The University of North
Carolina Iowa State University
Excavations at Azoria
in Eastern Crete
The University of North
Carolina
The Azoria Project is the excavation of an Early Iron Age and Archaic (ca. 1200-480 B.C.) site on the island of Crete in the Greek Aegean. Fieldwork is conducted by permission of the Greek Ministry of Culture under the auspices of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and the Archaeological Service of Eastern Crete (24th Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities). The main supporting institutions are the Department of Classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Classical Studies Program at Iowa State University, the Research Laboratories of Archaeology at UNC, the Institute for Aegean Prehistory Study Center for East Crete (INSTAP-SCEC), and the Duke-UNC Consortium for Classical and Mediterranean Archaeology (CCMA).
The
Azoria Project (Overview)
Azoria Project Staff
2002 Summary
Report
2003
Summary Report
2004 Summary
Report
2005 Summary Report
2006 Summary
Report
2007 Summary
Report (Study Season)
2002
Detailed Report (large PDF)
2003-2004 Detailed
Report (large PDF)
Views
of the Site
Site Conservation (Technical Report)
Objects
Current Research
Proposal
The
Azoria
Project Fund
Azoria News Archive
Bibliography
Azoria Bibliography (Recent
Publications)
Kritiko Panorama
(2007) PDF
The Azoria Project is a case study of urbanization in the Mediterranean in the first millennium B.C., exploring the Early Iron Age and Archaic town of Azoria (ca. 1200-500 B.C.) on the island of Crete. The goal is to examine changing dynamics of extra-island trade, crop and livestock processing, and local subsistence practices on this site, and to relate these changes to social processes involved in the formation of small-scale polities in the eastern Mediterranean during the first millennium B.C. The excavation examines the development of an urban settlement, tracing its growth from the Bronze Age until its establishment as a regional center in the Early Iron Age and a city by the 6th century B.C., and relating differential patterns of crop processing to models of land use and power relationships in order to identify corporate groups and to define the structure of the emergent city. Multiple phases of occupation at the site allow us to examine changes in the site's economy and physical structure, considering environmental and sociopolitical factors in small-scale state formation.
 Funding for the Azoria Project has been provided by the National Science Foundation (BCS-0438073); National Geographic Society (7193-02); (7614-04); the National Endowment for the Humanities (RZ-20812) (RZ-50334); the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (GR 6875); the Institute for Aegean Prehistory; the Loeb Classical Library Foundation; the College of Arts and Sciences, the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, and the Department of Classics of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; the INSTAP Study Center for East Crete (in kind); and the Azoria Project Fund (0-65305-42). |