Two adjacent buildings, apparently each entered separately from the E and sharing an E-W-running party wall, 04021, were extensively explored in Area MG1, on the north summit of Megali Koprana.

The southern building's format as partly uncovered in 2008 echoed the northern building in that the entrance was downslope from the E through a badly preserved E wall, set further to the W than the E wall of the northern structure. Entry was into a large c. 7 x 5m E room with approximately central hearth (partly revealed in the 2008 tests alongside unusual finds like an outsize clay (loom)weight and Minoan stone vase: another part of the latter was found in 2023). This room was found in 2023 to have a central round column base in a square stone setting and a work platform and slab-based jar storage enclosure in its NW corner. A central doorway in its W wall gave way to a smaller western room c. 5 x 2.5m with evidence for storage in pithoi (large coarse storage jars). Most of these, though found fallen on the floor, were most likely originally located in a specially designated zone defined by a floor-level stone border and/or low partition wall made from, or coated, with yellow waterproof clay/soil. A large work platform or low bench ran along the N part of the W wall in this room. It seems that a simple food/vessel storage room with coarse and fine pottery ran almost the whole width of the southern building at its south end (its E wall again being set in from those of the room to its north). This space was entered by stepping up onto a bedrock ledge in the west main room and/or through a badly preserved doorway or hatch in the south wall of the east main room.

There is no evidence that the northern building was connected with the building to its S and the fact that each of the main rooms in these areas had hearths suggests they were independently used, as in the case of the much smaller, simpler Area B buildings. However, as the finds show, the buildings do seem linked by a specially prosperous, 'busy' role within their district and the site. The pottery includes very numerous working vessels of a late type, such as semicoarse, sometimes decorated shallow basins and bucket-like vessels, as well as very numerous kalathoi (likely used as lamps). That occupation of both buildings dates right up to the period c. 1000 BC is shown by the latest vessel profiles of that period: many jars, jugs and amphorae have straighter, collar-like necks than those of the twelfth century BC, with multiple handles now popular (Figs. 21-22; 27). Fine vessels have increasingly pronounced feet: cooking pots are mostly flat-bottomed with decreased use of the tripod form in comparison with the twelfth-century forms. However, the range of fine items such as elaborately decorated pyxides and kraters and stirrup jars of all sizes, and the use of established decorative patterns of the post-crisis period on pithoi and cooking vessels - such as chevron and finger-impressed bands - shows how closely the manufacture and use of pottery was connected to the Late Minoan IIIC tradition (Figs. 24-26).

These last occupation deposits - including residues of decorated wooden objects and structural elements, architectural elements (clay packing and partitions) and artefacts of unfired clay, textile, metal, ceramic and stone - proved to have been excellently preserved, as expected, by an extreme, widespread burnt destruction. This especially applied to plant remains, which were copiously sampled, and animal bone. As in 2008, it was found that the extreme heat had had the effect of blackening bone, carbonising whole beams and planks, semi-vitrifying the large number of whole or restorable pots found fallen on the floor, turning some blocks of masonry partially to lime and preserving large amounts of unfired clay - the latter likely, on the basis of its forms and its ubiquity as recorded in 2023, to have been widely used in the structures as sills/lintels, wall facings and wall packings: it showed up in the destruction layers as compact, blocky red material. A human cranial fragment found in the upper destruction layer of the main room in the northern building may have formed part of the room's furnishing or equipment – perhaps picked up from the nearby cemeteries; reflect a death occurring in the destruction itself, with the body removed later, or be part of a later burial event as discussed above. Excavation in the same area in 2024 should throw light on this question.

The northern building proved to be distinguished by a plan so far unique in the Early Iron Age Aegean. A main 'hall' 9m long gives way to a rear chamber (the latter containing a mud-built or -faced partition running E-W) via two doorways in its W wall. The western part of the small chamber requires complete excavation in 2024. Special features found in the 'hall' included a central square (c. 0.7 x 0.7m x 0.5m) work platform and/or tall column base adjacent to a central ovoid hearth more than 1m in diameter. Adjacent to this area were the remains of a burnt loom preserving its original shape and structure – two to four 'legs' and a top cross-beam. Associated with the loom were more than 40 loomweights in different sets of subtly differentiated size, all weighing less than 60g.

The northern building proved to be distinguished by a plan so far unique in the Early Iron Age Aegean. A main 'hall' 9m long gives way to a rear chamber (the latter containing a mud-built or -faced partition running E-W) via two doorways in its W wall. The western part of the small chamber requires complete excavation in 2024. Special features found in the 'hall' included a central square (c. 0.7 x 0.7m x 0.5m) work platform and/or tall column base adjacent to a central ovoid hearth more than 1m in diameter. Adjacent to this area were the remains of a burnt loom preserving its original shape and structure – two to four 'legs' and a top cross-beam. Associated with the loom were more than 40 loomweights in different sets of subtly differentiated size, all weighing less than 60g.

