Skotino Cave

[citation needed] The cave lies high on a hill northwest of the village of Skotino, a few kilometers inland south of Gouves.

The first archaeological examination on the site were carried out by Arthur Evans, the well-known British archaeologist who unearthed and partially restored Knossos in the early 20th century.

A more comprehensive exploration was carried out by French and Greek archaeologists in the 1960s.

They found a considerable number of bronze and ceramic votive offerings, the oldest of them dating from the earliest Minoan periods, suggesting the cave was an important sacred shrine dedicated to a female fertility deity, presumably Britomartis.

The cave was still used in Classical Greek and Roman eras, when the fertility goddess Artemis or her Roman equivalent Diana replaced the Minoan deity.