KERAME
(Vionnos) Haghios Vasilios, Crete.
Twenty-five km W of Timbaki, a Classical and
Hellenistic city. Traces of Minoan, Geometric, and
archaic occupation of the site have been found, but the
most extensive settlement and most of the visible remains belong to the 5th to the 3d c. B.C. An inscription
from the site, assigned to the late 4th c. B.C., carries the
implication that the city was at that time an independent
state.
The city was situated on a small hill and the E slopes
below it and, to judge from surviving house and terrace
walls, covered an area of about 1.5 hectares. The defenses of the city are still clearly visible on the N side,
where a massive wall 3 m thick runs straight for over
100 m. From it project two semicircular towers, each
about 6 m in diameter and 40 m apart. At the W end of
the wall is another circular tower, twice the size of the
central towers, while the E corner tower is rectangular
in shape and of a different build.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
M. Guarducci,
ICr II (1939) 310f; E.
Kirsten, in F. Matz,
Forschungen auf Kreta 1942 (1951)
124-26; M.S.F. Hood & P. Warren, “Ancient Sites in the
Province of Ayios Vasilios, Crete,”
BSA 61 (1964)
173-74.
K. BRANIGAN
