Eleutherna

Surveys and systematic excavations have revealed the city's settlement patterns, sanctuaries and necropoleis in Orthi Petra,[1] even stone quarries in the surroundings of the Prines hill.

[2]Anagnostis Agelarakis was instrumental in helping to identify an Iron Age matriline—a so-called “dynasty of priestesses”[3] — at the site, based on the dental epigenetic traits of the individuals buried there.

[4] During the ninth century BC, in sub-Mycenaean times, in the Geometric Period of the later Greek Dark Ages, Dorians colonized the city on a steep, naturally fortified ridge.

The city's location made it a natural crossroads, as it lay between Kydonia on the northwest coast and Knossos, and between the shore, where it controlled its ports, Stavromenos and Panormos, and the great sanctuary cave near the peak of Ida, Idaion Andron.

The attacks of caliph Harun Al-Rashid in the later eighth century, together with another earthquake in 796, and the subsequent Arab rule in Crete, led to the final abandonment of the site.