Itanos - 2025

Crete - Itanos. Athena Tsingarida (Université libre de Bruxelles) and Didier Viviers (Université libre de Bruxelles) report on the fourth campaign of the five-year excavation programme at Itanos in east Crete, which focused on four sectors of the necropolis.

Excavations were conducted in four large sectors previously investigated during earlier campaigns.

At the foot of the hill, in the first sector [Z], excavations dated the initial destruction of the city wall to around 300 BC. This indicates that the fortification had already been constructed during the Classical period, before the arrival of the Ptolemies, thus challenging the widely accepted view that the earliest city wall around Itanos was built by them.

In the second sector [E] (Fig. 1), excavations focused on the large architectural complex west of the main pathway through the necropolis. The walled courtyard north of the complex was excavated over more than 75m². Successive construction phases of the enclosure walls corresponded to successive fill layers, indicating repeated development and restoration from its initial construction at the turn of the 7th and 6th centuries BC until the Roman period, when it appears to have been abandoned. A partial reconstruction of a portico along the south side of the courtyard was also possible. It consisted of a wooden colonnade with intervals of approximately two metres between the columns and seems to have been destroyed during the Classical period. Excavations at the south-western corner of the complex revealed an further extension to the west. A large room replicated the layout of Room F in the northern part of the complex, where an earlier Geometric or Orientalising tomb had been converted into a cenotaph. Another partially excavated room to the south suggests the presence of a central hearth. Several trenches were also opened both inside and outside the building to investigate the course of the eastern façade. A doorway identified south of this second Archaic unit remained in use until the Classical period, when a new entrance was opened further away. Excavations in the pathway revealed a heavily disturbed context, probably caused by the abandonment of the street during the Hellenistic period. Nevertheless, two traffic levels were identified, corresponding to two phases of street use likely linked to the two principal phases of occupation of the complex.

In the third sector [Γ] (Fig. 2), where three new subsectors were opened in the northern part of the area to explore what seems to be the northern limit of this group of tombs. Apart from traces of unsuccessful looting, excavations revealed an intact tomb [9422] containing a female burial oriented west–east. The grave had been cut into the bedrock and featured two reserved “benches” along its long sides. A second tomb [9429] of the same type, although almost entirely looted, was discovered west of Monument 2 and followed the southwest–northeast orientation characteristic of most graves dating to the Hellenistic and early Roman periods in the necropolis.

In the fourth sector (zones A and B) at the top of the necropolis hill, the focus was on several burial structures. A group of tombs (tumuli and enchytrismoi) dating to the late 8th century BC and the first half of the 7th century BC strongly suggests that this was the earliest occupied area of the necropolis. A series of pits associated with certain tumuli was also identified, one of which had been used for primary cremation and contained burnt human bones and grave goods, including perfume vases, dated to the early 7th century BC. Excavations also uncovered a carefully levelled tumulus, on whose surface several foundations for sèmata attested to funerary monuments later destroyed. Evidence indicates that ritual practices continued there through the use of two hearths located to the north. In addition, one of the burial mounds, later converted into an open-air cult space, was reused at the end of the 4th or beginning of the 3rd century BC for the burial of a particularly robust man in his fifties.