Nixon 2024 - Archaeology of Sustainability

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doi:./S
TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY:

RESOURCE PACKAGES AND LANDSCAPE MANAGEMENT
IN SPHAKIA, SOUTH-WEST CRETE
by Lucia Nixon
Wolfson College, Oxford
Using evidence from the Sphakia Survey, a multiperiod archaeological project in south-west Crete, this article has two goals.
The first is to contribute to a newly emerging field, the archaeology of sustainability. The investigation of sustainability in
Sphakia uses five main kinds of evidence: environmental, archaeological/material, textual, oral, and patterns of activity
that seem ‘difficult’ or ‘inconvenient’. Sphakia is a large area of highly dissected terrain with a wide altitudinal range – in
many ways, a ‘tough’ landscape, where agropastoralism has been its main economy. The second goal is to introduce the
concept of a Resource Package (RP), a combination of perceived resources in an area, as an analytical tool for landscape
study. Evidence for identifying agropastoral RPs of various scales, used at a particular time, includes imports, such as
pottery and obsidian, which can suggest exchange for a local resource or product; sacred sites; coins; texts and inscriptions;
place-names and other toponyms; and maps. The concept of RPs can usefully be applied synchronically and diachronically
to multiperiod projects like this, as well as more generally to other landscapes, ‘tough’ or not. Sustainable strategies (that is,
maximising resources and RPs without exhausting them) were used in the Prehistoric, Graeco-Roman and Byzantine–
Venetian–Turkish epochs in Sphakia; some may be relevant for the future.
INTRODUCTION
The goals for this article are to contribute to a newly emerging field, the archaeology of
sustainability, and to introduce Resource Packages (RPs) as an analytical tool for the study of
landscapes, using selected evidence from the Sphakia Survey, an archaeological project in
south-west Crete.
Survey archaeology in general is potentially of great value for detecting ancient approaches to
sustainability. Survey projects, which typically have much larger areas and longer time periods
than most excavations, enable archaeologists to look at a landscape both diachronically and
synchronically to see how people in the past chose and managed resources.
The Sphakia Survey

The Sphakia Survey is a particularly good case study for investigating sustainability. Sphakia is a
former eparchy, now deme, with a large area ( km) of highly dissected terrain and a wide
altitudinal range—in many ways, a ‘tough’ area where resources, particularly agropastoral ones,
are more constrained (Fig. ). Within a distance of  km, the landscape changes from palm
trees on the coast to elevations of approximately  m at the top of the White Mountains,
where there is some snow even in summer. Sphakia is dissected by some  gorges running
south to the Libyan Sea, including the famous Samaria Gorge. The Survey covers three main
epochs: Prehistoric (PH), – BC; Graeco-Roman (GR),  BC–AD ; and
Byzantine–Venetian–Turkish (BVT), AD –. Information was also collected for the

The date of  BC refers to work done by the Sphakia Survey; cf. Nixon et al.  and Mortensen .
Strasser et al. () give a Palaeolithic date to decoration in a low cave in the Asphendou area of Sphakia. Kopaka
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

 LUCIA NIXON
Fig. . Sphakia settlements in .
twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A key part of the Survey’s approach has been, wherever
possible, to collect and compare environmental, archaeological/material, textual, and
ethnographic/local evidence for the three epochs of the Survey.
The project’s main research focus was investigating how people used this rugged landscape over
the last  years or so. In general, people in Sphakia tended to live in more-or-less sedentary
agropastoral communities. Having located the best areas for agriculture and shepherding in the
later Stone Age, Sphakiote agropastoralists could have lived in or near those same places until
the end of World War II, when there was especially large-scale emigration. But staying in those
places is exactly what they did not do; even this ‘difficult’ landscape offers more flexibility than
one might expect.
Assessing sustainability in the past

The archaeology of sustainability is in its infancy. Turner et al. () note how important
landscape archaeology can be for future sustainable strategies, using three case studies
concerning water management, terracing and woodland preservation. Yet there are no generally
accepted methods for investigating and assessing intentional sustainability in the past. This
article, therefore, offers the methodology used here to look at possible sustainable practices in
the region over a long period, which is based on two assumptions. The first is that we are largely
dealing with agropastoral economies usually made up of free land-owners. I focus here on
agriculture, pastoralism, bee-keeping and, where possible, the use and management of cypress
timber. These four activities, particularly the first three, occurred in at least two of our three
epochs, and in most parts of the area, thus making both synchronic and diachronic comparisons
possible within Sphakia.
and Matzanas () report Palaeolithic material on Gavdos, south of Sphakia. Strasser et al. () found
Palaeolithic and Mesolithic material in the Plakias area, east of Sphakia.

Broodbank and Strasser (, –, ) suggested that people brought a package of crops and animals to
Crete in the Neolithic period. In this package, agriculture and pastoralism were inextricably entwined. The arrival
of people on Crete before then, as suggested by Strasser et al. (), need not preclude a later arrival of the
‘Neolithic package’.

TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY 
The second assumption is that free agropastoralists would instinctively want to be sustainable,
with a keen interest in using resources without using them up, especially if they wanted to produce
above subsistence: if they managed resources poorly, they were the ones who would starve.
Sustainable strategies thus would enable people in Sphakia to manage predictable risks such as
crop failure and unusual pasturage scarcity.
There are obvious indications of agropastoral sustainability in dissected terrain. First, because
animals must not be allowed to browse on agricultural areas before crops are harvested, planted
arable needs to be as separate from pasturage as possible. Second, in hilly areas (most of
Sphakia), it is likely that people will use terracing to maximise slopes with enough soil for
planting, and to prevent soil erosion. Third, bees do not require arable; it therefore makes sense
to put larger numbers of beehives in stonier places on which enough plants will grow to provide
bee fodder. People who separate arable and pasturage, terrace slopes to create ‘extra’ arable and
place larger numbers of beehives away from arable spreads are likely to be deliberately
employing strategies for sustainability. Fourth, it is likely that people will attempt to make use of
all altitudes available to them.
This article uses five main kinds of information in an investigation of sustainability in Sphakia:
environmental, archaeological/material, textual, oral, and a fifth discussed below. Archaeological/
material evidence includes two main categories of information. One category is direct: the
presence and location of infrastructure (terracing, milking-pens, bee enclosures) and other
special equipment (potter’s discs). The other material category is indirect: signs of ‘wealth’
(imported items, sacred spaces), because ‘wealth’ often means successful resource management,
and in some cases, may correlate with production above subsistence (e.g. for exchange)
requiring sustainable strategies over time. Textual evidence includes documents with an
awareness of particular resources, such as tax and census records and maps, especially those
relating to territorial boundaries that are often directly keyed to resources. Oral (and sometimes
textual) evidence includes systems for making resources memorable, using toponyms –
topothesies, ‘place-puttings’ – for landscape features outside settlements, as well as for and within
them. Topothesies often refer to potential resources such as water, particular plants and
productivity, and are good indicators of landscape knowledge and the agency that can result
from using that knowledge.
The fifth kind of information for Sphakia can also be useful, if sometimes less precise: patterns
of activity that seem ‘difficult’, ‘inconvenient’ or in some way ‘discrepant’. As Sphakia is an area of
highly dissected terrain with dispersed resources, it would not be surprising to find ‘difficult’
strategies here, for example those involving the use of resources in areas that might elsewhere be
described as marginal, or at a distance from settlements, or both. These ‘difficult’, ‘marginal’
areas might be used on a seasonal basis and might sometimes also involve movement of people,
as well as animals.
We divided Sphakia into eight geographical regions, numbered from west to east and grouped
into three areas: West (Region ), Central (Regions –), and East (Regions –). Our sites were
numbered by regions (e.g. . is in Region , . in Region : Fig. ).
We also stratified our sampling strategy by eight environmental zones defined during our first
field season (Fig. ). A minimum of  per cent of each zone was surveyed, though two areas
were intensively sampled because they have, for Sphakia, relatively extensive amounts of arable
land: the Anopoli Mountain Plain and the Frangokastello Coastal Plain. Within Sphakia, there
are three main altitudinal bands labelled Down (– metres above sea level [masl]), Middle
(– masl), and Up (> masl, highest point  masl). We sampled all regions, areas,
environmental zones and altitudes.
Sites were usually identified after field-walking. The main site classifications are small
(– houses), medium (– houses), and large (+ houses). We defined the term ‘site’
flexibly, as a place with evidence for significant localised human activity. Our sites include loci
marked by a handful of sherds; two large PH sites with multiple discrete pottery scatters (.,
.); complex multi-phased GR settlements with standing architecture such as Ancient
Anopolis (.) and Phoinix-Loutro (.); and a flourishing BVT multi-neighbourhood village
such as Khora Sphakion (.). Some sites, like the quarry at the mouth of the Aradhena

 LUCIA NIXON
Fig. . Regions of Sphakia.
Fig. . Environmental zones.

TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY 
Gorge (.A), are not marked by portable artefacts or building stone. One site (.) had
only stone tumble. Most of our sites are pottery scatters, with or without remains of
structures, and settlements of the Venetian–Turkish (VT) periods. We found no lithic-only
sites, presumably because local stone resources are not concentrated for exploitation, and
because the earliest Sphakia Survey sites date to Final Neolithic (FN), when pottery was
already in use (cf. n. ).
As with all archaeological survey projects, visibility in Sphakia affects almost all periods in some
ways. For example, Basins and Mountain Plains can be incredibly difficult for PH and GR
information, except for the largest, the Anopoli Plain (Region ). Paradoxically, as it is the most
recent epoch, BVT evidence can also be difficult.
The concept of RPs

The concept of RPs for reading the landscape of Sphakia was mainly developed and applied after
fieldwork began, when I conducted a subsidiary study of BVT outlying churches and icon stands in
 (Nixon ). My original aim in looking at outlying churches (exokklisia) was to understand
how they related to the landscapes of BVT Sphakia. Both exokklisia and village churches were
integral parts of the BVT settlement pattern from its earliest beginnings in the tenth/eleventh
century. Outlying churches were and are often built in areas with specific resources, at the time
when those resources come into economic use. These resources include arable land and crops,
pasturage and herd animals, water or the means of procuring/managing it, and connectivities of
various kinds (networks and connections inside and outside Sphakia, both by land and sea;
visibility and intervisibility of locations). Accessible areas with sufficient vegetation will support
bee-keeping as well as agriculture and pastoralism.
Dating churches inside and outside settlements makes it possible to suggest when certain
economic activities might have begun. Most churches are architecturally simple, and therefore
hard to date precisely, but some can be dated using frescoes and architecture (Gerola –;
Lassithiotakis ). The late seventeenth-century register of churches in Venetian Crete gives a
terminus ante quem for those included (Khaireti ). Large numbers of churches (‘hotspots’)
in an area, whether outlying or inlying, usually indicate a large amount of economic activity
based on certain resources.
The concept of RPs also used earlier work outside Sphakia. Nixon and Price () showed
that resources, rather than assumed population levels, are useful for understanding different
levels of contributions to the Delian League, as recorded indirectly in the fifth-century BC
Athenian Tribute Lists (Merritt, McGregor, and Wade-Gery –). This ‘follow-the-
money’ approach suggests that resources, however defined, are the key to economic success
and wealth. The example of Kea is instructive. This small island ( km) had four poleis,
and its later fifth-century contribution to the Delian League, deduced from the Athenian
Tribute Lists, was  talents; Keos was therefore one of the ‘Big Spenders’ contributing more
than one talent (Nixon and Price , ). Two resources brought wealth to Late Archaic
and Classical Kea: harbour dues and miltos, a red ochre which Athens clearly viewed as a
strategic material (Nixon and Price ; Cherry et al. ; Photos-Jones et al. ; Lytle
). Big spenders like Kea were more likely to mint their own coins; three of the four
Keian poleis minted coins in the fifth century (Nixon and Price , ; cf.
Papageorgiadou-Banis ). Thus minting was a sign of wealth and ‘resource-fulness’ (Nixon
and Price , –).
Like BVT churches inside and outside settlements in Sphakia, GR sanctuaries are more likely to
occur in wealthy places, however that wealth is defined. On Kea, Karthaia and Koressos, both coin-
minters, certainly had stone temples (Whitelaw and Davies ; cf. Lauter ; Østby ;
Cherry, Davis and Mantzourani b, with summaries of historical and epigraphic evidence for
Keian poleis).

Gaignerot-Driessen (, ) later used an identical list of basic resources in her work in Mirabello Bay.

