Editing Linear B (section)

==== Controversy on the date of the Knossos tablets ====
The [[Knossos]] archive was dated by [[Arthur Evans]] to the destruction by conflagration of about 1400 BC, which would have baked and preserved the clay tablets. He dated this event to the LM II period. This view stood until [[Carl Blegen]] excavated the site of ancient [[Pylos]] in 1939 and uncovered tablets inscribed in Linear B. They were fired in the conflagration that destroyed Pylos about 1200 BC, at the end of LHIIIB. With the decipherment of Linear B by [[Michael Ventris]] in 1952,<ref>{{cite book|last=Salomon|first=Marilyn J.|title=Great Cities of the World 3: Next Stop... Athens|publisher=The Symphonette Press|year=1974|page=15}}</ref> serious questions about Evans's date began to be considered. Most notably, Blegen said that the inscribed stirrup jars, which are oil flasks with stirrup-shaped handles imported from Crete around 1200, were of the same type as those dated by Evans to the destruction of 1400. Blegen found a number of similarities between 1200 BC Pylos and 1400 BC Knossos and suggested the Knossian evidence be reexamined, as he was sure of the 1200 Pylian date.

The examination uncovered a number of difficulties. The Knossos tablets had been found at various locations in the palace. Evans had not kept exact records. Recourse was had to the day books of Evans's assistant, [[Duncan Mackenzie]], who had conducted the day-to-day excavations. There were discrepancies between the notes in the day books and Evans's excavation reports. Moreover, the two men had disagreed over the location and strata of the tablets. The results of the reinvestigation were eventually published by Palmer and Boardman, ''On the Knossos Tablets''.<ref>{{cite book|first1=L.R.|last1=Palmer|first2=John|last2=Boardman|title=On the Knossos Tablets|location=Oxford|year=1963|publisher=Clarendon Press}}</ref> It contains two works, [[Leonard Robert Palmer]]'s ''The Find-Places of the Knossos Tablets'' and John Boardman's ''The Date of the Knossos Tablets,'' representing Blegen's and Evans's views respectively. Consequently, the dispute was known for a time as "the Palmer–Boardman dispute". There has been no generally accepted resolution to it yet.