ISSN 1233-6246 Mycenaeans at Malia? JAN DRIESSEN and ALEXANDRE FARNOUX Invasion or Aceulturation?l The identification of ethnie affiliation through the archaeological record is a hazardous enterprise which is seldom rewarded with suceess; only when an ethnie group with an entirely different material assemblage can resist intcgration outside its homeland because of its status and/or power in relation to the indigen- ous population, some information cau he gained. In generaI, however, newcomers adopt local customs J The excavatioDS in Quartier Nu were carried out under the auspices of the French Schoo1 of Archaeology at Athens and have benefited dearly from the c:ooperation of the ephoreia of H. NikoJaos (K. Davaras, M. Tsipopoulou, V. Apostolakou). During the 6 cam- paians, O. Stavroulakis, the foreman, was in charge of a force of 10 men from Vrakhasi and the work ofM. Chalkiadakis and O. Meta- xaralds, just to mention those who accomplished the molt difficult tasks, ia espeda11y remembered here. Bxcept Cor the authors, the followilll look part in the field and apothiki activities: J. Toumavitou (1988-1993), I. Schoep (1990-1993), O.-J. Van Wijngaarde (1991- 1992), S.A. MacGillivray (1991-1992), S. Müller (1988), R. Roche (1989), A. Wittmann (1989), M. Serano (1989), P. Cosyns (1990), V.Oeorgaka (1990), T. Poulou (1992), B. WolC (1992), 8. Fourier (lM), D. Mylona (1993), 8.8oeteos (1993), A. Brysbaert (1993), A. Aertssen (1993), and for the conservation: A. Vinçotte (1989-1990), B. BeDe (1989), O. Nikakis (1989), C. Orailhon (1990-1991), J.S. Kim (1991), J. de Laureyos (1992), A. Moiron (1992), C. Bonnot (1993), A. Teytaz (1993) and K. Vittorakis (1992-1993). N. SigaJas (1988- 1991) and L. Bemini (1992) were responsible Cor most oC the drawings, whereas P. Collet made most of the object photographs. M. Schmid made the architectural plans in 1988-1989 and gave much valuable advicc 10 one of the authors who continued the planning. S.A. Mac- Oillivray took the photographs of the mosaic-Ooor. The aerial photo- graphs were made by the team of Prof. 1. 8andekas of the Polytechnic Institute in Athens. We thank the previous and present directors of the French SchooJ, O. Picard and R. Btienne, for their continuous support and our visitors, espedally J.-C. Poursat, P. Day, K. Nowicki, C.F. Macdonald, R. Treuil and B. Hallager for their adm. - to a eertain degree and this habit inereases the more attractive the local culture is. For Bronze Age Crete, a major historical question coneems the date, circumstanees and nature of the arrival of Myeenaean Greeks on this Minoan island. Each of these issues causes a long series of sub-ques- tions and implications which have not been tackled properly, but aU funnel down to the basic issue whether or not archaeologic81 data cau he used suc- cessfully to identify, firstly, the moment of arrival of the Mycenaeans, and secondly, the nature of their presence. Although undeciphered, we know from Lin- ear A sources that Crete was non-Greek. Le. Minoan, until at least the end of LM lB, well into the 15th century. With the discovery of weU-dated tablets at Chania, written by a scribe who we already knew from Knossos2 - identification accepted by the authors -, the date of one of the last destructions of the palace at Knossos il, after 30 years of quarrelling, fmely solved: the (presumably) last tablets were written in LM lIIB1, around 1250 BC, and now discussion may concentrate on the date of the individual deposits of Knossos, sinee, as one of us bas argued elsewhere, we feel that the so-called "unit y of archives" is a fallacy. 3 This implies, frrstly, that around 1250 BC at least two major Cretan sites, Knossos and Chania, kept records of ongoing economic activities in Linear B Greek, and secondly, that Chania, although dependent on Knossos, 2 J.-P. OLIVIER, KN IIS ... KU ilS. Un même scribe à Knossos ./ et à la Canée au MR IIIB: du soupçon à la certitude, BCH 117 (1993), 19-33. 3 Sec J. DRIESSEN, Le palais de Cnossos au MR II-III: Com- bien de destructions? in J. DRIESSEN. &; A. FARNOUX (cds), La Crète mycénienne, Actes de la table ronde tenue à Athenes en mars 1991 (BCH Suppl.) (in press).