 LUCIA NIXON
Detecting and defining resources and RPs

The eight environmental zones defined by the survey are crucial for assessing the resources of
Sphakia, particularly those necessary for agriculture, pastoralism and bee-keeping (Fig. ). The
altitudinal range of Sphakia means more terrain variety and less overall availability of
agropastoral resources. Nearly  per cent of Sphakia (Mountain Desert and the Madares) is
over  masl ( km, . per cent); nearly  per cent (Mountain Desert, the Madares and
part of the eastern Madares Upper Slopes) is over  masl (. km, . per cent) and
basically above the tree-line. Within Sphakia, these higher altitude areas are mainly in west and
west-central Sphakia (Table ). The best agropastoral areas are at lower altitudes, where
connectivity by sea and by land is available in the two Coastal Plains (Loutro Peninsula,
Frangokastello), largest Mountain Plain (Anopoli), Lower Slopes, and sometimes Gorges.
The Madares (high-altitude pastures) have sufficient vegetation for ovicaprid browsing and
occur in two main areas within Sphakia (Fig. ). In this article ‘the Madares’ means specifically
the area north of Anopoli village, in west-central Sphakia. There is now a vehicular road from
Anopoli to the southern edge of the Mountain Desert, and then it is still several hours’ walk to
the Madares. The Mountain Desert has no connected vegetation and cannot really be used for
agriculture, pastoralism or bee-keeping (Fig. ). The Madares are accessible only from snowmelt
in late May or early June until snowfall in October at the latest.
Though much of the Upper Slopes (– masl) is also above the tree-line, there is the
possibility of pasturage here. The zones with the most obvious agropastoral potential are Coastal
Plains, Lower Slopes, Basins and Mountain Plains, and parts of Gorges and Cliffs, that is, those
Gorges with ‘floors’ and their lower slopes (e.g. Trypiti and Samaria; Figs , ). Middle Slopes
may also have something agropastoral to offer. These four (or possibly five) environmental zones
could provide the larger and more accessible areas of arable, pasturage, and bee fodder needed
to support substantial settlements. Because the terrain of Sphakia is dissected by multiple
Gorges and Cliffs, resources are also ‘dissected’ (discrete rather than continuous) in some areas;
most Basins and Mountain Plains, except for Anopoli and Askyphou, are small and scattered.
The Ts’Assi Basin, the smallest Mountain Plain, is a classic example of a ‘dissected’ resource: a
small patch of arable in a sea of limestone, just west of the Anopoli Plain, ringed by sites .,
., and . (Figs , ).
Agriculture, shepherding and bee-keeping activities all require vegetation. Archaeological
evidence in a specific place suggests human activity at a particular time. The environmental
zones described above, in turn, suggest which resources might have been available for that place.
These are mostly very general suggestions (‘agropastoral’), but more specific evidence can
suggest more specific activities. Datable trees, e.g. olives, can add to a resource picture, mostly
for VT. In some later periods, written evidence will add to the archaeological evidence.
Table . Sphakiote koinotites (‘communes’).
Koinotis Total Number of BVT Area Land Area Land

area villages (Stavrakis > m > m > m > m
(km) /) (km) (per cent) (km) (per cent)
Anopoli .  . . . .
Ag. Roumeli .  . . . .
Askyphou .  . . . .
Ag. Ioannis .  . . . .
Khora .  . . . .
Sphakion
Skaloti .  . .  
Patsianos .  . .  
Asphendou .  . .  
Imbros .  . .  
Total .  . .  .

TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY 
Fig. . Katsiveli Mitato (.) between two enclosures.
Fig. . Mountain desert north of Anopoli. June .

 LUCIA NIXON
Fig. . Trypiti Gorge (M. Buell).
There are several types of resources: settlement, optional and contingent. Settlements must have
good agropastoral resources in their immediate area or very nearby. Agropastoral resources are those
requiring vegetation, essential for the three major activities investigated here. Optional resources
include less strictly agropastoral resources, at or near settled areas. One example is wood used for
fuel and construction. Sphakia now has more cypress than any other part of Crete, up to the tree-
line (Rackham and Moody , fig. :a). Another optional resource is potting clay. A third is
medicinal herbs, e.g. dittany (Dictamnus origanum), generally more common in western Crete, and
available in Sphakia (Rackham and Moody , fig. :b). So far we have only textual rather
than archaeological evidence for its use. Finally, there are contingent resources, whose use
depends entirely on settlements elsewhere, usually at some distance, but accessible via regularly
used routes by land or by sea. The most notable Sphakiote example of a contingent resource is
the Madares. People using this area for seasonal pasturage will always need to use arable
somewhere else, and the distance from the Madares to arable resources means a major
commitment in terms of organising labour and time. Despite the ‘inconvenience’ involved, there is
evidence that the Madares were used frequently in all three epochs.
What is a resource, therefore? A resource, as defined here, can be anything in an environment
that people choose to include in their strategy at a particular time. The presence or availability of a
resource in a particular place is important because you cannot use a resource that you do not have.

On Cretan dittany, see Hippocrates IX., X., ; cf. Theophrastus Historia Plantarum IX.xvi..

In this case, resources are land resources; marine resources were and are important (Mylona ) but are
beyond the scope of this paper.

TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY 
Fig. . Samaria Gorge South.
But an available resource does not always mean a perceived, let alone a used, resource: sandy
beaches could have been used for swimming in all epochs, but people in Sphakia, as elsewhere
in the Mediterranean, did not exploit this resource on any large scale until the advent of mass
tourism in the twentieth century.
A Resource Package, then, is a combination of one or more perceived resources in an area or
areas, used by people in a particular way at a particular time. People change resources into RPs
by using them in a particular way. An RP can include one or several resources (arable, bee
fodder, pasturage), plus the routes to reach that RP. Some RPs, for example areas with sloping
rather than flatter ground, may require adaptations such as terraces. In some cases it is possible
to see how people use an assemblage of several RPs (villages and seasonal settlements used by
the same people). Thus people’s definitions of RPs in any given period will be the result of a

 LUCIA NIXON
Fig. . Region  and Ts’Assi Basin (M. Buell).
particular strategic approach to the landscape of Sphakia. The notion of RPs is flexible in terms of
scale and chronology. The main principle is that in a specific period, people will have strategies for
selecting a part or parts of the landscape for activities such as settlement, cultivation, pastoralism, or
bee-keeping (or some combination of these, and sometimes other, activities), according to the
presence of the right RP(s). This approach is in line with cultural or human ecology, rather than
environmental or economic determinism (Steward , ; cf. Butzer ; Barrett ).
In all three epochs it is rarely possible to quantify RPs, except to describe them as smaller or
larger. Until the end of BVT, we do not have precise RP boundaries, and then after, only for
larger RPs. In Sphakia, over the long period of time examined by our survey, people tended to
live in sedentary agropastoral communities. An agropastoral community needs a minimum RP

TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY 
Fig. . Ts’Assi Basin, looking west-south-west from .. June .
kit including arable; pasturage; water, however procured; and connectivity. In an area like Sphakia,
with its highly dissected terrain, it is impossible to overemphasise the importance of connectivity as
a resource.
Finally, the Sphakia Survey looked carefully at climatic fluctuations during the three epochs,
including episodes in FN–Early Minoan (EM) I, Late Bronze Age–Archaic, and VT (Rackham
and Moody , xvi–xvii, –, –). Nonetheless, human agency remains important:
though there may have been fluctuations in climate, people still had choices about their
approach to resources, such as whether to reconfigure their use of specific RPs.
THE PREHISTORIC EPOCH
During the PH epoch there were fluctuations in Sphakia site sizes: small in Final Neolithic–Early
Minoan I (FN–EM I), larger in EM–Middle Minoan (MM); largest in MM–Late Minoan
(LM) IIIA/B; smaller again in LM IIIC–Early Iron Age (EIA). In FN–EM, the largest PH sites
known to us are in the south-east Anopoli Plain; later, the largest PH sites were mainly to the
east. In MM–LM IIIA/B the difference in land use between east Sphakia and other parts of
the area becomes even more accentuated. While site numbers increase in every part of Sphakia,
the number, size and complexity of MM–LM IIIA/B sites (particularly coastal sites) all increase
markedly from west to east, culminating in two major sites at . and . (Fig. ). It seems
that the preferred RP for lower altitudes in this period was a combination of larger, connected
areas of arable (and pasturage) with direct coastal access.
Smaller PH RPs
Some smaller RPs were repeatedly used throughout the PH epoch, such as the Madares; some clay
sources were also repeatedly used. At site ., we found solid evidence of pottery manufacture,

 LUCIA NIXON
Fig. . Region .
including several potter’s discs and wasters (Fig. ). We located two good clay sources in this area,
one red and one grey. The red clay was used for mixed metamorphic fabrics, which our work shows
were produced at this site (Moody et al. , –, –).
In the Madares (Fig. ), there are  PH sites ( sites have FN–EM,  have MM–LM and
 have LM IIIC–EIA;  sites have EM–MM with a total of only nine sherds). Not all these sites
were occupied in later epochs but in all three epochs, Madares sites are discrepant from those at
lower altitudes in three main ways: site size (almost always smaller), function (represented in
ceramic assemblages), and chronological variance. The smaller size range of Madares sites is part
of the argument for seasonal use of this area for summer pasturage rather than year-round
settlement. The Madares are a contingent resource; they also lie on important routes linking
Sphakia with areas to the north. It is interesting that strategic use of these upland pastures began
early in the PH epoch, when we assume the population was much lower than in later periods. PH
ceramic assemblages from the Madares have a much lower proportion of Cooking/Preparation
sherds ( per cent) compared with the rest of Sphakia ( per cent), suggesting that there were
not typical domestic sites. We recognised no shapes or fabrics specialised for pastoralism.
The percentage of FN–EM I sherds is slightly greater in the Madares than elsewhere in Sphakia.
But Madares sherd numbers declined dramatically by  per cent in EM–MM, while elsewhere in
Sphakia they increased by  per cent. PH Madares activity peaked in MM–LM IIIA/B, as it did in
the rest of Sphakia. Pottery increased by  per cent here (partly because of low EM–MM sherd
numbers) and by  per cent elsewhere. By LM IIIC–EIA, sherd numbers declined by  per cent;
by contrast sherd numbers elsewhere in Sphakia fell by  per cent.

TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY 
Fig. . Potter’s disc from . (K. May).
Fig. . Sites in the Madares.
In MM–LM and LM IIIC–EIA the number of ceramic imports, especially but not exclusively at
site ., suggests some additional activity. The Madares were definitely connected with other
areas. Obsidian occurs at four Madares sites (., ., ., .), mostly associated with
FN–EM pottery. At site . obsidian debris with cortex was found, suggesting that people
brought the raw material with them and worked it on-site.

 LUCIA NIXON
How to interpret the unusual dip in EM–MM material? There are two possibilities: either
a change in climate (lower temperatures, higher rainfall) made it possible to use more pasture
at lower altitudes in the summer; or people simply preferred not to use the Madares in this
period.
Larger PH units/RPs
The largest PH sites are settlements in east Sphakia, where abundant arable may suggest larger RPs.
Site . in EM–MM and sites . and . in MM–LM are the best examples.
The Samaria Gorge is definitely used in the two later Bronze Age periods. Pottery from site .
near the Gorge mouth (Fig. ) has a higher percentage of later Bronze Age ceramic imports than the
much larger potting site . in MM–LM IIIA/B. We assume that site . controlled access to the
Gorge and therefore any exchange going out or coming into it, whether cypress timber, honey or
imported goods.
PH sacred sites
The strongest evidence for a PH sanctuary comes from site . in the northern part of the Samaria
Gorge, located among cypress trees, and near water. The assemblage here consisted mainly of
MM–LM conical cups including non-local examples. The combination of location plus
specialised assemblage suggests that this may be a small Minoan spring sanctuary (Nixon and
Moody , ). Possible evidence for some kind of sacred space also comes from the large
MM–LM I potting site . in east Sphakia: a bull figurine that could indicate a Minoan
domestic shrine (Fig. ).
Boundaries of PH Sphakia?
We can suggest PH territories within the area of modern Sphakia, without precise boundaries for
them. The largest PH sites are the two MM–LM sites in east Sphakia (., .; Fig. ), which
may or may not have represented a single territorial unit. Tripod cooking pots in the MM II–
LM III cooking fabric (‘Hamburger’), made at site ., were found everywhere in Sphakia
except Region  (Moody et al. , –), but this distribution cannot be used to support
the idea of a large, unified territory. Generally, average PH Sphakia site size increased from
FN–EM and EM–MM, with largest site sizes in MM–LM, followed by a drop in LM IIIC–
EIA. Largest sites are seldom in isolation but rather are surrounded by smaller sites, below
them in hierarchical terms.
I defined two main kinds of PH site groupings: clusters (at least two sites of the same PH
period within  m of each other) and groups (at least two sites of the same PH period
within  m of each other). Most site groupings include three or more PH sites; groups of
only two are typically in areas with known visibility issues. Some sites were not necessarily
close to others but acted as nodal points on or near the coast (.) and/or on important land
routes (.).
I suggest that each site grouping uses an RP. Community members selected resources that,
taken together, made settlement (or seasonal use) a viable option. All large PH sites (e.g. .,
.) are either in a site grouping or are nodal sites. Many site groupings demonstrated definite
settlement hierarchy within them; nodal sites may also in some cases be important to local
hierarchies.
The recurrence of site groupings and nodal sites at certain locations suggests repeated use of
that specific RP. PH site groupings almost always correlate with other factors: larger site sizes
and site numbers in that area, higher sherd numbers and the presence of imports (ceramic or
lithic, such as obsidian), and sometimes suggestions of production/industry beyond subsistence
(MM–LM .; the Madares in MM–LM and LM IIIC–EIA; ., discussed above).

