Excavation ran for 5 weeks and 2 days, involving a team of 20 individuals (including 4 senior staff). The areas targeted were Area B, immediately east of the 1930s excavations and located on the south slopes of the Mikri Koprana peak; Area A, located immediately NW of a large natural doline c. 100m S of and below Mikri Koprana summit and 120m N of and below Megali Koprana summit, and Area MG1, the N summit of the Megali Koprana peak. (Fig. 1). The site was approached consistently from the Nisimos plain on the SE, where the condition of the track is deteriorating and requires leaving the vehicles (hire cars) at increasing distances from the foot of the mountain track: other routes from the west would require use of expensive all-terrain vehicles and still leave a similar amount of track to be negotiated solely on foot. The excavation team resided in the Lasithi plateau to the south, with the nearest accessible accommodation now being located in the plain half an hour's drive from the base of the driveable track.

All areas were planned at 1:50 on a previously prepared topographical plan before excavation. All areas were hand-excavated. Considerable difficulties were encountered in the work (especially in the heatwave of 40+ degree Celsius temperatures which swept the Aegean in July), considering the lack of paved road access to the site across the Nisimos plain, the absence of available skilled or unskilled labouring assistance locally due to access and accommodation limitations, the half-hour climb for researchers and students to the summits up steep goat paths, and prior to this ascent the 5km driving distance to Nisimos prior from the nearest villages up a poorly-made and twisting, steep road/track. As a result of these access limitations human or mule transport (the latter increasingly unavailable) are relied on to bring excavation and conservation equipment to the site and to bring finds and samples down. The inaccessibility preserves Karphi's natural beauty and ecosystems, as well as preventing damage to the ancient tombs scattered down the mountain slopes, but limits numbers of visitors. Public interest can rewardingly be engaged in other ways, which the groundwork for our project has helped to develop as documented in our 2022 application and report.

For maximal efficiency, speed and research benefit in these conditions we used open-area excavation, strategically placing trenches of various sizes to evaluate the relatively simple stratigraphy at this site. For highest resolution, we used single-context recording within this framework, with each new stratigraphic context identified, registered, planned at 1:20 and photographed, including via aerial drone, before excavation. Individual context record sheets were completed with data for all contexts and digitised shortly afterwards to form part of the digital archive including plans, photographs and section drawings. 20% of each stratigraphic context except topsoil and stone tumble was sampled and floated to retrieve archaeobotanical remains. Using equipment borrowed from the University of Oxford, most soil samples, carried laboriously down from the site by team members, were able to be water-floated by those team members at the field base. Floated carbonised material ('flot'), residues and unfloated soil were taken to the Institute for Aegean Prehistory Study Center for East Crete for processing during the study season. All finds were initially taken to the Biomechaniki Apothiki (store) of the archaeological authority of Heraklion, EFAHRA, as the permit required. A first conservation and study season, including stabilisation and cleaning of metal finds, necessitated applying for a further permit for the costly transport of these finds by registered movers to the INSTAP Study Center for east Crete (INSTAP-SCEC) in October 2023. The Center offers the best facility in the island for this type of study and our project is highly privileged to obtain the services of its staff in situ. Regarding architectural conservation, cleaning and consolidation of wall tops and some wall faces was initiated on site using a mortar developed and approved by conservation consultant Dr Stephania Chlouveraki on behalf of INSTAP-SCEC in 2008. Further consolidation work will be done at the beginning of the 2024 season.

Staff

Dr S. Wallace and Professor K. Nowicki co-directed, with the assistance of Dr Ina Berg (University of Manchester) and Ms Effimia Angeli (University of Lublin) as temporary supervisors in Area A. Other students and graduates assisting across all areas came from the Universities of Warsaw, Gdansk, Poznan, Sheffield, Cambridge, Durham, Bristol and Canterbury Christ Church. Assistance and training on flotation was provided by Ms C. Henkel and archaeobotanical remains are being studied by Ms Henkel in collaboration with Dr E. Margaritis (Cyprus Institute) and Dr M. Ntinou, University of Thessaloniki (dendrology). Zooarchaeological remains are being studied by Dr D. Mylona (INSTAP-SCEC). Preliminary reports on selected organic data have already been obtained (with results incorporated in this report) and discussions held in person with Ms Henkel and Dr Mylona during the study season. S. Wallace and K. Nowicki drew and inked all plans, sections and artefact drawings and took all photographs, this work commencing during the excavation season and continuing through winter 2023-24: some initial illustrations of finds appear here. Conservators Ms K. Hall, INSTAP-SCEC (metals) and Ms Matina Tzari, SCEC (ceramics) were responsible for artefact conservation and advice; Dr Stephania Choluveraki (TEI Athens) continued to advise on building conservation. Mr Douglas Faulmann (INSTAP-SCEC) provided expert assistance with artefact illustration.

