MASONRY STYLES AND BUILDING PROGRAMS AT PYLOS

Michael C. Nelson

The Minnesota Pylos Project created the first stone-by-stone, measured state plans and elevations of the extant remains of the Late Bronze Age palace at Pylos. A significant contribution to Mycenaean architecture is the wealth of documented building practices provided by the new plans. For example, they detail four distinct styles of cut stone masonry: an early form constructed with small, rectangular blocks; orthostate construction; ashlar masonry typical of the Bronze Age with an exterior face of coursed ashlar blocks and an interior face of rubble; and ashlar shell wall construction, which consists of an exterior and interior face of coursed blocks and an inner core of rubble and mud.

Two of these masonry styles are unusual because there are few, if any, mainland parallels. The orthostate construction at the palace, built with an exterior face of upright, squared slabs and an interior backing of rubble, can only be compared with two worked slabs at Tiryns. These slabs probably came from an orthostate-constructed wall but they were re-used in a later rubble wall. Ashlar shell wall construction has no mainland equivalents.

Looking to Crete, however, these two masonry styles were used in the construction of Minoan buildings, mainly palatial or monumental structures. For instance, the palace at Knossos preserves orthostate façades and ashlar shell walls. Other signs of Minoan influence at Pylos include a mason's mark, a magazine with narrow rooms lined with pithoi, and a possible light well.

The new state plans also help to interpret the early building programs at Pylos and these are related directly to masonry styles. Early in the Late Bronze Age, perhaps in the Late Helladic II period, a very large building existed on the southwestern edge of the hilltop with orthostate façades. In the next phase, three new buildings replaced the previous orthostate building. These all had façades of a newly introduced type of masonry, the ashlar style. Finally, in the last remodeling of the palace buildings, near the end of the Bronze Age in the Late Helladic IIIB period, cut stone masonry became a building method of the past and the builders developed, instead, a new form of wall construction that employed block fragments in rubble masonry. This is the period when all signs of Minoan influence are absent and at the center of the palatial complex lay the three-room megaron - the hallmark of Mycenaean architecture.