Mycenaean pu-te-ri-ja and the ki-ti-me-na / ke-ke-me-na Pair

The two words ki-ti-me-na and ke-ke-me-na, which in the linear B land register from Pylos designate two kinds of land, have given rise to various interpretations. Some people think they had the opposite meanings of “private” and “public.” Others see them as technical terms indicating the use of the land, “tilled” and “fallow.” Others have put forward the suggestion that they were a pair of technical legal terms, relating to notions of “settlement.” This paper seeks to provide evidence in support of the last hypothesis. To this end the Uf(3) land registers from Knossos are analyzed, where ke-ke-me-na alternates with the term pu-te-ri-ja. In particular, it is argued that the probable meaning of pu-te-ri-ja is “land of cultivation,” a notion which seems to support the hypothesis that the opposition between ki-ti-me-na and ke-ke-me-na was a legal one, relating to the notion of “settlement.”