illustrated.

"Chapter 2 by Maria Shaw and Anne Chapin...publishes the painted plasters from the building where floral landscapes are dominant. [...]A most important contribution of this new Kommos material is the evidence of so-called “preliminary sketch-lines”, the first to be relatively securely identified outside Knossos. [...]Chapter 4 by Deborah Ruscillo is devoted to an exhaustive presentation of the faunal remains. The arrangement is very effective, and the survey of Glycymeris shells is highly welcome, given the intricacies of the material from House X. [...]Overall, the production of the volume is outstanding...The Lily Fresco from space X1, an obvious choice for the color frontispiece, has been wonderfully reproduced, as are all the plates and illustrations.[...] ...Shaws and their collaborators have...given us a very complete and authoritative picture of an important building from a key site in south Central Crete."
Vassilis Petrakis, National Hellenic Research Foundation
Bryn Mawr Classical Review (2013.03.50 )