Karphi Revisited Excavation Project: Exploring a Post-Crisis City

Social resilience and change through crisis in the ancient world

Exploring the mountaintops

Google Earth overflight image - Karphi location

This website introduces and documents the history of a research and public engagement project by an international archaeological research team, sponsored and supported by leading academic institutions. The project uses permissions from the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sport and operates and publishes in archaeology's international peer-reviewed academic and professional environment. This is centred at the ancient town of Karphi, Lasithi, Crete. The site was first excavated in 1937-9 and was excavated again in 2008, with results published in 2012, then in full in 2020, by the present research team director, Saro Wallace.

This independently hosted website authored by the project co-directors presents the background of work at the site and the potential for future discoveries.

We warmly invite your interest and participation in our work.

Introduction: a research project looking to engage local people

Our research project at the ancient settlement site of Karphi, dating 1200-1000 BC, with earlier and later periods of use, was welcomed to the region by the Demos of the Oropedio Lasithiou (Lasithi Plain) in 2008-12; 2018, and again in 2023-4 after an interlude in which local politics variously instrumentalised the interest of external public bodies in the region's heritage, with some negative effects on our work. We have documented these developments within the website. Finding them to be of interest to anthropology and heritage research, we intend to reflect on them in future publications on the latter themes. In 2022, we also met with staff of the Cultural Division of the Demos of Chersonisos to introduce our project to them, since the site lies on a border zone between the two administrative regions and administrative responsibility has recently been partly shifted in ways which enable our project. There has recently been increased local interest in our work, following extensive outreach and focus group work undertaken in 2021-22, including in local schools, and a talk given by Krzysztof Nowicki at the invitation of the Demos in 2024. We continue to welcome and stimulate local interest and involvement through a variety of activities including picnics and dinners hosted by members of the community for our research team, and tours and talks about the site offered to local groups throughout our excavation seasons and beyond.

Our research project collaborates with the British School at Athens (2008-20; 2021-22 and previously), the Polish Institute of Archaeology at Athens (2023-2028) and the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sport's Archaeological Service (from 2022, the Ephorate of Antiquities of Heraklion, from 2008-2021 the Ephorate of Antiquities of Lasithi) to recruit and reach out to students, volunteers, site visitors and locally-based site workers in excavation and conservation. Students and staff involved in our project come from universities all over the world including Greece (Athens, Crete, Komotini, Ioannina) the UK (Bristol, Durham, Oxford, Bournemouth), Poland (Gdansk, Warsaw, Poznan), France (Paris-Sorbonne), Italy (Bologna). We welcome volunteer involvement and run an annual field training school in archaeology and heritage techniques. Via the connection of the site to John Pendlebury, a Winchester college alumnus and war hero killed in the Battle of Crete (1941) we have a relationship with the Classics graduates of Winchester College, UK, which supplies us with regular interested participants going on to study Archaeology at UK universities.

The co-directors of the research are Dr Saro Wallace, UK (Senior Research Fellow of the Gerda Henkel Foundation, Germany 2021-24) and Professor Krzysztof Nowicki, Poland (State Professor of the Academy of Sciences Warsaw. A 5-year research program was applied for and granted in 2023. Both research at the site generally, and our involvement in research there have a long history, with many different sponsors and funders. We and other scholars have extensively published and presented aspects of evidence from the site and its finds (currently stored in the Museum of Heraklion) in peer-reviewed publications and lectures since the 1990s, building on the publication of reports on the first excavations at the site in 1938 and 1960.

John Pendlebury's finds from Karphi, including bronze and iron objects and the striking clay goddess figurines, are currently displayed in the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion...

These stands and tubes were probably used to support vessel lamps and/or vessels containing liquid offerings in cult settings, and are also known from settlements contemporary with Karphi which have been excavated more recently. They form part of a new 'town cult' set of cultural materials and behaviours appearing across Crete post-1200 BC.

Krasi village on the northern flanks of the Lasithi mountains: Karphi peak above and to the right

A rich cultural landscape...

Survey work in the north Lasithi region during the last thirty years by scholars including John Pendlebury, L.Vance Watrous, Krzysztof Nowicki and Saro Wallace has revealed a dense network of contemporary settlements founded in the foothills and mountains during the crisis at the end of the late Bronze Age. The dominant use of the landscape for grazing today makes these ancient remains (walls and potsherds) clearly visible. On the right, above, is the striking Karphi peak viewed from the foothills to the north. The landmark provided an ideal setting for a Middle Bronze Age open-air 'peak' sanctuary, which we are researching parts of in our current project, as well as the focus of the later defended settlement. The settlement spread over the saddle between Karphi peak and that of Mikri Koprana (visible here to its left), as well as to the summit of Megali Koprana on the south, covering about 3 hectares in total (estimate form surface survey).

Why was the Karphi settlement founded and who lived there?

Late Bronze Age Aegean state systems based at the town centres of regional kingdoms, such as Knossos, Mycenae, Tiryns and Athens, collapsed at c. 1200 BC. What systems replaced them, and how did new ways of organising communities foreshadow the emergence of the Greek polis state? Investigating and contextualising individual swelling practices and spaces for community activities and institutions across the whole large Karphi site (not just the saddle excavated by Pendlebury) is one of our main research objectives, enabling this question to be answered. We can note that the foundation of Karphi and other peaktop sites at this period shows concern with security, the need for coherent action at a time of social fragmentation, and the willingness to address significant economic challenges including year-round living in a rugged landscape c. 1140m above sea level.

Getting to Karphi

The protected archaeological zones around the settlement and its cemeteries prevent the bulldozing of a modern road. which would be likely not only to damage the archaeological remains but also to affect the tranquillity and enjoyment of the site and its role as a wildlife habitat by encouraging large-scale visiting. The lack of a road restricts access to people willing to make the steep 20-minute walk to the peaks from the Nisimo plain, near the village of Tzermiado, or from the 'Homo Sapiens' park near the village of Kera. There are other walk routes in, and we aim as part of our research to produce informative trail guides to highlight those routes and explain the archaeological heritage of the wider area for a range of visitors and locals arriving by foot or on horseback.

A spectacular heritage landscape

Cult cave in the mountains

The Middle Bronze Age to Classical cult cave of Psychro (the 'Dictaean Cave') lies in the mountains south across the Lasithi plain from Karphi (seen here with Megali Koprana in the foreground.

Contemporary settlements

Understanding of contemporary unexcavated sites in the north Lasithi area has been developed through the project's survey and ceramic petrography components. This is the site of Kastello, above and to the south of Krasi in the north Lasithi foothills. It is a large settlement founded contemporarily with Karphi which continued in use beyond Karphi's abandonment, likely as a satellite of an emerging polis settlement at Papoura. Papoura lies below Karphi and directly on the pass into the Lasithi plain.

Natural defence at altitude

There is a clustering of sites in this area following the collapse of state systems across the Aegean at c. 1200 BC. The Lasithi plain provides a protected, extensive agricultural zone behind a wall of mountains offering great vantage points over coastlands and foothills in all directions, with well-guarded passes. This is Siderokefala, guarding the main valley entrance to the north of the plain (Selli/Ambelos).