Peak sanctuaries are extremely scarce in west Crete. Where they occur, they are near major PH settlements, e.g.
Vrysinas near Rethymnon (Tzachili ; Nixon , , table , Vrysinas mislabelled as cave).

TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY 
Fig. . Head of bull figurine from . (K. May).
Discussion
The eastward lean of settlement numbers is paralleled in the BVT epoch, but not in GR. Areas with
good RPs were more likely to have sanctuaries or sacred areas as well as imports; . and . are
the two examples.
We know that people were using the Madares throughout most of the PH epoch (Nixon and
Price , ). Late-Bronze-Age Linear B tablets from Crete tell us about pastoralism
specialised in wool for textiles, closely controlled at palace level (Killen ). We do not know
what kind of pastoralism people in Sphakia were practising in the Bronze Age, nor is it possible
to tell whether Sphakia was oriented toward a particular palatial centre.
Cypress charcoal occurs in Minoan levels at Khania, Kommos, and Knossos (Moody ,
–). The only Linear B reference to cypress comes from Pylos on the Greek mainland
(Ventris and Chadwick , , , ).
Linear B documents from Knossos (Gg series) and Khania (Gg ) record honey, measured in
amphoras, often as a religious offering. Interestingly, there is mention of  amphoras at Knossos
(Gg ) associated with Khania. If these amphoras contained honey, Gg  would be recording
very large quantities of it in west Crete (Bendall , –; cf. Tyree, Robinson and Stamaki
, ). Beeswax may also be mentioned in Linear B tablets (U, U) from Knossos
(Ventris and Chadwick , ).
Residue analyses of LM IA ceramic vessels confirm consumption of honey in Khania for
cooking, eating, and possibly ritual activities (Tzedakis and Martlew , –). Finding
archaeological evidence of Minoan bee-keeping is more difficult. Four ceramic vessels at Zakros,
two dated to the Neopalatial, have been identified as bee-smokers (Tyree, Robinson and
Stamaki ). Suggestions that MM–LM incised ceramic vats found in Crete were used as
beehives are not convincing (Davaras ; E. Melas ; D’Agata and De Angelis ).
There is good evidence for the use of beeswax as a means of illumination from residue analysis
of lamps and conical cups at LM IA Mochlos (Evershed et al. ). Further work may clarify the
possible scale of beeswax production.
Boundaries of palace/‘court complex’ territories on Crete have been discussed, but evidence for
smaller territories is rare to non-existent (Bennet , –; , –; Nakassis, Galaty and
Parkinson , , fig. :; cf. Kyriakidis , –).
On a smaller scale, two sets of agricultural terraces, identified through intensive survey and
dated to MM–LM and LM I, were found on Pseira; one set might have been used for olives,
the other for grain. Two Minoan check dams were also located (Hope Simpson, Clark and

Walking times do not help: site . is equidistant from Khania ( hours) and Phaistos ( hours,  minutes);
see Noukhakis  and Pendlebury , –.

 LUCIA NIXON
Goldberg ). At Palaikastro, survey work near the Minoan town has found strong evidence for
Minoan agropastoral infrastructure in ‘resource-ful’ locations (terracing, check dams, pit cisterns
for watering animals, division walls to separate agricultural and pastoral activities, and enclosure
walls), which suggests boundaries at this local scale. Datable pottery from five small sites
included MM and some LM III material (with LM IIIC at one site; Orengo and Knappett
, –). These features also suggest ‘very careful management of the landscape in order
to avoid erosion and the overexploitation of grazing areas’ (Orengo and Knappett , ; cf.
Jusseret, Letesson and Driessen  on land ownership at Palaikastro) and the existence of
sustainable practices.
THE GRAECO-ROMAN EPOCH
Within the GR epoch, the location of centres changes from mainly inland and upland in
Geometric–Archaic–Classical–Hellenistic (GACH), to mainly coastal in Roman–Late Roman
(RLR), when . was the largest site (Fig. ).
Smaller GR RPs
Madares GR sites are often grouped on routes (Fig. ). The chronological and functional
proportions of GR pottery from the Madares differ from the rest of Sphakia, suggesting that
these sites were used differently from ordinary domestic sites; we assume that the Madares were
mainly used for seasonal pasturage. Shapes consist mostly of Plain Table and Cooking, Storage,
some Transport, and a few Decorated Table. In this epoch, the number of storage vessel
fragments from five sites makes Storage more common in the Madares ( per cent) than
elsewhere in Sphakia ( per cent). Geometric–Archaic (GA) sherds were six times the percentage
( per cent) of sherds identified elsewhere in Sphakia (. per cent). The Classical–Hellenistic
(CH) Madares sherds suggest a level of activity only half that seen in the rest of Sphakia. Roman
and Late Roman pottery is about one-fourth as common in the Madares ( per cent) as
elsewhere in Sphakia ( per cent), probably because there is little Decorated Tableware or
amphoras. Perhaps, as in CH, the Madares were less used in RLR.
Contemporary with the polis at . in the Anopoli Plain were midsize sites ., ., .,
., and . and other smaller settlements (Fig. ), usually located on south-facing slopes,
not on the flatter arable below them – a sensible, sustainable strategy to maximise arable here.
After . was deserted, the midsize and smaller sites continued into RLR with  additions.
In the Frangokastello Plain, the pattern was different. When site . was the main centre, there
are traces of GACH use on the Plain, including some terracing. But near the large RLR sites at .
and ., there was a set of small Late Roman (LR) farms, usually – m apart, with clearer
terracing. One farm (.) is surrounded by six other sites (Fig. ). Using Thiessen polygons,
Price (in preparation) determined that this site had c.  ha of agricultural land available to it,
larger than the area assumed by other scholars for a single family. Perhaps the relative aridity
and unproductivity of land here meant that a larger area was required for a single family.
Other smaller RP developments are the two LR estate centres (Fig. ): sites . and ., both
within easy reach of Phoinix-Loutro (.), each with a halo of smaller sites, constituting a cluster.
The estate centres are agglomerations of + rooms unlike any other GR sites; . has terraces
built into part of the site, and a cistern (Fig. ). We suggest that these estate centres produced
grain, which was transported down to the coast at . for shipment elsewhere (Price and Nixon
, –). Grain from . may have been taken first to Ta Marmara (.A). Samaria
Gorge North and South are used in RLR; we suggest that cypress wood and bee fodder were
part of the RPs there.
Some early GR examples of agricultural infrastructure, terraces and beehive sites, were found in
the Anopoli Plain. Agricultural terraces on slopes add to the amount of available arable; beehive
sites suggest bee-keeping on a scale above household production of honey and wax. Possible

TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY 
Fig. . Anopoli Plain and Phoinix-Loutro.
perimeter walls were noted in the Anopoli and Frangokastello Plains (Price and Nixon ,
–). Terraces can best be dated when they are associated with structures, as at .. The best
evidence for GR terracing in the Anopoli Plain comes from site ., an RLR house with its
own cistern and a peripheral structure  m away. It was part of an organised agricultural
landscape with an RP including arable and bee fodder, given the number of ancient ceramic

 LUCIA NIXON
Fig. . Plan of . (S. Price, S. Donovan).
beehive fragments found here. Crucially, the terracing abuts the walls of the main structure and
must be contemporary with it.
Most beehive sites are hard to date precisely. Three examples outside settlements can be dated
by associated amphoras: site . (Hellenistic, near .), . (RLR in the southern Samaria

Other GR terraces in Sphakia include one built for a now enormous Hellenistic(?) olive tree at Loutro (.),
and others in the Frangokastello Plain; Price and Nixon .

Francis ; . See Yangaki  for a proposed GR apiary at Eleutherna.

TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY 
Fig. . Beehive fragments from GR bee enclosure . (K. May).
Gorge), and . (on a route at the eastern edge of the Anopoli Plain). All three have stone
enclosures and fragments of ceramic beehives usually not closely datable. Site ., also on a
route, has a fourth ancient beehive enclosure with beehive fragments (Fig. ). Each beehive
area plus the land around it represents a small RP. Larger groups of beehives were not always
enclosed, as at site ., which seems to be RLR in use. Like ., ., and ., this site is
away, but not far from, good arable, another suggestion of strategies to protect arable and to
enhance agricultural sustainability. Forbes (pers. comm. ) notes that thin soils and
uncultivated areas with low-growing plants often provide better bee ‘pastures’ than cereal-
dominated arable land. Site ., on thin soil at the top of terraced slopes, is a good example of
this strategy. Beehive sites are usually within easy reach of settlements. These sites, and coins
with bees on them minted by Tarrha (Fig. ), suggest bee-keeping at a scale above subsistence.
The marbleised limestone at Ta Marmara (‘The Marbles’, .A) was cut into blocks and
transported for use elsewhere. This limestone became a resource contingent on the importance
of RLR Phoinix-Loutro (.).
Larger GR units/RPs
Large sites have been identified archaeologically for GACH and RLR, with five in use in each
period. Some of these large sites are known from texts. The GACH centres are . (west); .
and . (central); and . and . (east). The RLR centres are . (west); . and .
(central); and . and . (east). The number of sites (though not the sites themselves) is the
same for each period. All five GACH centres are inland and upland with at least some coastal
access. Site . is the farthest from the coast (a -minute walk from the sea). In RLR, four
centres are coastal: ., ., ., and .; only . is inland and upland. The large GACH

Theophrastus shows some knowledge of pollination (Historia Plantarum II..) but not of the role of bees in it.
We cannot be sure if people deliberately put beehive sites near crops and trees needing pollination.

 LUCIA NIXON
Fig. . Bee coin found at . between Tarrha and Ag. Roumeli, probably from Lisos
(Svoronos , –, pl. XXX:,).
sites are reduced in size or deserted by the end of Early Roman (ER). Phoinix-Loutro (.) is by far
the largest and most complex centre; the new estate centres at . and . are linked with it
(Fig. ). Site . is the only known seventh–ninth-century AD centre. Though large sites
occur in west, central, and east Sphakia, they are not evenly distributed, with more in the west.
There are some major potential gaps, notably Khora Sphakion and Askyphou, both on the main
north–south route through Sphakia.
GR sacred sites
Sacred sites (Table ) mirror the location of contemporary centres: GACH examples are all inland/
upland except ., while RLR examples are all coastal except ..
Three GACH centres (., ., .) have sanctuaries at or near them. The stone temple at
., associated first with site . and then with site ., is the only surviving sacred structure
dated to GACH (Fig. ). The location of this temple in west Sphakia mirrors the westward lean
of GR centres. Our current knowledge suggests that it was the major sacred site in GACH
Sphakia. The GACH sanctuary near . is the cave at ., no longer used in RLR (Francis
et al. ). Another sanctuary is at . in the northern part of the Samaria Gorge, where
cypress trees now abound. This sanctuary begins in the sixth century BC and continues into the
Roman period (main period of activity from the first to the third centuries AD). Niniou-
Kindeli’s suggestion that the sanctuary was dedicated to Artemis or Apollo remains unconfirmed
(Niniou-Kindeli –; Sporn , –).
RLR sanctuaries occur in eight locations in the west (Trypiti, Samaria Gorge), central (.,
.), and east (Frangokastello Plain). The earliest definite Roman sacred site is at Phoinix-
Loutro (., Sector ), where there was a concentration of pottery with an unusually high
proportion of Decorated Tablewares, including abundant ER–MR Italian Terra Sigillata. The
nature of the assemblage plus the absence of other ancient structures suggest that this area was a
sanctuary of some kind, coinciding with the emergence of Roman Phoinix as a major centre.

TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY 
Fig. . Loutro Peninsula with ferry at western harbour; Ag. Kharalambos on point. Arrow
indicates former eastern harbour. July .
Table . GR sacred sites.
Region/Area GACH locations R/LR locations

/Trypiti ., ?temple, CH? ., inscription mentions Temple of Serapis
(but not where), rd century AD; LR basilica
/Samaria N ., sanctuary, th century BC– ., sanctuary, main period st–rd century
/Samaria S ., temple, CH ., LR basilica built over CH temple
/Madares
/Araden ., basilica
/Ancient Anopolis ., sector A, ?shrine on route ., sector A, ?shrine may continue as route
up from Loutro still in use
., sector G, sacred
structure?
/Phoinix-Loutro .., ‘Samian Enclosure’, ER;  LR basilicas
.., LR basilica
/Khora Sphakion
/Askyphou
/Frangokastello ., possible figurine? ., basilica
Plain ., sacred cave ., basilica
Sector  also has four of the five Phoinix-Loutro LR basilicas plus the highest number of Phocaean
Red Slip (PhRS) sherds for the site. The numbers (five total) and distribution of LR basilicas
confirm the dominance of .; the Frangokastello Plain comes next in this hierarchy, with two.
Three other sites have a basilica each (., ., .).

