Adventures in Fields of Flowers: Research on Contemporary Saffron Cultivation and its Application to the Aegean Bronze Age

Anyone familiar with Minoan art will be aware of the large number of representations of crocuses - on ceramics,, on wall paintings, in faience, perhaps on seastones, and also in Linear B. The exact species of crocus shown has been a hotly debated topic for many years, with most experts favouring either Corcus cartwrightianus or Crocus sativus (see Amigues 1988 for a summary). They are both purple, autumn-flowering plants, the only difference being that the stimas of C. cartwrightianus are about 1 cm. shorter than those of C. sativus (Matthew 1999: 21-22). The DNA of both plants is very similar, and it has been suggested that C. cartwrightianus is perhaps the wild ancestor of the cultivated C. sativus (Frilli Caiola 1999: 32; Matthew 1982: 56). Indeed, today on the island of Santorini, C. cartwrightianus is still gathered for its saffron (Tzachili 1994). However, the debate over which of theses two species was depcited is redundant for the purposes of this paper, as both of them can provide saffron.

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