Ancient Itanos

Itanos is a city-harbour located 9km far from Palekastro village, Eastern Crete. The site had an important maritime role as revealed by Herodotus. The author mentions the significance of the city in the Greek colonization of Cyrene in Lybia. The archaeological record shows that the site was occupied from the 10th c. B.C. to the 6th c. AD. No evidence of Bronze Age activity has been found so far, despite the island’s strong role in the Mycenaean and Minoan periods.

Earlier excavations focused on the urban centre of the city, and the University of Brussels has been conducting fieldwork in the North Necropolis since 1996. The recent campaigns in this zone brought to light a densely occupied cemetery dated to the Late Classical and Hellenistic periods (4th–1st c. BC), and early funerary activity, with pits, dated to the Geometric – Orientalizing periods (8th and 7th c. BC). The project funded by the Foundation will concentrate on a partly excavated building in this zone, dated to the late 7th-6th c. B.C., a period when, on current evidence, the cemetery does not appear to have been in use. The material assemblage associated with this architectural complex suggests that it was used for communal feasting. The importance of this structure for the understanding of the social organization and funerary practices in Archaic Crete is vital since it is the only known example of communal activity in a cemetery during a period (the 6th c. B.C.) for which there is a lack of evidence on burial customs or funerary rituals in Crete.

Further excavation of the building and surrounding area is needed to complete the plan of the architectural complex and to better understand its function and the nature of the surrounding structures, unearthed during the 2011 and 2012 campaigns. The study of the material yielded by the on-going excavations will shed further light on both the activities performed in this area and on the social identity of the group that met and commemorated in this place.

Itanos flourished in the historic Greek and Roman period. It was established in the Prehellenic period. Itanos became powerful and wealthy from conducting trade with Syria, Palestine and Libya. The city had its own coins and buildings covered with marble.

The temple of Dictaian Zeus at Palekastro belonged administratively to the city of Itanos and that was the reason of the constant wars between Itanos and two other cities, Pressos and Ierapytna, that wanted to take the temple under their rule. The city was inhabited until the 15th century AD when the pirates forced the inhabitants to move to the hinterland of Crete.

For the past 7 years, a coalition of European researchers has been studying the archaeological site of Itanos from various archaeological, environmental and geophysical aspects. The project, supervised by the Institute of Mediterranean Studies, the French School of Archaeology and the Technical University of Crete, has integrated a number of surveying techniques for accessing the archaeological and environmental parameters of the wider archaeological region.

Ancient Itanos area

1. East Acropolis,

2. Western Acropolis,

3. Basilica A,

4. Basilica B,

5. Living Area,

6. Necropolis.

The Necropolis - Cemetery

A. Tsingarida and D. Viviers (Belgian School/ULB) report on the first season of a new five-year project focused on completion of work in the North Cemetery, conservation work towards the public presentation of the site, and documentation of the plan and function of so-called ‘Archaic building’ in order to understand its nature and importance for sixth-century Crete.

Graves and multiple, successive structures revealed in the North Cemetery present a very different picture from the single, large funerary monument restored on the basis of earlier excavations. The area is organized in two parts around a north-south path. To the east lies a densely packed Late Classical-Late Hellenistic cemetery, and to the west several structures including the Archaic building (which dates to the Archaic and Early Classical periods).

An Early Roman wall built on a backfill layer covering the north-south path acted as a terrace and retaining wall, at a time when the cemetery was slowly being abandoned and the area used for cultivation. This wall was also found at the southern limit of the excavated area of the Archaic building, continuing south above the path. The bottom course of another wall was also found here.

Excavation at the west side of the main room of the Archaic building completed the plan of this area. The bedrock was cut away outside the room for the construction of its west wall, and to form a level floor surface covered with small pebbles (perhaps a yard). A stone threshold indicates that the corridor originally led to an open or semi-open area on its west side: this door was later closed. The main room has a centrally placed hearth: a destruction layer within the room contained patches of reddish clay from collapsed mud-brick walls. The scarce material from this layer includes shells and stone implements of as yet undefined function. No faunal remains were found. In the south-west corner of this excavation area lay a wall of medium-sized rubble, earlier than, and very different in character to, the walls of the Archaic building. This was cut by the construction of the west wall of the main (hearth) room.

The Archaic building had three successive occupation phases. The earliest was Archaic, but earlier than hitherto believed. The only structural elements preserved are the wall partly destroyed by the west wall of the main room, and the first phase of north wall of the Archaic building, which extends further to the west (where it acted as a terrace wall).

The second and main Archaic phase (late seventh to early fifth-century) consists of the main (hearth) room and a corridor (pastas) that opens to the west. Finally, during the Classical period the doorway of the pastas towards the west was sealed, and a basin and an altar placed inside the corridor.