 LUCIA NIXON
Fig. . Greek temple, Roman basilica, and Venetian church at Tarrha (.). July .
Boundaries of GR Sphakia?
We have no GR evidence of any entity in Sphakia. Two areas may represent edges or borders: the
sanctuary at site ., and the Poikilasion area in the Trypiti Gorge with up to three sanctuaries.
Discussion
Both centres and associated sanctuaries in GACH and RLR lean westward in terms of distribution;
most are in west and central Sphakia. This would be true even if there were additional centres at
Khora Sphakion or Askyphou, as finds of imported PhRS in each of these places might indicate.
The GR westward tendency is a different pattern from those in the PH and BVT epochs, where
there are more, and larger, settlements in east Sphakia. The GR pattern of larger settlements
toward the west suggests a different approach to larger-scale RPs in this epoch.
Textual evidence confirms this westward lean. The Hellenistic koinon (city federation) of the
Oreioi (‘mountain people’), a monetary union, includes Tarrha and Poikilasion, plus Elyros,
Syia, Lisos, and probably Kantanos, all to the immediate west of Sphakia. Lisos was the focal
sanctuary of the Oreioi. The gods of Poikilasion are also mentioned in a treaty of c. 
(Polybius ..; Chaniotis ). Tarrha, Araden and Anopolis officially received a sacred
ambassador (theoros) from Delphi c. – BC (Faure , –; Perlman , –),
and these same three cities were members of another koinon, the Kretaieis, which signed a
treaty with Eumenes II of Pergamum in  BC (SIG  .–; ICr iv..–; Chaniotis ).
Only Anopolis (Svoronos , –, pl. I:–) and Tarrha minted coins, both in the Hellenistic
period. The western focus may partly explain the otherwise puzzling prominence of the small
settlement at ., identified by us as Poikilasion: there is a possible CH temple nearby,
probably in use until Roman times; its gods are mentioned in the  BC treaty; a temple of
Serapis is mentioned in a third-century AD inscription; an LR basilica was built here (Fig. ).
Price looked at centres and territories for Hellenistic Cretan poleis (Table ; Price , –).
He found that there was an inverse relationship between the size of Sphakiote centres and their

TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY 
Table . Hellenistic Cretan poleis (after Price , ).
Name Area of Suggested territory Centre area (ha) to

centre (ha) area (km) territory area (km)
Gortyn   :.
Kydonia   :.
Phaistos   :.
Aptera   :.
Itanos   :.
Anopolis   :
Araden   :
[Patsianos Kephala, .]   :.
Tarrha   :.
territory sizes (smaller centres, much larger territories) – different from the relationship observed
elsewhere on Crete. Similarly, comparing the average territory size for Keian and Sphakiote
poleis shows that the territories proposed for the ‘resource-ful’ Keian poleis are far smaller than
those proposed for the Sphakiote examples (Table ).
The exact boundaries of GR Sphakiote centres are not known, but there is information for the
boundaries of other Cretan poleis. The fifth-century BC boundary separating Tylissos and Knossos
is expressed as a perambulation (a series of named points), which include a sanctuary and natural
features (Osborne and Rhodes , –, no. B, ll. –). Kyriakidis (, –) notes that
this boundary ‘largely coincided’ with that of the later koinotita (‘commune’). Chaniotis, looking at
Hellenistic polis treaties in Crete, gives several examples of perambulation-style boundaries, also
mentioning sanctuaries and natural features named through topothesies. In two east Cretan cases
at least part of the ancient boundary coincided with the later koinotita boundaries (Chaniotis
, –, –, no. , pls  and , –, –, no. , pls  and ).
One reason for boundaries is ultimately to define which RPs belong to whom. There is a
substantial body of evidence for this kind of awareness of important resources, and the need to
manage and regulate their use. Chaniotis (; ; cf. Nixon and Price ) has gathered
abundant epigraphic information for the management of pastoralism, transhumant and
otherwise, in GR Crete. Of interest for west Crete are two inscriptions: the mention of
magistrates at Polyrrhenia responsible for orderly flock movements (ICr II.xxxii.) and the early
imperial inscription recording the ownership of flocks by the sanctuary of Diktynna (ICr I.xxv.;
Chaniotis , , , –, n. ).
Ovicaprids were not the only animals requiring rules: an inscription from Lyktos dating to
c.  BC records decisions about the boundaries of an area ‘where sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs
are to be pooled together and sorted out’, presumably for summer pasturage (Gagarin and
Perlman , –, Lyktos inscription B). The boundaries are described in terms of paths
which everyone presumably knew well, without lists of toponyms (Chaniotis , ).
Bee-keeping and bee products were also of economic significance: evidence includes the
existence of specialised bee-keeping sites and the presence of bees on the coinage of Tarrha.
There is good archaeological evidence for bee-keeping in the GR world, including Sphakia, but
few textual references to it, as there are for pastoralism. Because transhumant animals were mobile
Table . Sphakia and Kea poleis and territory sizes (using Sphakia boundaries; after Price , ).
Location, area (km) Poleis Maximum territory

per polis (km)
Sphakia, . Tarrha, Araden, Anopolis, [Patsianos Kephala, .] .
Kea, . Ioulis, Karthaia, Koressos, Poieessa .

 LUCIA NIXON
and could cause damage to other people’s property and crops, they more obviously needed
regulation, whereas beehives were stationary, and did not.
Though there is no archaeological evidence for the GR use of cypress wood from Sphakia,
textual evidence suggests that it was of economic importance here. Fifth-century BC inscriptions
show that cypress wood was in demand for Greek temple construction (Cooper , , citing
IG I  [= Osborne and Rhodes , –, no. ] and IG I ). In the s BC,
Tykhamenes the Cretan won the contract to supply cypress wood for the door of the new
Temple of Asklepios at Epidauros (IG IV I, , l. ); the name Tykhamenes was common in
western Crete, and he may have come from one of the western Cretan poleis (Perlman ,
). In the third century BC, Theophrastus mentions cypress trees growing in hilly areas above
Tarrha (Historia Plantarum II.ii., V.iv.). It is possible that the sanctuary at . was linked with
cypresses; cf. a fifth-century BC inscription mentioning an Apollo sanctuary on Karpathos from
which cypresses were cut for a temple of Athena in Athens (Osborne and Rhodes , –,
no. , ll. –, –).
The importance of good resource management can be seen in other ways. On the Greek
mainland, Mackil discusses the importance of resource complementarity and economic
interdependence, the role of koina in promoting them, and decisions by poleis and koina to
maximise trading and other relationships between them. One example comes from third-century
Boiotia: an inscription from inland Akraiphia records a price list for freshwater fish from Lake
Kopais and saltwater fish from coastal Anthedon. Clearly it was to the advantage of both places
to have access to both kinds of fish (Mackil , –).
Mackil also discusses enktesis, which permitted property-ownership across koina and made it
possible for agropastoralists to diversify their production (Mackil , –; , –;
Economou and Kyriazis , with table ). Enktesis was also part of Cretan property rights, and
could include access to pasturage (Ager ; Chaniotis , , n. ; cf. Mackil , ).
Clear boundaries existed, as did ways of working across them to mutual advantage, resulting in a
paradoxical combination of definite territorial boundaries and measures giving cross-border
access to certain things. There are similar patterns in the BVT epoch.
The link between economically successful RPs and imported pottery was noted above. Twenty-
nine sites had five or more PhRS sherds each. The distribution of those sites confirms the strong
preference for coastal locations with good access to local and inland resources. There is a good
link between RLR sanctuaries and PhRS: all  places with basilicas, nine of which are coastal,
had five or more PhRS sherds. Moreover, the Loutro sector with four basilicas also had the
highest number of PhRS sherds for a single area. Other sites with solid PhRS counts include the
two RLR estate centres (., .) and two places with good connectivity (. near Khora
Sphakion; ., Askyphou Plain).
The emergence of a large RLR coastal settlement with harbour facilities and five basilicas on the
Loutro Peninsula at Phoinix-Loutro (.) had major effects on inland and upland areas: desertion
of two large sites (., .), construction of two estate centres with distinctive architecture (.,
.), and another possible drop in Madares use. The estate centres represent an unprecedented
(and never repeated) larger-scale use of their respective agricultural RPs. These two sites, on
routes linked to Phoinix, must have been part of a new, extractive production system, probably
driven by external (i.e. Roman imperial) factors, distorting normal resource exploitation and
packaging.
The GR westward lean of sanctuaries and centres, concentrated in areas with demonstrably less
arable, is a pattern showing an unusual emphasis on the more mountainous areas of Sphakia,
literally going against the grain of Sphakiote agricultural resources. The larger arable areas of
east Sphakia were certainly used in both GACH and RLR, but there were more centres and
more sanctuaries in west and central Sphakia. This aberrant lean (compared to the PH and BVT
epochs) surely involves a different approach to resources and their packaging, even if we cannot
explain the reasons for it.
However boundaries for larger RPs within Sphakia were constructed, the estimated territories in
Hellenistic Sphakia are much larger, and the polis centres are much smaller, compared to
contemporary Cretan territories and centres; perhaps the smaller poleis of this period needed

TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY 
larger territories due to more dispersed resources (Price , ). The number of centres in RLR
is similar; only Roman Phoinix has a much larger centre. These fewer, larger GR polis territories
would be analogous (though not identical) in terms of RPs to the phenomenon of fewer, larger
BVT koinotites.
THE BYZANTINE–VENETIAN–TURKISH EPOCH
The BVT settlement pattern, which jelled in the fourteenth century, included churches outside and
inside settlements. VT villages were located inland and upland, as in GR, though people chose
different locations (Table ; Figs , ). Settlement hierarchy has at most three levels:
settlements of at least – houses, smaller places, and single houses. In east-central and east
Sphakia, there are also summer villages, possibly from Venetian onward. There are more
settlements in east than west Sphakia.
Smaller BVT RPs

Byzantine material occurs at four Madares sites (., ., ., .), all on main north–south
routes, in areas which could have been used for seasonal pasturage. Site . in the northern
Samaria Gorge is still inhabited. Site . in the Askyphou Plain has a major BV phase. The
twelfth-century Skordhylis Perambulation discussed below shows clear knowledge of these three
landscapes.
In VT, we are confident that the Madares, accessed via the Mountain Desert to the south, were
used for seasonal pasturage. Site size is still relatively small. There are  BVT Madares sites. Again,
the proportion of Cooking/Preparation sherds in the Madares ( per cent) is different from the rest
of Sphakia ( per cent). Byzantine pottery is about the same proportion as elsewhere in Sphakia.
Venetian sherds, including some Early Venetian (EV), are all from east Madares sites. The high
proportion of Venetian fine wares is unusual. Of the datable pottery,  per cent was VT,
Turkish or Turkish–Modern, suggesting a fourteenth–nineteenth-century increase in activity.
Some of the shepherd’s huts (mitata; cf. Vallianos and Vallianos ) here are distinctive
corbelled structures, clearly different from houses in settlements (Fig. ).
Two other examples of smaller RPs are instructive. In , early in the Venetian period, a will
records the bequest of a settlement called Livadia (‘meadows’, a topothesia indicating a productive
area) with land ‘as far as the village of Vraskas [.]’ (Carbone , , no. ). This topothesia is
still in use, so we could locate the settlement (our .A), where we found an EV church, plus
remains of houses nearby, with two wells. The area is well-watered in Sphakiote terms with easy
access to the coast. The actual settlement did not last long (perhaps people left for the nearest
villages, . or .): olive trees surviving today were planted between  and  (dated by
their diameters; cf. Rackham and Moody , ) on new terraces overlying the houses. At
around the same time, a large wall was built to enclose the church, which continued in use
(Khaireti , , no. ). The area was also used in the Turkish period. The will’s implied
Table . GR centres and VT villages.
GR centres VT different VT same

. .
., . .
. .
. . (non-nucleated)
., . .
., ., ., . ., .

 LUCIA NIXON
Fig. . Patsianos village (.) with Patsianos Kephala (.) to left in the Frangokastello
Plain. September .
Fig. . Katsiveli Mitato (.) plan and cross-section (O. Rackham, S. Donovan).

TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY 
boundary and the topography, with two converging gullies, have enabled us to suggest an area of
 ha.
The second smaller RP involves the use of stone tumble at GR settlements for making VT
lime. Lime-kilns were built at four GR sites on the northern edge of the Anopolis Plain at its
uppermost level (., ., ., .; Fig. ), some distance from the nearest BVT Anopoli
house-group (.). These sites would presumably have been overgrown with shrubs useful as
fuel. Placing lime-kilns here avoided terraced arable at lower levels; lime could be conveniently
transported to points of use elsewhere.
Larger BVT units/RPs

There is insufficient evidence to speak of larger Byzantine units within Sphakia. For VT the picture
is clearer. We visited known larger settlements while also recording smaller ones that seldom
appeared on maps or lists. The combination of fieldwork plus lists of villages gives a figure of
– villages at this time, including the three easternmost villages which became part of
Sphakia only in the later nineteenth century. But even without these three villages, there was a
clear eastward lean in settlement, with more villages in east-central and east Sphakia than in
areas further west.
In the lists of  and , the figure of – villages is stable, but between those dates, there
had been changes. Settlement desertions began in EV with smaller places like Ta Livadia (.A);
later ones are mostly small sites in west and west-central Sphakia. Site ., not listed in Trivan
(), is a Turkish exception. Resource packages near deserted areas almost always continued
in use. By the later eighteenth century, the village in the Trypiti Gorge (.) was deserted;
newer villages, formerly seasonal settlements, were in east-central and east Sphakia (e.g. .,
.).
BVT sacred sites

There are three, possibly four, Byzantine churches (smaller Greek Orthodox buildings instead of
larger LR basilicas) in Regions , , and . Three of them are exokklisia with two known
physically. Profitis Ilias (.) is above the coast on the western edge of the Trypiti Gorge, near
GR sanctuaries at sites . and .. Ag. Pavlos (.) is on the coast, near a route and a fresh
water source. Two other churches are mentioned in the Byzantine Perambulation (Gerland
–, document IIIA). Point , ‘the saddle of Khristos’, where there is a later church, lies in
the Askyphou Plain near site .. Point  is ‘on the bema (sanctuary step) of the church in/of
Ag. Roumeli (.)’. The three possibilities for this church lie on the western edge of the
Samaria Gorge.
Venetian–Turkish churches occur in all eight regions. Unlike the Byzantine churches at .
and ., most Venetian and VT churches are architecturally undistinguished rectangular
structures and therefore usually difficult to date with precision; others can be dated using
frescoes and architecture or texts (Gerola –; Khaireti ; Lassithiotakis ).
Some Venetian-period churches have inlaid bowls (bacini ), usually imported from long
distances, and datable; there are also Turkish-period examples (Fig. ; Armstrong,
in preparation; Yangaki ). Turkish-period churches of the nineteenth century include free-
standing churches (.) and additions to existing ones (., .), mostly in east Sphakia,
often with dated lintels. Among these are the first churches in settlements which texts tell us are
seasonal (.A, .). Church numbers in different areas vary widely. Only one church occurs
at the Up altitude in Region  (.). Three Venetian ‘hotspots’ with several churches each

For Late Antique lime-kilns using stone (and/or sculpture) as fuel, see Munro ; , –; Buell
in press, –.

Trivan ; Stavrakis /. Counting villages, as opposed to seasonal settlements, is complicated.
Before the later nineteenth century, the villages of Kapsodasos, Skaloti, and Argoule belonged to the Ag. Vasileios
eparchy; there were only  villages in Venetian Sphakia as then defined.

 LUCIA NIXON
Fig. . Ag. Georgios and bacini, Ag. Roumeli (.). June .
emerge in the southern end of the Samaria Gorge, particularly the area of old Ag. Roumeli (.),
Khora Sphakion (.; Dalidakis ), and the central Frangokastello Plain (Region ).
In five cases, smaller Venetian churches are built over larger LR basilicas. One is in the village of
Aradena (.); the other four are exokklisia (., .., ., .). The church hotspots in the
Frangokastello Plain and the Samaria Gorge are represented; the Khora Sphakion hotspot is not.
People did not build Venetian churches over all Sphakiote LR basilicas; I suggested that the
deliberate choice of locations is linked with resource use in both periods (Nixon , –).
The Venetian RPs for the southern Samaria Gorge (cypress timber) and the Frangokastello Plain
(arable) are clear. The situation on the Loutro Peninsula had changed, however. Only one of the
five Phoinix basilicas had a church built over it (..); all other later churches here were
constructed elsewhere. Phoinix may have been the economic powerhouse of LR Sphakia, but
Venetian Loutro clearly had a different resource focus.

TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY 
Monasteries, like villages, require dedicated RPs to be self-sustaining. No Venetian monasteries

have been recognised in Sphakia. A Late Venetian text states that Sphakia had  priests, but no
monks (Trivan  in Manousakas , ). Most other parts of Crete do have Venetian
monasteries, usually large establishments outside settlements, owning enough land to provide a
living for the monks, such as Moni Preveli to the east (a double monastery) founded in the late
sixteenth century. At one point, resources at Preveli included arable for olive oil, carobs, grain,
garden produce, citrus fruit, and honey and pasturage to produce cheese, wool, milk, and meat.
The monastery also owned productive land-parcels (metochia) elsewhere (Psilakis , –;
foundation date, ).
The only two definite Sphakiote monasteries, identified through strong architectural and/or
textual evidence, are in East Sphakia at the Down elevation. Panagia Thymianis (.), east of
Khora Sphakion, seems to be late eighteenth–nineteenth century; Ag. Kharalambos (.), in
the Frangokastello Plain, is nineteenth century. Both have small churches with relatively few
monastic cells (Psilakis , –), vastly different from the scale of grander monasteries like
Preveli.
Boundaries of BVT Sphakia?

The earliest written record of the Sphakiote landscape is a perambulation, given in a charter
seemingly of . The charter was attached to a land grant current in EV times, giving
jurisdiction to the Skordylis family over a territory dependent on Anopoli (Gerland –, text
A; –, text B). The unnamed territory described in the Perambulation included about four-
fifths of modern Sphakia, with a boundary from the coast south-east of Vouvas (.) to the
middle of the Askyphou Plain, up to (part of ) the Madares and down to old Ag. Roumeli
(.). Excluded are the Trypiti Gorge, part of the west side of the Samaria Gorge, and the area
east of Vouvas. The  boundary points include several resource-based topothesies, e.g. ‘Three
Olive Trees/Groves’ (point ) and the Forest of Agrales (point ) in the Askyphou Plain, still
known by that name. Three high-altitude features, a cistern and two Madares areas with mitata,
along with Byzantine sherds found here, could suggest transhumant shepherding.
The later church on ‘the saddle of Khristos’ mentioned above is  m from the
Perambulation’s turn in the middle of the Askyphou Plain, near . (Fig. ). This location
was probably at the junction of lands held by three noble families, the Skordylides, Phokades,
and Melissenoi (Gerland –, –, document IIIB).
Information from Venetian and Turkish village lists shows that Sphakia then had boundaries like
those of modern Sphakia, except for the three villages added in the later nineteenth century
(Kapsodasos, Skaloti, Argoule).
Discussion
Visibility for the BVT epoch is often difficult for most areas in Sphakia. There is very little
Byzantine material; phases within VT villages that are still occupied are typically impossible to
track. Imported pottery, useful for assessing activity and ‘resource-fulness’ in the PH and GR
epochs, is for the most part a less valuable source of information, especially in the Turkish
period. Churches, sometimes decorated with imported pottery (i.e. bacini ), are often the best
way of detecting economic activity and ‘wealth’. The BVT epoch is, however, exceptional for the
abundance both of material and archaeological evidence, and of textual and ethnographic evidence.
Material and archaeological evidence

The best kinds of material evidence for BVT are settlements and settlement desertions,
agropastoral and industrial infrastructure, and church hotspots; datable trees are also useful.
Settlements, distinguished by the presence of house-groups, occur at Middle and Down
elevations only; there are no settlements above  masl. Nucleated and non-nucleated VT
settlements increase from west to east in Sphakia. Most nucleated settlements are in east-central
and east Sphakia; examples are Komitades (.) and Patsianos (.). Non-nucleated

 LUCIA NIXON
Fig. . Askyphou Plain looking south-south-east. Modern road on right continues route to
coast. April .
settlements are often in mountain plains, with house-groups (geitonies) on rocky lumps (Fig. ),
rather than on arable land. House styles vary somewhat by areas within Sphakia, but not by altitude.
Most settlements have at least one church, often Venetian or VT, and usually some exokklisia.
For example, Ag. Ioannis (.) had three village churches, plus two definite exokklisia at ..
Some settlements acquire churches only in the later Turkish period; other settlements never
have churches. Settlements with either a nineteenth-century church or no church occur in
Middle altitudes in Regions –, mainly in small mountain plains such as Kallikrati (.).
Some settlements without churches are small (– houses).
The main VT settlements, mostly Middle and Large, were known to us from the beginning
because they were mentioned in Venetian and Turkish texts, and their names survive. Other
settlements, mainly Small, were below the textual radar. Settlements deserted within VT are
useful because they shed light on diachronic changes in BVT approaches to resources.
Two east Sphakia sites, deserted within the Venetian period, reveal an early malleability in the
EV settlement pattern. The earliest BVT phase of site . probably dates to the time when the
Askyphou Plain was divided into the three noble family areas mentioned above. This Small
settlement’s location on slopes in the south-west arm of the plain permitted control of the main
route to the south coast; a built path ran through it. Later in the Venetian period, . was
deserted, and the main (and larger) neighbourhoods were established on rocky lumps above the
Plain. A big enclosure wall to keep animals out was built around the bottom of the Plain with a
new path around its outer edge following a slightly different route from the older one. In , it
apparently made sense to have small settlements near larger ones, like .A, described above,
near Vraskas (.). Site .A was deserted sometime between  and , but its RP with
arable, pasturage, and water remained in use throughout Venetian and into Turkish times, as
did the church.
Two Region  sites, . and ., demonstrate the value of connectivity and the will to use
small RPs on routes (Fig. ). Site . is slightly earlier, with two small settlements (+ and +
houses) on either side of a route. Terrace walls and enclosures suggest agropastoral activity here.

TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY 
Fig. . Anopoli Plain from the Anopolis Ridge. Three Anopoli village neighbourhoods: left to
right, edge of Kambos (.), Skala (.), Mariana (.). September .
The route linked Ag. Ioannis village (.), two churches at . and ., and the coast at Ag.
Pavlos (.). Site ., with a highly visible church and a house with two or three rooms and a
courtyard, is on a route linking . with Aradena (.). Here olive trees – years old sit
on terraces; small pens suggest pastoral activity. Both sites were deserted in the later Turkish
period; their RPs remained in use.
The desertion of site ., successor to Poikilasion, near the bottom of the Trypiti Gorge
(Fig. ), suggests that even its agropastoral RPs and nearby harbour were not enough to sustain
it as a settlement after the later eighteenth century; use of the area continues to this day.
Individual items of BVT agropastoral and industrial infrastructure are usually not closely
datable, though pottery and texts can provide broader date ranges. The nature and number of
specific types of infrastructure often vary according to environmental zones, and from region to
region.
There is a clear separation between higher- and lower-altitude areas. Region  has no houses.
Instead it has the corbelled structures built only here in the Up altitude (Fig. ), and the
highest number of small enclosures, near or built onto them. We knew from the outset that
these corbelled structures (mitata) were linked with seasonal rather than settled use of the
vegetation here, available only as summer pasturage. The smaller enclosures were milking-pens,
needed when there are larger numbers of animals to milk; smaller house flocks at lower altitudes
(up to – head) do not require them. Milking-pens also occur at Middle altitudes in Regions
– and –.
In terms of purely agricultural infrastructure, most settlements (Regions , –) have terrace
walls and threshing-floors (alonia). It is possible to date terraces to Byzantine, Venetian, and
Turkish; most are VT. Terraces with datable trees growing on them have helped us to locate
Venetian and/or Turkish examples (Price and Nixon , , figs , ). All Middle and Down
areas of Sphakia have single alonia, typically connected with smaller, dispersed areas of arable.