As expected, expanding the 2008 test area in Area B1 produced a more stratigraphy more complex than seen in other sectors, revealing extensive open-air MM use of the area immediately east of the saddle between Karphi and Mikri Koprana peaks. This underlay heavily burnt and well-preserved rooms of ordinary-sized LM IIIC houses. As in the tests, the 2023 excavations found that floor deposits of LM IIIC date lay almost immediately under topsoil. This was a huge contrast with areas like A1, making the exposure of archaeological deposits and materials much easier, but also indicating their vulnerability: architectural stone tumble in this zone has been almost entirely removed by agriculture, leaving wall foundations only. In 2023 second room exposed to the E of the N-S orientated room excavated in 2008 was found to have a hearth, indicating that in stark contrast to the MG buildings this complex probably represented small single-room houses each having a main room with hearth and adjunct small storerooms or antechambers, paralleling for example the 'Barracks' houses in the 1930s excavations immediately to their west and many other houses at Karphi, as at contemporary village sites like Kavousi Vronda and Monastiraki Chalasmeno in east Crete. However, some hitherto atypical features were represented in the B1 dwellings. One was the nature of the newly discovered hearth in the E room. It was composed of sherds of LM IIIC date, neatly arranged in an ovoid shape and overlain by a clay/mud use surface, just as in the case of other hearths at the site. The decision within the lifetime of the settlement to use this method of hearth construction, unparalleled in contemporary Crete and yet known from the coastal Levant at the same period, is striking. One explanation for it might be the fact that unlike the majority of other residents at Karphi, people building in this area at or after the establishment of the site were faced directly with the extensive remains of what we have now discovered to be a relatively long-lasting - if perhaps periodic - use of the same area in the Middle Bronze Age, during a period in which pottery found in 2023 tells us probably extended between MMIB (starting c. 2000 BC) and the end of MM II, c. 1700 BC: the pottery previously found in 2008 had been largely datable to the MM II period only, c. 1800-1700 BC. The traces of this use were so extensive, including through their burnt nature, as to be unavoidably noticed in daily life, especially given the tendency of LM IIIC houses at Karphi to be founded directly on bedrock, and to have simple earth trample floors on the rock. Immediately under the LM IIIC sherd hearth were found the remains of a hearth constructed and used in the MM II period, contemporary with a surface on which were numerous broken, eroded and trampled MM pots, covered by the c. 1000 BC destruction layer. Remains relating to the earlier presence of people at the site were not only recognised but actively incorporated into the lifestyle of those creating and using the building.

Regarding the MM period, the first find of a hearth in this area confirms our impression from the tests that the whole zone was used at this time for cooking and consumption of food, likely in association with, but clearly separate from, the contemporary peak sanctuary. The latter itself has never been precisely dated: MM pottery chronologies are still poorly studied in this region and the limited recovery and long exposure of the MM remains on the peak, thanks to the lack of attention given to them as LM IIIC material was rapidly removed in the 1930s, exacerbates this difficulty. Stratified and relatively well-preserved material covering a significant part of the MM phase of Cretan prehistory found in this 2023 excavation zone assists us to draw reliable comparisons with other areas to produce a better dating model, and to compare the spans of use of the peak sanctuary and what we assume to be an auxiliary zone (which might have developed and expanded over time) respectively. Understanding the foundation dates of peak sanctuaries in different Cretan regions in relation to the first emergence of palatial polities is important in understanding that emergence as a regionally disruptive phenomenon with a major impact on the first formalisation of political territory in the island. In itself, the nature of the material so far studied points intriguingly to B1's function as an auxiliary area connected to the peak sanctuary's use. This type of site has so far rarely been uncovered and never systematically excavated. While some miniature vessels, typically featuring at peak sanctuaries themselves, were uncovered in B1 in 2008, we found none in the 2023 exposures, while we did continue to find medium-sized decorated jars and jugs. MM archaeobotanical material from the new excavations included whole grape, including skins and stem, which suggests discarded wine lees from such a jar: burning would seem less likely in the case of whole fresh fruit or raisins. We also recovered numerous small fine drinking cups, and cooking pots (Fig. 29). Vessel remains were consistently found crushed and eroded under the later occupation, apparently never having been cleared, and were heavily mixed with the ash and charcoal of what seem to have been cooking fires in this area during the MM period. The contrast with the total destruction of the LM IIIC house deposits is notable: MM pottery and bones are usually unburnt and never burnt to the intense levels found in the later destruction.

If people expanding onto this area of the site in LM IIIC respected the earlier use enough to leave its remains in situ and even re-use/adapt its features, did that re-use include architecture? If so, we could expect these LM IIIC houses to be somewhat divergent in their plan from either the standard dwellings or special buildings of the site. The poorly preserved S wall of the western room, 01504, proved to have material from the MM use phase running right up to it: it is founded on bedrock. In 2024, excavation S of this wall will allow us to establish more clearly whether the wall itself could be MM in date, perhaps a boundary for what still seems likely to be an open-air, specialised zone rather than any kind of dwelling, and to consider, if so, the impact of the wall's presence on the building strategies of the LM IIIC period. As well as expanding to the S we will undertake expansion of the excavation to the east, to complete the exposure of a representative LM IIIC building complex in a systematic fashion for the first time. The spectacular preservation of whole vessels on floors – even better here than in MG1, perhaps thanks to less disturbance in antiquity - allows a very detailed picture to be built up of exactly how the building was used, with large storage jars, amphorae and cooking pots as well as numerous fine vessels alongside animal bones (sheep/goat, cattle, young pig among the consumed species) and very abundant archaeobotanical samples already recovered and awaiting analysis: priority was given to the MM material in the first study season.

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