The speaker is Antonella Pautasso, Director of the Italian Mission in Priya and Director of Research at ISPC-CNR (Institute of Cultural Heritage – National Research Council of Italy).

The lecture will be given in English.

One of the most important sites of the Iron Age in Crete is the plateau or Patella of Prinias on the eastern foothills of Psiloritis. The neighbouring village lent its name to the ruins of the ancient city and its cemetery which dominates the hill opposite. It is a prominent topography from which both the two seas of the island, the northern Cretan Sea and the southern Libyan Sea, can be seen, as well as the network of ancient roads that led to this central location.

With a history dating back to the end of the Bronze Age, Prias experienced a period of impressive prosperity in the 7th century BC: urban changes, public buildings, a temple, a fortification and the famous relief tombs, before being abandoned in the 6th century BC.

In this lecture we will travel through a century and a half of dense history and critical transformations, through new interpretations emerging from the combined reading of old excavations and contemporary research. I wonder what this ancient city was called?

Antonella Pautasso is Director of Research at ISPC-CNR (Institute of Cultural Heritage – National Research Council of Italy). She is a fellow of the Italian Archaeological School of Athens, specialised in Classical Archaeology at La Sapienza University of Rome, was awarded a PhD at the University of Naples Federico II and became Professor of Classical Archaeology. Since 2021 she has been Director of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Priory, of which she has been a member since 1994. She has been scientific manager of national (Ministry of Research of Italy – MUR) and international (CNR-CNRS, CNR-Dimokritos of Athens) research projects concerning the archaeology of Crete, with emphasis on the Iron Age. She has received international grants for the study and publication of archaeological assemblages from the Prinia site (INSTAP, Shelby White – Leon Levy Foundation). Her main research interests focus on the archaeology of Crete (Iron Age and Archaic period; study of ceramics and coroplasty), as well as on Archaic and Classical Greek Sicily (coroplasty, ceramics, religion). She is co-founder of the international research group on Greek clay figurines (ACoSt – Association for Coroplastic Studies) and a member of its board of directors. She has published four monographs, edited three edited volumes and is the author of numerous articles on the archaeology of Crete and Greek Sicily.