Linear A is, above all, a Cretan script. It turns up at the great Minoan palaces and the towns around them — and, more surprisingly, at remote sanctuaries on mountain peaks and in sacred caves.
The map of findspots tells a story on its own. The same writing system was used to keep the palace books and to inscribe objects left at a shrine. One script, two very different worlds: the storeroom and the summit.
Most Linear A documents come from administrative settings — the palaces and the settlements clustered around them. Five sites dominate: Haghia Triada, by far the richest source of tablets; Khania in the west; and the palaces of Knossos, Phaistos, and Zakros. Smaller towns and villas — places like Mallia, Arkhanes, and Tylissos — show that the script was used well beyond the largest palaces.
A palatial administrative centre in the Messara plain of south-central Crete — and the single richest source of Linear A tablets anywhere. Most of what we know about Minoan bookkeeping comes from here.
In western Crete, on the site of the ancient city of Kydonia. The second-largest body of Linear A documents, recovered in modern excavations beneath the present-day town. Proof that the administration reached across the island.
A major palace near Haghia Triada, and the find-spot of the famous Phaistos Disc (which may not be Linear A at all). Administrative clay documents come from its palatial rooms.
The easternmost Minoan palace, on the far east coast. Its archive was sealed by the destruction that ended the Neopalatial period around 1450 BCE.
The largest and best-known Minoan palace. Knossos is more famous for the later Greek script, Linear B, but Linear A survives here from the earlier period.
Mallia, on the north coast, plus villa sites such as Arkhanes and Tylissos. Modest finds, but they show Linear A in everyday use outside the great palaces.
Away from the palaces, Linear A appears at religious sites — high peak sanctuaries and sacred caves. Here the inscriptions are not account-keeping but dedications, often cut into stone vessels left as offerings. Several of these places carry a repeated opening sequence that reads like a formula. Mount Iuktas (Juktas), above the Knossos valley, is among the best known; others include Petsofas in the east, the cave at Psychro (the Diktaian Cave), and sanctuaries at Kato Syme, Kophinas, and Apodoulou.
A peak sanctuary on the mountain rising above the Knossos region — one of the most important Minoan high shrines, and a source of inscribed dedicatory objects.
A peak sanctuary in far eastern Crete, near Palaikastro. A long-used cult place, with finds that include Linear A inscriptions.
A sacred cave high in the Lasithi mountains, long identified as a major Minoan cult site, where inscribed offerings have come to light.
A mountain sanctuary in south-central Crete with a remarkably long history of cult activity, and ritual inscriptions among its finds.
A peak sanctuary in the Asterousia mountains of southern Crete — one of the high places where dedicatory inscriptions appear.
A site in the hills of central-western Crete that has yielded inscribed material from a non-palatial, ritual context.
What ties these places together is the writing itself. The scribes who tallied oil and grain at Haghia Triada used the same signs as whoever inscribed an offering on a peak above Knossos. A script born for accounting also served the shrine — and the fact that the sacred formula repeats from one sanctuary to the next, far apart, tells us the practice was shared across the island.
We can sound out the signs at both kinds of site. What the offerings actually say, we still cannot read.