This archaeobotanical dataset from the Little Palace North (LPN) project at Knossos (Crete, Greece) includes sixteen samples dated to the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods. The samples were recovered during the 2001-2002 excavations by flotation. The dataset includes 594 archaeobotanical items: cereal grains and chaff, pulses, fruit and nut remains and wild seeds. Most plant macroremains were charred but a few mineralised/calcified remains were also present, all of them being fruits and possibly nuts. The overall preservation of the assemblage was average while olives exhibited a high degree of fragmentation with only 8 olives found whole and the remaining 236 across the whole assemblage represent the minimum number of individual. The dataset is particularly important as it provides much needed new data on some of the least well represented chronological periods across the Aegean. It is also the first dataset on Classical archaeobotanical remains in Crete.
This archaeobotanical dataset derives from the analyses of the archaeobotanical remains collected from 3 Archaic, seven Classical and six Hellenistic dated soil samples, recovered from the 2021-2022 excavations during the Little Palace North (LPN) project. The excavations were directed by Dr Mieke Prent and Dr Stuart Thorne under the overall direction of Dr Eleni Hatzaki, then curator of the British School at Knossos, under eth auspices of the British School at Athens. The Archaic samples derive from leveling and paving activities, the Classical ones from the floors of a house and a pit, and the Hellenistic samples from terracing fills, the disuse phase of a well and the soil inside a pithos.