Approximately $55000 were spent on the project this year (cash and in-kind) in the following categories: participant external travel, transportation, accommodation, and subsistence; equipment and consumables; administrative and study resources and time; vehicle hire and fuel; storage and transport of finds and equipment. All participants were salaried/received a research stipend outside the project budget, or were volunteers. Organisations providing and/or channelling resources to support project expenses were the Gerda Henkel Foundation (Germany), Grampus PEATS and the Turing Student Grant Scheme (UK), the Rust Family Foundation (USA), HERITΛGE, formerly the Heritage Management Organization (Greece and USA), the Polish National Center for Science (Poland), and the A.G. Leventis Foundation (Cyprus), alongside private donations. Since local labour, is all but impossible to recruit for the project in a remote and under-populated archaeological region, most participants usually require to be brought in from outside. However, with a collaborative and interested local authority having been recently elected in our study region we look forward to garnering more local community support and involvement than has previously been available, including through our ongoing ethnography-informed engagement programme.

As part of our programme of social and educational outreach related to the project we fulfilled our aim of completing trails leaflets, but were unable in the pre-election period to gain the promised collaboration with the local authority to support presentation of the leaflets to local organisations. However, we area already in conversation with the new, more favourable authority to pursue this in 2024. Rough footage for the documentary film we are currently producing on attitudes to heritage in the region before and after the excavation continued to be edited.Click here and start typing. Explicabo nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit sed.

In 2023, work started in the arduous form of manually breaking (where necessary) and removing large fallen wall stones, up to 1m in length, in the northern half of the building. Topsoil removal followed this in a trench 9.5 x 4m, covering the NW quadrant of the building (03082) and part of the exterior area to the N/NW beyond the N wall (Fig. 2). Topsoil here contained frequent (c. 30%) large stones and 20% medium stones, with less than 1% pottery. The necessity of splitting and rolling many large boulders took a large part of the first two weeks' excavation. Removal of several subsequent layers of large and latterly more fragmented, weathered stones revealed yellow roofing material of the same type we recovered in 2008, and below this the trampled and compacted layers comprising the LM IIIC floor deposits, containing numerous pithos and fineware sherds. Although we had scheduled excavation of the whole structure, moving the massive rockfall, partly within a heatwave, meant we could only achieve excavation to bedrock this year in the large single trench, revealing the NW half of the larger room and producing a N-S section through it, the latter suggesting that a large hearth lies in the southern part, to be excavated in 2024. The features already suggested by the tests were confirmed, including via the discovery of more stand fragments which will enhance the study of function. On and in the abandoned trample floor, animal bones proving regular food consumption in the building for the first time, including sheep, goat and cattle, were recovered, along with more of the outsize pithos (storage jar) found in 2008 and part of an unusually large grinding quern, both pointing to consumption activities at scale (Fig. 28). The design of entry and exit to the building was confirmed for the first time, with the discovery of an entrance doorway in the north wall. However, residues relating to core features of the building including the location of its hearth and the nature of serving and consumption modes and areas remain to be investigated by complete excavation in 2024. The maximum trench depth to bedrock was 0.8m: bedrock in the NW quadrant of the building was revealed to slope sharply downwards in a N-S direction, as well as W-E. The W wall appears founded on bedrock. Cultural material of the same date as that found inside the building was recovered outside the building for the first time, NE of the entrance doorway in lower stone tumble deposits. We continue to hypothesise this building as a specially constructed public building used for dining; complete excavation and study of the finds is needed to establish as far as possible how this function operated. No detailed finds study from A1 was able to be started in the 2023 study season.Click here and start typing. Ipsum quia dolor sit amet consectetur adipisci velit sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt.