Excavations at Petras

Abstract

On a low spur of the hills that shut in the Sitia valley on the east, immediately overlooking the sea and separated from the port of Sitia by nearly a mile of sand-bar, stands the unimportant hamlet of Petras, originally Venetian, afterwards ‘Turkish’ or Moslem-Cretan, and for the most part ruined and deserted since 1896. Mr. Marshall came here in January, 1901, and collected sherds which left no doubt about the early date of the remains, treated by previous travellers as Hellenic. Lying on a deep bay and commanding as it does the easiest route into the Eteocretan highlands, it seemed likely that Petras might furnish useful clues, if not to the indigenous culture of the district, at any rate to the foreign influences that were at work here during the Bronze Age. Later, when two months of work at Praesos had produced very little Kamáres pottery of the familiar mid-Cretan types and no Mycenaean, it seemed doubly desirable to examine this, the nearest definitely Mycenaean site, and to ascertain what had been the local varieties of early pottery.

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