 LUCIA NIXON
Fig. . Venetian bee enclosure at Ergastiria (.). September .
Large groups of threshing-floors occur only in east Sphakia, where there are larger stretches of
arable, along with most of the Sphakiote grain-mills. Two large aloni groups are associated with
villages in the central Frangokastello Plain (.: +; .: ).
Larger stone enclosures (Regions –) enable people to separate different resources, for example
arable from pasturage; dried thorny shrubs often placed on top of enclosures acted as a further
deterrent to ovicaprids. The largest is in the Askyphou Plain.
Smaller stone beehive enclosures (melissokipa) are usually away from settlements, often in
sloping areas with thin soil. The highest numbers are in Regions , , and , with others in
Regions , , and . Ergasteria (., ‘workshops’) had a melissokipo with a stepped area for five
rows of hives and a separate storeroom and cistern (Fig. ). All these enclosures were on
sloping ground often in area with thin soil. The enclosures protect bees from wind. On flatter
ground, melissokipa are often not necessary; their absence in such areas does not necessarily
mean absence of bee-keeping. Some VT beehives were ceramic, others were made of perishable
materials (cypress wood, wicker; Mavrofridis ). Rectangular pieces of cypress bark, carefully
cut from trees so as not to kill them, were used as lids for beehives made of sawn cypress wood.
Some lid-cuttings are at least as early as the Turkish period. Lid-cuttings occur in Regions  and
–, with the largest numbers in the Samaria Gorge and Khora Sphakion areas (unpublished
formal records by Rackham and Moody). Their absence in east Sphakia relates directly to the
lesser availability of cypress
Lime-kilns occur in all regions; the Region  example is atypical (below the tree-line). Wells and
cisterns occur in all parts of Sphakia; the Askyphou Plain has the highest number of wells (+ at
the north end), though they are difficult to date.
Watermills occur in regions , , and , with the highest number in the Samaria Gorge, which
has most of the tall straight cypresses in Sphakia (Fig. ). We suggest that most mills here were
sawmills rather than grain mills. Ceramic evidence complements the economic picture given by
the mills. Within Ano Samaria village (.), we found sherds from a sixteenth-century fine ware
jug, identified as ‘NE Italian’, likely to be from the Veneto, and possibly Venice itself
(Armstrong, in preparation). Venetian-period churches and tombs with imported bacini at sites

TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY 
Fig. . Tall cypress trees near Ag. Nikolaos (.), Samaria Gorge. July .
., ., and . also demonstrate contacts with the world beyond Sphakia in this church
hotspot.
Some areas of specific large-scale activity can be correlated with the church hotspots in Samaria
Gorge South and the central Frangokastello Plain. The Samaria hotspot was probably linked with
trade in cypress timber; the Frangokastello hotspot with high levels of grain production. We can
also suggest that the Khora Sphakion hotspot was quite simply linked with links: this area has
the best connectivity in Sphakia, by land and by sea.

 LUCIA NIXON
Textual evidence
Turkish-period texts give important information about settlements, often confirming what we had
suspected from our fieldwork (Pashley , .; Raulin , vol. ; Papadopetrakis /;
Stavrakis /; Noukhakis , ; Deffner n.d.?). First, some non-nucleated
settlements made up of separate house-groups, whether contiguous or non-nucleated, were
counted as individual units, as they still are. These house-groups are known as neighbourhoods
(geitonies). Most non-nucleated settlements occur in mountain plains (e.g. Askyphou and
Anopoli). Contiguous geitonies occur in Khora Sphakion (., ., ., .) and in old Ag.
Roumeli (.).
Second, these texts offer crucial clarification on seasonal use of certain agropastoral resources.
One aspect of Sphakiote seasonality involves the ‘discrepant’ settlements, those at Middle altitude
in Regions – with either nineteenth-century or no churches. These higher summer settlements
with cooler temperatures had different resources from those of the lower winter ones. The alonia
tell us that grain was largely grown everywhere except at the Up altitude. In the Middle elevation
summer settlements, people also grew grapes, fruit trees, and nut trees. Winter settlements had
olives and carobs as well as grain. The system of seasonal summer settlements probably starts at
least as early as Venetian; three small sites (., ., .) without churches north of Khora
Sphakion mentioned in a document of  are among the seasonal settlements confirmed in
Turkish-period documents.
The information from texts and material remains shows that the VT agropastoral system
involves movement of animals as well as of people, with different patterns within Sphakia. West
Sphakia has year-round villages and usually single mitata at a higher altitude. West-central
Sphakia (Regions –) has mainly Middle villages and groups of mitata in the Madares (Up) for
summer use, plus some coastal grazing in winter. Khora Sphakion and east Sphakia have winter
and summer villages with mitata (usually single) above them. Turkish-period texts mention
mitata for summer use.
Two documents of  show that pasturage was already a crucial resource in the Venetian
period (Vourdoubakis , ). Together they record a deadly dispute between two families
over pasturage for sheep and goats and a new boundary, using topothesies to separate their
territories in the area north of Khora Sphakion (.; Nixon et al. , –).
Sheep and goats are not directly attested in the Early Turkish (ET) tax document of  since
they were taxed and recorded separately. The document records a grazing tax, but we do not know
how it was calculated, and the amounts paid by villages seem odd (Price et al. , ; cf. Nixon
and Price ).
There is evidence that (V)T pastoralism was specialised to cheese, which was exported to other
countries (Randolph /, ). Vourdoubakis published two eighteenth-century documents
recording the sale of madara-land (summer pasture) at Livada near .. Land value here was
measured in terms of cheese productivity rather than area. Raulin (, .–) records that
in the s Sphakia produced more sheep and higher amounts of cheese and wool than its area
at that time (. per cent of Crete) would suggest in relation to the rest of the island. A 
document mentions animal theft (Nixon ,  n. ), and later evidence that certain churches
were used to deal with sheep theft.
Twentieth-century information is relevant for the use of the Madares. Only men and boys over
 went up (Nixon and Price , ). Members of the same kin group used the same mitato and
took turns in the Madares so that they were not all absent from their villages at the same time.
Topothesies here often reflected resources: Livada (‘meadow’) and Nerou Lango (‘basin of
water’). Fig.  shows how shepherding work was integrated into the annual agropastoral cycle.

Vourdoubakis , document I, , –, document XXIII, , –. The unit of measure is the oka-
madara, based on the Turkish weight-unit oka (. kg). The land going with site . is extensive ( ha) and is
valued at only  oka-madares. Site ., valued at  oka-madares, has a much smaller area.

Churches at ., .A, and ., coinciding with former/current koinotita boundaries, plus . and . on
the coast and Ag. Zoni outside Vouvas (.); Nixon , –.

TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY 
Fig. . Circular calendar of agropastoral activities for Anopoli area (K. Glicksman).
The Greek word for beehive enclosure, literally bee garden (melissokipo), occurs in the 
document mentioned above; Ergasteria (.) is one of two locations (Vourdoubakis , ).
The ET tax document records a tax on beehives, but as with grazing, we do not know what its
basis was. Three villages each pay the highest beehive tax: Ag. Roumeli, Kolokasia, and
Patsianos, the latter two in east Sphakia.
Raulin (, .) comments on the high reputation of honey from mountainous areas and
says that both honey and wax were exported, with ten times as much honey as wax. Sphakia
along with Kissamo in Khania Nome produced the highest amounts of beeswax and honey in
Crete (Raulin , ., ).
Early fifteenth-century documents show that the Venetians took a keen interest in Cretan
cypress timber and forbade the export of unworked cypress from the island; Noiret ()
presents three relevant documents identified by their dates:  (pp. –);  (); and
 (). Mills are specified as ‘molini’ on Basilicata’s  map (Clutton and Kenny ,
); mentioned in a report of  on the coastal resources of west Crete (Semitecolo /
, ); and repeated on Coronelli’s  map of west Crete (reproduced in V.T. Melas and

 LUCIA NIXON
Tsokopoulos , –). These are the  mills in Samaria Gorge South (.). Sawn timber was
taken to the coast not far from old Ag. Roumeli (.), and then transported by sea. In the Turkish
period, Raulin (, .) notes that cypress timber was used for beams in rural houses, but the
wood does not seem to have been exported.
As for agriculture in general, the  document mentions alonia at Kaloi Lakkoi (.), one of
the summer settlements near Khora Sphakion (.). Threshing-floors and beehive enclosures
therefore go back at least to the earlier Venetian period.
The ET tax document of  notes a tax on watermills, used for grinding grain as well as
cutting timber. The same document gives figures for various arable commodities (wheat, olive
oil, grape must; Price et al. , tables –). The top producers of these commodities are all in
east-central and east Sphakia. In the seventeenth century, Khora Sphakion and Imbros–
Askyphou–Asphendou are the major producers. These figures shed light on Khora Sphakion as a
church hotspot.
Finally, later eighteenth- to early nineteenth-century land sale documents show that women and
men could own land outside (and sometimes at some distance from) their own villages, often at
different altitudes within Sphakia; this is a version of enktesis.
Conclusions
The combination of both archaeological/material and textual/ethnographic evidence provides a
much more nuanced picture of how people in the BVT epoch might have packaged resources
sustainably, using the environmental zones at their disposal. We located specialised
infrastructure for activities including cultivation, shepherding, cypress timber, bee-keeping, and
arable cultivation. Texts confirm that some of Sphakiote products were for export as well as
local use: cypress timber, pastoral products, olive oil, honey and beeswax.
We had already spotted a link between churches and RPs. Fieldwork made it possible to suggest
specific economic activities based on RPs in or near the three church hotspots (Samaria South,
Khora Sphakion, Frangokastello Plain); the texts made it possible to confirm those suggestions.
The lack of church hotspots in other areas (Ag. Ioannis, Anopoli, major pastoral areas) was
surprising.
Fieldwork also confirmed the importance of knowing where (and when) all settlements are, not
just those named in written documents. We might have guessed that smaller (‘discrepant’)
mountain plains with late or no churches were perhaps seasonally used, but we would not have
known for certain without Turkish-period texts making it clear that there really were villages and
seasonal settlements with duplicate infrastructure, used by the same people, rather than higher
numbers of settlements used by completely different people.
QUANTIFYING RPS
Quantifying RPs is potentially important for thinking about the agropastoral resources available to
people living in an area. Smaller and larger RP examples are discussed here.
Site ., Ta Livadia (.A), and Kosona

Site ., an LR farm in the Frangokastello Plain, and the EV settlement at Ta Livadia (.A)
were discussed earlier. Both lie on good arable; we do not know if people used pasturage
elsewhere, but we do know that in later Sphakia, pasturage on any major scale was normally
done away from good arable. These two sites are compared with the twentieth-century village of
Kosona on the Methana peninsula in mainland Greece, studied by Forbes in the s (Table ).

Vourdoubakis , documents XIX, XX; no boundaries given boundaries for the land being sold.

TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY 
Table . Site ., Ta Livadia, and Kosona.
Sphakia, .; RLR Sphakia, Ta Livadia, Methana, Kosona/Kypseli; twentieth

.A; EV century
Households/  house (like other RLR est. – houses,  households (Forbes , )
houses Frangokastello Plain perhaps others
farms) south; max 
Total RP area? c.  ha =  stremmata c.  ha (with all Unknown (Forbes, pers. comm. Dec.
associated land) = )
 stremmata  households at  stremmata of arable
(on average divided into  different
plots; p. ) =  stremmata or
 ha
Land-holdings in Kosona are fragmented rather than contiguous (a few people held land in the
plain of Trizinia some distance away, living in makeshift huts; Forbes, pers. comm. August ).
Fragmented land holding means that relatively small kin groups can harvest crops at different
altitudes at different times, turning dissected terrain into an advantage (Forbes , –,
, fig. ; cf. Aschenbrenner ). The combination of equal inheritance with virilocal
marriage and dowry practices means that land owned by a household was not only fragmented
(Forbes , , , ), but could also fluctuate from generation to generation.
Forbes’ study of Kosona shows that people knew precisely what agropastoral resources were
available at any given time, and how to organise their work over the year to exploit them. For
Kosona, the emphasis is on arable, as pastoralism seems not to have been done on any major
scale; the land associated with Ta Livadia is excellent arable, as already noted. Although it was
possible to calculate the average amount of arable per household, calculating the area and
boundaries of the total RP for an individual village, including Kosona, proved difficult.
Forbes recalls an interview with a village secretary elsewhere in the area. Describing the annual
agricultural returns to the statistical service, this man said that he met with the local agricultural
officer and a couple of other people, ‘and we tell lies!’ In other words, official figures for the
specific territory of Kosona may not be accurate (Forbes, pers. comm Dec. ; the new
Ktimatologio [Land Registry Greece] n.d., open only to citizens).
The comparison of Ta Livadia and Kosona could indicate a recurring range of figures for arable
land per household, possibly around  to  ha (cf. the much lower figure for eighteenth-century
Anavarin in Messenia, . ha; Davis, Bennet and Zarinebaf , ). But even if these figures
are accurate, they may well not represent a settlement’s total RP: other resources elsewhere may
also be in use. The larger area available to the one-house farm at site . could suggest that the
total RP for this single household was  ha; we cannot tell. Even in our own time, determining
the area and/or the precise boundaries of a village’s RP can be unexpectedly complicated.
Koinotites and land divisions

Until the s, the basic divisions used in Greece divided the country into nomes, eparchies, and
koinotites, places of common land, or ‘communes’. In  and after Greece became part of the
then European Economic Community in , Crete, including Sphakia, was still a largely
agropastoral economy. In  the Greek government adopted the Kapodistrias–Kallikratis Plan,
which turned most eparchies into demes, and abolished most koinotites (OECD ; cf.
Ioannidis , , table ).
The boundaries of the four Cretan nomes were basically determined by the later Venetian
period. They divide the island into four big chunks, each with land on the north and south
coasts. The  Venetian turmae (squadrons) became the  castellates, similar to the  later

See also the new () Ktimatologio (Land Registry Greece), available online <https://land-registry.gr>
accessed January ).

