A Reassessment of Mackenzieʹs Second and Third Cities at Phylakopi

PHYLAKOPI was first excavated by the British School at Athens from i8g6 to 1899 under the successive directorships of Cecil Smith and David Hogarth, and the direct supervision of Duncan Mackenzie. The results of these excavations were published in 1904 as Excavations at Phylakopi in Melos (Atkinson et al. 1904) (FIG. 1). The final chapter of Excavations at Phylakopi was a synthetic piece written by Mackenzie, in which he provided a description of the siteʹs stratigraphy and suggested some cultural and historical contexts for its interpretation. Mackenzie saw the settlement at Phylakopi as comprising three successive ʹCitiesʹ, preceded by evidence of ʹpre-Cityʹ occupation. Each ʹCityʹ constituted a discrete architectural period, terminated by a site-wide destruction leading to its abandonment, followed by wholesale rebuilding, except in the case of the final ʹCityʹ, when the abandonment was permanent. Mackenzie termed these cities ʹFirst Cityʹ, ʹSecond Cityʹ and ʹThird Cityʹ, and they are now considered broadly equivalent to Early Cycladic III, Middle Cycladic, and Late Cycladic periods of occupation (Barber 1987, 23 fig. 24; Warren and Hankey 1989, 41 table 2. 3, 55 table 2. 5, 71 table 2. 6), though the exact dating is open to refinement.