Background

In 1937, John Pendlebury and team started excavations with the permission of the Greek archaeological authorities via the British School at Athens at the remote and rugged mountaintop site of Karphi, 1140m above sea level in the Lasithi mountains of Crete. The site had previously been reconnoitred by Arthur Evans, who noted the remains of massive buildings between the peaks of Karphi and Mikri Koprana. The result of excavation was the unexpected discovery of the streets, squares, houses, storerooms and shrines of an exceptionally large town, founded here in the mysterious, chaotic era at the end of the east Mediterranean Bronze Age. Pendlebury put together a fairly comprehensive report with schematic site plan and catalogue of the very numerous finds, including some early colour photographs. The finds were taken to the Museum of Heraklion. Pendlebury intended to, and did, complete only the excavation of the saddle area between Mikri Koprana and Karphi (about a fifth of the site's total area) leaving the rest of the site for future research. Work stopped in summer 1939.

In 1960, following Pendlebury's death at the hands of the German Army during the Battle of Crete in 1941, leaving his work , another member of the excavation team, Mercy Money-Coutts, published an overview of the large amount of pottery vessels recovered.  

During the 1980s and 1990s, Bogdan Rutkowski and Krzysztof Nowicki with individual permissions from the Greek Ministry of Culture mapped and examined surface remains excavated and unexcavated at the site, with special focus on the Temple. They also undertook extensive landscape survey with separate permissions in the north Lasithi area.

In 2002, Saro Wallace with permissions from the Greek Ministry of Culture via the British School at Athens started detailed planning and building recording on the excavated and unexcavated built remains at Karphi, leading to the improvement of published maps and plans and the preparation of a targeted test excavation in four areas of the wider site. She also carried out a variety of formal and informal surveys (soil, land-use, historic land-use) using permits from IGME (the Greek national authority for geological mapping and sampling). This work was published from 2005: a book-length publication was submitted for publication in 2015 and in 2020 was published by the British School at Athens.

In 2005-11, Professor Leslie Day (Wabash University), excavator of Early Iron Age sites in eastern Crete and a close long-term collaborator with and advisor to Nowicki and Wallace, with the permission of Heraklion Museum via the British School at Athens, studied and published in full the pottery assemblage from Pendlebury's excavations at Karphi, again in a volume within the British School at Athens series.

In 2012-2019 Saro Wallace and colleagues with permissions from Heraklion Museum and the Greek Ministry of Culture via the British School at Athens  studied and published or prepared for publication detailed plans of surface remains at Karphi and the neighbouring site of Papoura, and new records and analyses of the metals finds, human remains and selected small finds from Pendlebury's excavations.

In 2021 under the auspices of the British School at Athens Saro Wallace (then Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester) and Ina Berg (Senior Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Manchester) applied to the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sport for permission to restart excavations at Karphi in a 3-year programme. This application cited in its support a formal letter of welcome and offers of assistance from the Demos of the Lasithi Plain, obtained in 2018. Just before commencement in June 2021, with all our team already having visited the site and living in Tzermiado village, it was indicated by EFALAS (Ephorate of Antiquities of Lasithi) that permission was unexpectedly likely to be refused, ultimately due to local political uncertainties and conflicts about work on the region's heritage involving the Demos and Dimarchos, which only later became apparent to us and over which we had no control: neither our international project team nor our sponsors have ever had political preferences, connections, influence or alliances in Greece. Instead, a 6-week field school for students in the project team was run in the Lasithi plain and mountains area. This unexpected derailment of our plans meant the BSA's project and support schedule could no longer accommodate our full programme. It was decided to try to move the project to the newly founded Polish Institute at Athens.

In 2021 Wallace also started a funded programme of ethnography-based research on the nature of opportunities for heritage landscape enhancement and promotion in the area using local communities' knowledge and awareness of that landscape. This built on her earlier studies in this vein in 2002-5. Associated activities intended to benefit local communities included the draft preparation of trails leaflets and the design of an archaeological education and research programme in schools aimed at finding out about young people's awareness and understanding of local heritage landscapes and their potential.  

In 2022, again under the auspices of the British School at Athens and with the assistance of EFAHRA, which agreed to take the sites in question under its administrative aegis, our project team and students undertook a programme of surface survey recording at the sites of Papoura and Karphi. Under the auspices of the Polish Institute of Archaeology and Athens and with the full formal support of the British School at Athens, we then applied to the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sport for permission to start the excavation project for five years 2023-7.   

In October 2022 the Demos of the Lasithi Plain (which had in 2018 formally and warmly invited the project's work on mapping, excavation, outreach and educational activities in the area) suddenly attempted to stop our ongoing educational programme in local schools authorised by the regional education authority (which included trips to Karphi) arguing that it was intended to use the knowledge of schoolchildren about the local area to search out and exploit archaeological sites for unspecified gain. Notwithstanding the project's numerous attempts to contact the Demos and ask about the motivation of this action  no reply was received. On 21 November 2022 the Demos published an article in a local newspaper (Anatoli), stating that 'British so-called archaeologists' had illegally excavated at Karphi in 2021 and had undertaken morally reprehensible work in local schools aimed at exploiting children: a related hour-long interview with the Dimarchos Ioannis Stefanakis appeared on a local television channel. No names were given in this article, which stated that British archaeologists had no right to undertake 'colonialist' research in the Lasithi plain or surrounding mountains because Lord Elgin had taken the Parthenon marbles in the 1820s! All work in the Lasithi region, it asserted, should now take place by 'Greek scientists and Greek hands'. The television interview reflected these views.

The project was sorry to learn in these very distressing ways of a complete volte-face in the attitude of the Demos of the Lasithi Plain regarding archaeological research - a domain over which Demoi hold no legal supervisory powers - and sorry to witness such a major misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the nature of international archaeological research in Greece and the laws governing it displayed by elected public officials. We referred the matter to the British School at Athens and Greek Ministry of Culture and Sport. We publicly restated our commitment to and background in collaboration with the Demos of the Lasithi Plain as well as the neighbouring Demos of Chersonisos, since work in this border zone involves and affects people living in both demoi, including through developing visitor interest in the local cultural landscape.

Our excavation permit from the Ministry of Culture and Sports via EFAHRA was awarded for 5 years in June 2023. Three areas of the site tested in 2023  - Area MG1, Area A and Area B1 - were the subjects of extended excavation, with highly informative results. Preliminary building conservation was carried on on the excavated remains. A first report appears on this website. An apology for the poor treatment of our earlier and ongoing projects on behalf of the communities of the Lasithi Plain was published during this first season in the Anatoli newspaper, co-ordinated by a group of local people interested and informed about the project and wishing to see a new political order in the region.

In October 2023 the existing Dimarchos of the Lasithi Plateau failed to be re-elected and was replaced by Mr Giorgos Athanasakis who has warmly welcomed our ongoing research in the region. We look forward to developing friendly relationships and collaborations with the new demos government given the site's position adjacent to and strong historical associations with this demos, despite the shift in administrative arrangements indirectly brought about by the problems encountered in recent years. See our blogpost of January 2025!