 LUCIA NIXON
Fig. . Sphakiote Koinotites and areas (M. Buell).
eparchies. The eparchies split the island horizontally from west to east, nearly all of them running
inland from the coast. Amari and Lasithi were the two landlocked exceptions (Bennet , figs 
and ). The koinotites may have been defined in the Venetian period; their boundaries were known
at least by the end of the Turkish period. The earliest definite koinotita boundaries that I could
find are those in the Atlas of Greece ().
Koinotita boundaries could be changed. In  the boundaries of three Sphakiote koinotites
were formally redefined by selecting different topothesies to mark the new boundaries in the same
manner as used for the Skordylis Perambulation some  years earlier (Geronymakis , ).
These boundary adjustments are simple because topothesies named many landscape features. In
Asphendou Koinotita there are  topothesies, one for every . km. Ta Livadia (‘the
meadows’) is one of many topothesies with resource implications.
The principle that seems to underlie the definition and boundaries of nomes, eparchies, and
koinotites is that they must each include sufficiently varied resources – agricultural, pastoral;
coastal, inland – to support the people living within them. The koinotites were the smallest
official divisions above the level of individual settlements. I suggest that, minimally defined, a
koinotita is an area which includes the agropastoral resources necessary to support at least one
village sustainably. Evidence for this suggestion includes the following factors: size, montaneity,

Gaignerot-Driessen (, ) suggests that some Mirabello Bay koinotites are as early as the Venetian period;
eparchy names in this area such as Mirabello (Lasithi Nome) and Monophatsi (‘Boniface’, Herakleion Nome)
certainly bear the imprint of Venetian rule.

Not all boundary changes were happy ones. For s protests in Vrakhasi, east Crete, against proposed
Kapodistrias–Kallikratis Plan changes resulting in a new local koinotita, see Gaignerot-Driessen , , ill. .

Geronymakis , – (list of names, foldout map back of book); Nixon , .

TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY 
Table . Anopoli and Patsianos Koinotites. Size and montaneity: Atlas of Greece ; villages and population:
Stavrakis /, –, Pinax  for  census; cf. –, Pinax ; p.  for comments on low Sphakiote
deme (‘commune’) populations; arable production: Price et al. .
Anopoli Patsianos

Size . km . km
Land >  masl . per cent . per cent
Villages by   
Arable wheat, kg /km /km
Arable olive oil, litres ./km ./km
Arable grape must, litres ./km ./km
Church number  
Church density /. km /. km
Population number  
village numbers, arable productivity, number and density of churches, and population figures
(where known).
Size is the single most crucial variable for koinotites, as variation in koinoitita size within Sphakia
shows (Fig. ). I noted above that larger koinotites are in west and central Sphakia, with smaller
ones east. Larger koinotites are more mountainous, have fewer villages, lower arable productivity,
fewer churches with lower densities, and usually smaller populations with lower densities.
Table  shows that Patsianos koinotita is much smaller than Anopoli but has on the whole better
arable production figures, more churches, and more people. Moreover, reaching RPs in
Patsianos koinotita is far easier; Anopoli koinotita, with its far more dissected terrain, could
benefit from the Madares, but using them effectively for pasturage would also require major
investment in terms of time costs.
Dissected terrain matters. Khora Sphakion is the fifth largest koinotita in Sphakia, yet it shares
the highest population density with the smallest (Imbros). Khora Sphakion koinotita also has by far
the largest number and density of churches. It has less arable than the smaller eastern koinotites, but
it did (and does) have the best connectivity in Sphakia.
Looking at Khania Nome puts Sphakia into a wider context. Khania Nome has five eparchies,
varying greatly in size (smallest: Apokoronas,  km; largest: Kydonia,  km). The number of
koinotites within the five eparchies varies far more (Sphakia, nine; Kissamos, ), as does their
average size (Apokorona, . km; Sphakia, . km). I infer that the smaller the area of an
eparchy or koinotita, the more advantageous the agropastoral RP within it. Because the average
koinotita size in Sphakia is far larger than for any other Khaniote eparchy, I also infer that
Sphakia was less ‘resource-ful’, in agropastoral terms, than most other eparchies in Khania Nome.
Later koinotites, valuable for their own periods, can also be useful as a starting point for
investigating earlier periods. Mackil (, , table ) used epigraphic information to suggest
boundaries for economic polis communities (koina) in Hellenistic Boiotia; Hope Simpson ()
compiled textual and archaeological evidence for the territory of Mycenaean Messenia. Linear B
tablets from Pylos mention two big divisions of its territory, the Hither and Further Provinces,
separated by the spine of Mount Aigaleon and the smaller centres associated with the two
divisions (Bennet , –).
Archaeological research and more recent maps show that the boundary of Boiotia Nome has
fluctuated many times (Mackil , map ; Fachard , fig. :,; Atlas of Greece s/s;
). The boundary of Messenia Nome is more similar to those proposed for the Mycenaean
Kingdom of Pylos: Shelmerdine and Bennet (, , fig. :) suggest that the kingdom
included much of the modern nome (Pylos:  km; Messenia Nome:  km). In both
cases, eparchies, both their numbers and their boundaries, are irrelevant, in terms of the
information we have for ancient divisions in Hellenistic Boiotia or Mycenaean Messenia.
It was useful to compare koinotita sizes and numbers before the later twentieth-century
Kapodistrias–Kallikratis Plan (OECD ) in Khania, Boiotia, and Messenia Nomes. Boiotia is
the largest, with fewer, larger koinotites (; average size . km); Messenia has more, smaller

 LUCIA NIXON
koinotites (; average size . km); Khania’s  koinotites are on average . km.
Varying degrees of montaneity account for these differences: Boiotia is easily the most
mountainous (Kithairon, Paliovouna, Motsara plus Lake Kopais Basin); Messenia even with
Mount Aigaleon is less mountainous than either of the other two nomes; Khania has the White
Mountains. This information gives an immediate idea of their contrasting agropastoral ‘resource-
fulnesses’.
In Boiotia and Messenia, koinotita boundaries and sizes are potentially more helpful than those
for eparchies. While it is received wisdom that ridge lines make useful boundaries, the Bronze Age
Hither/Further Province boundary dividing Mount Aigaleon in Messenia does not correspond
particularly well with the  eparchy boundaries. Using this information, I looked at whether
centres of Hellenistic Boiotian koina and Mycenaean provincial centres of Pylos coincided with
koinotita centres. Just over  per cent of the Hellenistic poleis and  per cent of the Pylian
provincial centres coincided (Mackil , map ; Hope Simpson , ). These coincidences
are not sufficient to generate internal boundaries for Hellenistic Boiotia and Mycenaean
Messenia. But individual coincidences are interesting for local boundaries, such as site  (area
Ib), a district centre south of Pylos coinciding with a koinotita centre (Hope Simpson , –
, , map ; Atlas of Greece ).
Without documents, we will never get precise boundaries for most RPs in any period. The
koinotita sizes give us an immediate sense of three things: the degree of agropastoral ‘resource-
fulness’ inside them; the overall resource envelope for at least one substantial settlement; and
some idea of how people could package those resources sustainably. Koinotita boundaries were
devised for the kind of dissected terrain common in most parts of Greece, and they evolved to
set reasonable limits for territories of various sizes, in a basically agropastoral economy. Used
with other variables, koinotita boundaries can suggest possible RPs for follow-up in different
periods and places (cf. Gaignerot-Driessen , –, maps , ).
CONCLUSIONS
This article had two goals: to contribute to the archaeology of sustainability, and to introduce RPs
as a useful analytical tool for investigating landscapes. Using five different kinds of evidence, where
available – environmental; material/archaeological, both direct (infrastructure) and indirect
(‘wealth’, e.g. imports and sacred sites); textual; oral; and ‘discrepant’ – was a fruitful approach
to looking at strategies for sustainability and the packaging of resources.
For the agropastoral economy of Sphakia, I predicted that if people were acting sustainably, they
would have at least three sustainable strategies: separation of arable and pasturage, use of
agricultural terraces to maximise the amount of arable, and careful placement of larger beehive
areas to avoid encroaching on arable. Table  shows that these strategies were indeed part of
people’s approach to the Sphakiote landscape, though not observable in all three epochs. The
use of all altitudes in nearly every period in all three epochs, whether the largest sites were
coastal or higher up, is another more general strategy for sustainability. It was difficult to
determine boundaries of smaller RPs, though we suspect from GR documents outside Sphakia
and BVT documents within it that they existed. The larger-scale koinotita boundaries seem to
have been constructed on sustainable principles.
Our work in Sphakia began with a research question: how did the people of Sphakia use their
tough landscape over some five millennia? When it came to looking at sustainability, I realised that
there were other questions to ask. Why did people in Sphakia use their landscape in the various
ways that we have observed? Why did they use particular resources there and not somewhere
else in some periods, but not in others (given that all altitudes seem to have been in use

Note [ku]-pa-ri-so, Kyparissos (‘cypress’; Ventris and Chadwick , , , no. /PY Na ; Bennet
, –), probably Kyparissia, capital of its koinotita, though not a Mycenaean district centre.

TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY 
Table . Strategies for sustainability. Square brackets indicate areas outside Sphakia.
PH GR BVT
General -use of every altitude -use of every altitude -use of every altitude
Infrastructure [-Pseira: Minoan agricultural -agricultural terraces -corbelled mitata at Up

terraces elevation
[-Palaikastro area: MM–LM -perimeter walls/ enclosures -agricultural terraces
terraces, enclosures, and -larger beehive sites, some -enclosure walls for arable
division walls to separate with enclosures, often -larger beehive sites away
agriculture from pastoral away from settlements from settlements
activities
Texts [-in east Crete, enktesis, -land ownership at more

possibly including access than one altitude, often
to pasturage outside owners’ villages
[-at Tylissos and in east (form of enktesis)
Crete, landscape -landscape knowledge in
knowledge in boundaries boundaries using
using topothesies topothesies
-land valuation based on
productivity
Seasonality seasonal Madares use for seasonal use of Madares for -seasonal use of Madares for
pasturage, possible dip in pasturage, possible dips in pasturage
EM–MM CH and RLR -seasonal settlements using
different RPs
throughout the long timespan of the Survey)? One answer is that people knew that sustainable
strategies meant that they could use all available resources without using them up.
The Madares are a conspicuous example of a contingent RP used seasonally. Other examples of
seasonality can be more difficult to detect archaeologically. We have a reasonable understanding of
(V)T seasonality, materially as well as textually, but that does not mean that people in PH and GR
had a similar approach. In part this is because seasonal arrangements can take many different forms
(Rosen ). Erny’s () statistical finds analysis for smaller Iron Age sites on Crete found a
wider variety of site functions than expected; her data were mainly from sites at lower altitudes,
but this approach could fruitfully be applied to sites in areas such as Sphakia. How best to
detect and understand seasonal practices is an area of the archaeology of sustainability where we
await further methodological developments.
Compared to other parts of Crete and beyond, Sphakia is a constrained, even tough, landscape
for agropastoralism; the more dissected the landscape, the more dissected the resources, both
within the same altitude and at different ones. Given the altitudinal range of Sphakia, we might
well have predicted RPs dissected by type and by altitudinal location – and we would have been
correct. People living in Sphakia managed to turn possible disadvantages of dissected terrain into
definite advantages, to minimise risk, and to build sustainability into the system. These sustainable
strategies include using pasturage at all altitudes, which in some periods enabled pastoral production
above subsistence; seasonal settlements with different crops at different times of year; and small
plots of land at different altitudes which could be harvested at different times. It may be that there
are more, and more complex, adaptations in Sphakia than in less tough landscapes. Further
research on the archaeology of sustainability in less dissected terrain will help to test this hypothesis.

