East Cretan Peak Sanctuaries Project (ECPSP)
This project aims to publish material from old excavations undertaken by Dr Costis Davaras in the 1970s, which has remained largely unstudied and unpublished, and thus unavailable to the research community. Dr Davaras invited Morris and Peatfield to work with him to publish the figurines from these sites, and it was agreed that the Prinias peak sanctuary above Sitia would be the pilot publication, the first in a planned series, which will include Petsophas, Modhi, and other smaller peak sanctuaries.
Integral to the work has been a 3D scanning project (using a laser scanner), which has been invaluable for producing 3D models for study of style and technology. In addition to a published catalogue of the finds, we plan to make the 3D models available online, making the peak sanctuary figurines more accessible to a wider audience.
Project team:
Dr Costis Davaras (former Director of the Cretan Archaeological Research Institute, and Ephor in the Greek Archaeological Service)
Dr Alan Peatfield (University College Dublin)
Dr Christine Morris (Trinity College Dublin)
Dr Brendan O'Neill (University College Dublin)
Dr Simone Zimmermann (Trinity College Dublin)
Publications:
Christine Morris, Brendan O’Neill, Alan Peatfield 2019, 'Thinking through our hands: making and understanding Minoan female anthropomorphic figurines from the peak sanctuary of Prinias, Crete', in Christina Souyoudzoglou-Haywood & Aidan O’Sullivan eds, Experimental Archaeology: Making, Understanding, Story-telling, Oxford, Archaeopress, 53-62
Christine Morris, Brendan O'Neill, Alan Peatfield 2018. ''Figures in 3D’: digital perspectives on Cretan Bronze Age figurines,', Open Archaeology: https://doi.org/10.1515/opar-2018-0003
For funding for this ongoing project, we are grateful to the following: Irish Research Council; Trinity College Dublin; University College Dublin.
This project is part of the international research network Unlocking Sacred Landscapes: https://www.ucy.ac.cy/unsala/
We are indebted to our archaeological colleagues in the Ayios Nikolaos Museum for facilitating our work.