No less diverse were the places where the Minoans worshipped. We saw earlier, in Chapter 3, that widespread and elaborate cult practices centred on the peak and cave sanctuaries. The Minoans also had rural sanctuaries in open sites that were unconnected with peaks or caves. The archaeological evidence for these sacred enclosures is slight, but Bogdan Rutkowski (1986) argues that the images carved on sealstones and rings are sufficient proof that they existed. The images show vegetation in the foreground and background, and sometimes rocks too, but there is little evidence of a more precise location. Occasionally we may be able to identify a palm, fig, or olive tree, but even this is not enough to limit the location to a particular ecological zone; oak trees, for instance, can be found from 680 metres down to sea-level.
The minor sacred sites may have been fairly informal in layout, precincts hallowed by some long past and barely remembered appearance of a deity, but not separated off from the rest of the landscape in any visible way. Sometimes, we may imagine, boundary stones or small cairns were used to mark the edge of the precinct, or a rough, low drystone wall. The more important sacred precincts were probably bounded by more substantial walls: the Gypsades Rhyton seems to show one of these. The sacred tree cult mentioned earlier led to the building of enclosure walls round individual trees or groups of trees thought to have been visited by deities. Several seal impressions and rings show a high wall with a double cornice surmounted by sacral horns, or a high fence surrounding a tree.
Within the enclosure, which may have been quite small, there were sometimes cult buildings, sometimes not. A clay model from Arkhanes, and dating from the very end of the Minoan civilization, shows the sort of modest shrine that may have been erected in a sacred enclosure: an oval hut with a conical roof, entrance doors and a cult idol inside. These were lightly built and have not survived well in the archaeological record; nevertheless, the remains of cult houses measuring about 4 metres across have been found at Gazi, Kefala (in the Pediados district), Plai tou Kastrou near Kavousi, and at Pachlitsani Agriada. Some of the sacred enclosures may have had much more elaborate structures like the tripartite shrines at Juktas and in the Knossos Labyrinth.
As well as cult buildings, the sacred enclosure may have contained altars of various shapes, as shown on the Gypsades Rhyton, and decorated with plaster and paint, as shown on the Agia Triadha sarcophagus. There were probably also sacrificial tables and statues of deities, like the clay goddess found at the sacred enclosure of Sachturia.
Here, as in the temples, priestesses danced. The iconography necessarily shows rather small numbers of dancers; generally the seals and rings only allow space for three or four figures, but we should assume that we are being shown only the nucleus of a larger religious ceremony. The dancers appear to whirl energetically about with their hands on their hips, flung wildly out into the air, or waving high above their heads. A gold ring from Kalyvia shows a naked woman pulling down a bough of the sacred tree and another worshipping at a boulder. Another image shows a priestess beside an altar, summoning a deity by blowing a triton shell (title illustration, Chapter 2). Each image shows just one key event in what was evidently a complex series of rituals. We are never shown a complete ceremony. The frescoes allow more scope, but even they show little more than one event at a time. What the Sacred Grove and Dance Fresco does show us, though, is that large numbers of dancers and spectators were involved in the ceremonies.
Occasionally we are shown men dancing. The Gypsades Rhyton seems to show two men involved in a line dance of some kind, whereas the clay model from Kamilari shows four naked men in a ring dance within a circle of sacral horns: the rim of the model appears to represent the boundary of the sacred enclosure.