 LUCIA NIXON
People in Sphakia may have been resource-poor in agropastoral terms, but they were strategy-
rich. The basis for the strategically sustainable management of Sphakiote resources is landscape
agency: familiarity with every available resource in the terrain which specific people could use,
often using topothesies or their equivalent.
Who had the landscape agency to develop and use resource strategies? In the PH epoch we do
not know. In GR there is one instance in the Roman period where external agency might have
played a part: the three areas linked with the major port settlement at Phoinix-Loutro – the two
grain-growing estate centres (., .) and the marbleised limestone at Ta Marmara (.A).
In the BVT epoch we know of major landholders and external Venetian and Ottoman rulers.
Nonetheless, the strategies observed for (V)T are based on a system where resource
management is usually directly handled by free agropastoralists. The Skordylides of the late
Byzantine Perambulation may have been the landowners, but they were a local family; in the
Turkish period, the external rulers of Crete were content to tax producers, including those in
Sphakia. In these periods, therefore, landscape agency is almost entirely in the hands of the
people who owned and managed the land and its resources – the exception is cypress timber,
which the Venetians controlled. The (V)T and GR systems seem to be for the most part directly
accountable: the people doing the work are locals who will be the first to know if resource
strategies do not work properly.
Movement was perhaps the single most important adaptation to the tough terrain of Sphakia.
Movement of different kinds and timings – daily and seasonal; shorter and longer distances;
whole village populations, men and older boys only – was essential for maximising RPs of
different sizes in Sphakia. The example of Kosona showed that people there travelled to
landholdings at different altitudes over relatively short distances. But Sphakia has a more
constrained landscape, so there was more movement over longer distances, with a wider
altitudinal range, often for longer times.
To outsiders, all this movement may seem ‘inconvenient’, but convenience is always in the eye
of the resource user. In fact, as the (V)T–earlier-twentieth-century system shows, movement made
it convenient to combine different tasks, on smaller and larger scales, into one overarching
sustainable strategy, and to construct a predictable schedule for the agropastoral year. As Randy
Newman says, ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going’. The going in Sphakia was,
and is, tough, but tough landscapes make for tough people, always on the move one way or
another to make the landscape work for them. In the early days of our fieldwork, I was surprised
that we always met people, no matter where we were working that day. Eventually I knew
enough not to be surprised: in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Sphakia, ‘going’ is still
important, even if it is mostly by truck rather than on foot or by mule.
The systems of resource management described here were usually based on the need for local
self-sufficiency; if production above subsistence was a regular part of the economy, then that also
needed careful oversight. The consequences of failing to apply landscape knowledge for a given
area were stark: potentially lethal privation, if crops failed and/or animals did not produce/
reproduce as expected, and loss of income or the possibilities of exchange, if expected
production above subsistence did not happen.
Ethnographic work suggests that people therefore developed their own strategies to manage
these risks (variable climate and rainfall) from year to year, typically by overproducing in good
years to make it through bad ones (Forbes ; ). People knew that their resources were
finite, and that all strategies for land management had to be sustainable over the long term. It
seems unlikely that anywhere in Sphakia could be considered marginal: if people could find a
use for land, they would use it, sustainably. I suggest that we can safely assume that these
statements apply not only to the recent past in Sphakia, but also to the whole period covered by
the survey.

Randy Newman’s  ‘Memo for my son’, lyrics available online at <www.songlyrics.com/randy-newman/
memo-to-my-son-lyrics/> (accessed January ).

TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY 
The (V)T agropastoral system, a fully integrated and sustainable way of maximising RPs,
continued in Sphakia into the earlier twentieth century, with several activities producing above
subsistence. After World War II (–) and the Greek Civil War (–), however,
traditional self-sufficient village agriculture began to collapse all over Greece. In  Greece
joined the EU (then the EEC). By the later s, when we began our work in Sphakia, there
were EU subsidies for olive groves on flatter arable (i.e. not on smaller agricultural terraces),
often using irrigation systems, and for imported feed for flocks. At about this time tourism
began to be a serious economic activity in Sphakia. Then, from the later s, the
Kapodistrias–Kallikratis Plan (OECD ) largely abolished the old koinotita boundaries. The
plan reflects major changes in the Greek economy and the need to manage land in different ways.
What we saw when we started our work was a deeply dis-integrated system: the old system was
in pieces, with agriculture basically gone, and pastoralism and bee-keeping continuing, though
differently. Movement was still part of the system, but pastoralism, once largely transhumant,
was becoming more stationary (imported grain meant that flocks did not have to be moved so
often or so far, with less use of high-altitude pasturage); bee-keeping was becoming ‘nomadic’
(moving beehives in trucks, rather than using fixed areas such as bee enclosures). New kinds of
knowledge were now important, so that much of the once essential landscape knowledge, and
the agency that went with it, were considered irrelevant, certainly by people outside Sphakia.
People inside Sphakia were often regarded as ignorant hillbillies rather than knowledgeable
problem-solvers with a strong background in sustainability (cf. Nixon , –; Manzano
et al. , ).
The result of these changes is that pastoralism and bee-keeping are now done less sustainably. In
the Anopoli area, shepherding no longer makes use of all possible pasturage locations; animals eat
imported feed, sometimes in fenced areas; overgrazing is becoming a problem (Meyer et al. ,
–, fig. bde). Bees are in greater danger of disease because nomadic bee-keeping means that
they are always ‘working’, and therefore more stressed (Bacandritsos et al. , ; cf. Simone-
Finstrom et al. ). These changes could be seen as an affront to anyone used to the old, self-
sufficient, sustainable practices.
Should the old ways simply be brought back? Of course not. Traditional agropastoralism was
very hard work, and the people who did it lived on a knife-edge, hence emigration from Sphakia,
as from other parts of the agropastoral Mediterranean. But some of that old landscape
knowledge could perhaps be incorporated into modern production methods, with a view to
restoring sustainability; this is at least an idea worth exploring. The collapse of the old
agricultural system means that there are resources now not systematically used. One possibility is
to find a sustainable way of using former agricultural land as pasturage for ‘free’. Another is to
consider a workable alternative to nomadic bee-keeping. The idea would be to keep the
principles of landscape agency, while updating the strategies.
Developing modern, sustainable landscape strategies based on older practices is not a new idea.
Explicitly using the results of archaeological work to improve modern food production began
overtly with the Libyan Valleys Project (Barker et al. , ). Scientists and archaeologists are
now beginning to realise how important archaeological work can be for suggesting new
possibilities (Turner et al. ; cf. Valipour et al. ). Monbiot (), among others,
suggests that a plant-based diet is best for our planet; others suggest that a reduced-meat diet
combined with pastoralism, properly done, makes the most of land which is unsuitable for
cultivation (Rebanks ; Manzano et al. , ; Sustainable Food Trust ). The
archaeology of sustainability will become increasingly important given climate change and the
need to support human populations with better knowledge, agency, and resource strategies.
In this article I have identified strategies for agropastoral sustainability in the dissected terrain of
Sphakia for all three epochs, using a wide range of evidence; introduced the concept of RPs as an
analytical tool for the study of the Sphakiote landscape; and summarised several approaches to
sustainable resource packaging over the Survey’s time span. I hope to have shown that looking
for sustainability through careful resource management in this tough landscape is not only
archaeologically valuable, but potentially useful for everyone making choices for a sustainable
future.

 LUCIA NIXON
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Sphakia Survey is codirected by Lucia Nixon and Jennifer Moody, with senior participation
from Simon Price (d. ) and Oliver Rackham (d. ). I thank the Greek Archaeological
Service and especially the former KE’ Ephoreia in Khania; the students and specialists who
worked with us; and the Canadian Institute in Greece for their help over the years. Thanks also
to the many institutions who funded our work: the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council (Canada); the Institute for Aegean Prehistory (US); the Arts and Humanities Research
Council (UK); Queen’s University at Kingston; the University of New Brunswick at Saint John;
the University of Oxford (Lady Margaret Hall; the Faculty of Literae Humaniores, now Classics;
the Research and Equipment Committee); and Baylor University, Texas. Other details on the
Survey website (Nixon et al. ). Earlier versions of this article were presented as seminars at
the University of Texas at Austin and the Mycenaean Seminar, London (), and the Greek
Archaeology Group, Oxford (). I thank these audiences for their comments and questions.
Thanks to Jamie Fairbairn and Nicoletta Momigliano (useful comments); the staff of the Map
Room, Bodleian Library, Oxford (Michael Athanson, help with montaneity figures; Nick Millea;
Stuart Ackland); Matt Buell (maps and references); Kapua Iao (copyediting). Hamish Forbes
kindly read and commented on the manuscript before submission. I thank especially Simon
Price for encouraging this work on resources from the very beginning, and the people of Sphakia
for answering my endless questions. All images were produced by members of the Sphakia team
unless otherwise indicated. I am responsible for any errors that remain.
lucia.nixon@classics.ox.ac.uk
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World: Resources Dedicated to Religion in the
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Scientific Reports , no.  (available online Historical Research, National Hellenic Research
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klassischer und hellenistischer Zeit (Heidelberg). Greek Archaeology , –.

 LUCIA NIXON
Προς μια αρχαιολογία της βιωσιμότητας: πακέτα πόρων και διαχείριση του τοπίου στα Σwακιά,
νοτιοδυτική Κρήτη
Χρησιμοποιώντας στοιχεία από την Έρευνα Επιwανείας Σwακίων, ένα αρχαιολογικό πρόγραμμα
πολλαπλών περιόδων στη νοτιοδυτική Κρήτη, το άρθρο αυτό έχει δύο στόχους. Ο πρώτος είναι να
συμβάλει σε ένα νέο αναδυόμενο πεδίο, την αρχαιολογία της βιωσιμότητας. Η διερεύνηση της
βιωσιμότητας στα Σwακιά χρησιμοποιεί πέντε βασικά είδη τεκμηρίων: περιβαλλοντικά,
αρχαιολογικά/υλικά, κειμενικά, προwορικά και πρότυπα δραστηριοτήτων που wαίνονται «δύσκολα»
ή «άβολα». Τα Σwακιά είναι μια μεγάλη περιοχή με έντονα κατακερματισμένο έδαwος και μεγάλο
υψομετρικό εύρος - από πολλές απόψεις, ένα «σκληρό» τοπίο, όπου η αγροκτηνοτροwία ήταν η
κύρια οικονομία. Ο δεύτερος στόχος είναι η εισαγωγή της έννοιας του πακέτου πόρων (συνδυασμός
αντιληπτών πόρων σε μια περιοχή), ως αναλυτικό εργαλείο για τη μελέτη του τοπίου. Τα τεκμήρια
για τον εντοπισμό πακέτων αγροκτηνοτροwικών πόρων διαwόρων κλιμάκων, που χρησιμοποιήθηκαν
σε μια συγκεκριμένη εποχή, περιλαμβάνουν εισαγωγές, όπως κεραμική και οψιδιανός, που μπορεί
να υποδηλώνουν την ανταλλαγή με έναν τοπικό πόρο ή προϊόν· ιερούς τόπους· νομίσματα· κείμενα
και επιγραwές· τοπωνύμια· και χάρτες. Η έννοια των πακέτων πόρων μπορεί να εwαρμοστεί
συγχρονικά και διαχρονικά σε προγράμματα πολλαπλών περιόδων όπως αυτό, καθώς και
γενικότερα σε άλλα τοπία, «σκληρά» ή μη. Βιώσιμες στρατηγικές (δηλαδή μεγιστοποίηση των πόρων
και των πακέτων πόρων χωρίς εξάντλησή τους) χρησιμοποιήθηκαν στην Προϊστορική,
Ελληνορωμαϊκή και Βυζαντινή-Βενετική-Τουρκική εποχή στα Σwακιά· μερικές από αυτές μπορεί
να είναι χρήσιμες και για το μέλλον.
Μετάwραση: Στέλιος Ιερεμίας

Nixon 2024 - Archaeology of Sustainability

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The Annual of the British School at Athens, , page  of  © The Author(s), .

Published by Cambridge University

TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY:

Wolfson College, Oxford

The Sphakia Survey

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Fig. . Sphakia settlements in .

Assessing sustainability in the past

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Fig. . Regions of Sphakia.

Fig. . Environmental zones.

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The concept of RPs

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Detecting and defining resources and RPs

Table . Sphakiote koinotites (‘communes’).

Koinotis Total Number of BVT Area Land Area Land

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Fig. . Katsiveli Mitato (.) between two enclosures.

Fig. . Mountain desert north of Anopoli. June .

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Fig. . Trypiti Gorge (M. Buell).

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Fig. . Samaria Gorge South.

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Fig. . Region  and Ts’Assi Basin (M. Buell).

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Fig. . Ts’Assi Basin, looking west-south-west from .. June .

THE PREHISTORIC EPOCH

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Fig. . Region .

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Fig. . Potter’s disc from . (K. May).

Fig. . Sites in the Madares.

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Fig. . Head of bull figurine from . (K. May).

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

THE GRAECO-ROMAN EPOCH

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Fig. . Anopoli Plain and Phoinix-Loutro.

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Fig. . Plan of . (S. Price, S. Donovan).

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Table . GR sacred sites.

Region/Area GACH locations R/LR locations

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Table . Hellenistic Cretan poleis (after Price , ).

Name Area of Suggested territory Centre area (ha) to

Location, area (km) Poleis Maximum territory

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245424000042 Published online by Cambridge University Press

THE BYZANTINE–VENETIAN–TURKISH EPOCH

Smaller BVT RPs

Table . GR centres and VT villages.

GR centres VT different VT same