Kavousi Project

[1] The objective of the project was to restudy a number of archaeological sites originally investigated by the pioneering American archaeologist Harriet Boyd [Hawes] in the early years of the 20th century,[2] focusing on the Greek Dark Age sites of Kavousi Vronda and Kavousi Kastro, but also including tombs at nearby Aloni, Plaï tou Kastrou, and Skouriasmenos, all located in the northern foothills of the Thripti Mountains of eastern Crete.

In 1974, Geraldine C. Gesell and Leslie Preston Day initiated a project to locate a number of ancient sites previously investigated by early American archaeologists in the Isthmus of Ierapetra, many of which were not marked accurately on maps of the time.

The primary photographic archives (black-and-white film negatives) are curated by the Department of Classics at the University of Tennessee (Knoxville); copies of color slides and some other materials are also preserved in the W.D.E.

Settlement site, c. 427 meters above sea level, established slightly later than Kavousi Kastro and inhabited for up to four generations (around 120 years) before being abandoned at the very end of the Late Minoan IIIC period (c. 1050 BCE).

[9] Vronda ("Thunder Hill"; Greek: Βροντάς or Βρόντας) was briefly explored by Harriet Boyd [Hawes] in 1900 and extensively excavated by the Kavousi Project from 1987 to 1992.

As an extensively excavated settlement from a single period of occupation, Kavousi Vronda provides insights into domestic activities, architecture, religion, and social organization of a community at the very beginning of the Greek Dark Ages (Late Minoan IIIC, or 12th to 11 centuries BCE).

Its later cemeteries, used by the inhabitants of Kavousi Kastro and/or nearby Azoria until the late-7th century BCE, attest to regional mortuary practices, rituals, and ideological concerns throughout the Early Iron Age.

In the Late Geometric period (second half of the 8th century BCE), the excavated portion of the settlement included at least 21 houses, one of which (Building H) may have been a "special status" structure distinguished by its size and highly visible location on the western slope.

Kavousi Kastro thus reveals a long sequence of occupation that provides insights into domestic activities, architecture, and social organization of a community throughout the entire Early Iron Age.

Location of at least one stone-built tholos tomb on a slope c. 200 meters south of Kavousi Kastro, from which the British archaeologist Arthur Evans had obtained antiquities in 1896 and 1899.